CURMUDGUCATION: Drowning Bunnies To Raise Graduation Rates

CURMUDGUCATION: Drowning Bunnies To Raise Graduation Rates:

Drowning Bunnies To Raise Graduation Rates

Mount St. Mary's University is a relatively small school in Maryland, "located in the middle of everything." And their president would like to drown some bunnies.

Okay, only metaphorically. What Simon Newman would like to do is improve the university's retention numbers. And he would like to do it by "counseling out" students early who are judged likely to drop out later. Here's the lead from the college newspaper's story about the plan:

Even before this year’s freshman class arrived on campus in August, President Simon Newman was developing a plan to dismiss 20-25 of them before the end of September as a means of improving the Mount’s student retention numbers.

Newman was hired by the university just over a year ago. His previous experience? Thirty years in finance and investment. Perhaps that's why he used a less-than-felicitous metaphor to explain his plan. Unfortunately for him, the university apparently has a student newspaper that does real reporting, and they reported on Newman's plan-- and a few other things.  As reported in Inside Higher Education:

The student newspaper also reported (and The Washington Post quoted a professor confirming) that Newman told some faculty members they needed to change the way they think of struggling students. He reportedly said, “This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.”

The Mountain Echo quotes emails from Newman as they lay out the specifics of the plan to "cull the class." The entering freshmen would take a "survey" that would help decide their fate (it was not CURMUDGUCATION: Drowning Bunnies To Raise Graduation Rates: