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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 22, 1979)
s d hrder for collegiates to meet standards THE BATTALION WEDNESDAY AUGUST 22. 1979 Page 3 Student reasoning ability lower whose nd his ln >pus, ay, the atten. were a local _«alfthe nation’s college students I the intellectual reasoning abil- omeet course standards the way [ were taught just a few years ^aTexas A&M University study i confirmed. Results of psychological tests sen 736 Texas A&M student vol- Lers were consistent with find- colmany nationwide studies that cate science students are on died a dd not arrival , 66, of ghway at 5:30 e train slightly better prepared mentally than non-science majors, said physi cist Dr. Laura Bergmasco Osborne, who administered the tests. Fifty-three percent of Texas A&M’s science students were at a level required of “conventional” courses, compared to 38 percent of the non-science majors, revealed Osborne, a visiting associate profes sor. She described conventional classes as those which stress the ability to reason and present an swers in a coherent way, standard requirements in most courses until recently, she said. The study further disclosed that going to college longer is no cure, either. Students over age 22 who had been attending college more than four years did not particularly Lower living predicted for standard 1980s ke salary e hike lenied tion to er late isocia- ;s and h four :'ited a Taphy. londay ures of ranged cted to ng the e pow- fewer Americans may be able to ferd sities of life in the tnt of another major recession, Texas A&M University «omists warned Wednesday. Dr. Gene Uselton and Dr. S. urles Maurice agreed with a re nt report of the Joint Economic immittee of Congress which led the growth of productivity in tcountry the, “economic linchpin the 1980s,” and pointed out this ajoreconomic indicator is slipping unatically. We have had an increase in , ( nernment-caused uncertainty in HtClUO'll -® ess , Maurice said, head of the sraomics department at Texas iiM, “which has reduced innova- productivity and capital forma tion. It has become easier to put a firm out of business or into the red because of government regulations — resulting in increased uncer tainty and less production.” Maurice said decreased growth of productivity is often used as a defi nition of recession and could mean a lower standard of living as fewer goods like homes and automobiles are produced. In the first half of 1979 output per man-hour in the private business sector decreased by an annual rate of 3.3 percent and fell at an annual rate of more than 5 percent in the second quarter, the largest quar terly decline ever recored by the U.S. Labor Department since it began keeping statistics in 1947. tgs 10 has braska Jay in vill be before latney es and 1 Kan- id the :y was orney inves- ofiice ie i have o says Judge h day rning. onday lys — iob niten- e who :h S10 eVore a and ape of offers /yom- Drison ed by ing50 1 trial pts to &M B00KST0R has a wide variety of paperback books for all to enjoy Fiction Best Sellers Mysteries Magazines Westerns Comic Books Collectors stamps and supplies Largest selection of science fiction in the area 3602 E. 29th St. Bryan n and xican Social jeans t, left dirty- ies of To* AUTO START VW — DATSON — TOYOTA — VOLVO And all U.S. makes and models we have DYNA SCAN for complete scientific tune ups. 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College Bryan, Texas 822-1559 .leffenson standard Uselton, director of Texas A&M’s Center for Education and Research in Free Enterprise, also blamed the decline on government regulations. “Some of the regulations are good,” Uselton said, “but there are many regulations that are taking away more than they give back. More and more people are engaged in doing things that are nonproduc tive. For example. General Motors alone employs 23,000 people just to fill out government forms, and that has occurred only in the last 10-15 years.” The congressional mid-year analysis of the economy warned that tax and regulatory barriers to pro duction must be addressed of the average American is likely to see his standard of living decline in the 1980’s. benefit from the extra time, Os borne noted. “The overall results agree with national averages,” she said of the Piaget tests that measure a student’s ability to solve problems by reason ing. Even more pessimistic conclu sions, said Osborne, are drawm in a new book, “American Higher Edu cation in Decline, written by Texas’ Commissioner of Higher Education Dr. Kenneth Ashworth. “The fact that science students scored higher may give us science teachers momentary pleasure, but we must not forget that even among science students, the level was only 50 percent. We live in a society af fected by the preformce of all its members,” she remarked. Osborne suggests the modern de arth of classical and humanistic courses such as Latin, Greek and philosophy may work against mental development of non-science stu dents. Changing the attitudes of teachers and adults who “waste the most precious and formative years of students by dulling their minds in the search for easy popularity and less strenuous work, is the only real answer to the dilemma, she ar- gured. "It is unfair to the youngsters to cheat them out of the kind of early preparation, starting in grammer school, that will allow them to cope successfully with reality, Osborne said. She thinks lowering the reasoning level required by convintional col lege courses and liberal “curve” grading are doing more harm than good. “Curve grading appears to help students not yet at that needed mental level to gain better grades, possible creating a false sense of se curity,” said the Texas A&M scien tist. “If a course is kept at a very low level, it will not be unusual to find several bright, intellecturally de veloped students making lower grades because they are bored. 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