Submitted by Max Sherwood, Sep 25, 2007 22:13

their expectations of students? You aften hear that certain freshman course "cull-out the weak students". Unfortunately, the NYU system has taken that to a new level. How many more students with mental health issues will be "culled out" by this unfortunate unforseen method?

With today's technology the school system has grown to expect that every student can deliver whatever they demand, because they now have the "tools of technology". The school and professors have not adequately considered that each and everyone of them has assumed that now students can instantly gratify their demands since todays' students have new tools. This is simply not true. People have fixed capacities for what they can ingest, digest, and learn, and in most cases it requires some amount of time. When students who are striving for excellence (as expected by their profs and society) are challenged with unrealistic expectations (i.e. several profs expecting the highest quality work on several projects all at the same time), many will not be able to meet the demand. Intellectual and emotional intelligence and/or health will cause unusually highg stress. Unfortunately, the students and not the profs suffer. College Officios claim that "some students can't handle today's pressures". To put it bluntly ... duh?! That's obvious, however these officios are the creators of these pressures and somehow are able to very easily absolve themselves from their responsibilities. That being the health and welfare of the students in the schools they control. They are blinded by their own ambitions and it is students who ultimately pay. Have they serioulsy asked themselves 'why there are so many more suicides now then before the E-information explosion?', I seriously doubt it. All that matters is that they produce more high scoring students, despite the losses. "Win at all costs". [I believe they would call that the "D" profile in the "DiSC" personality scale.] They say the students are "sick" to further absolve themselves. They are sick. They are the sociopaths, consumed in their own power to show results in order to boost their schools enrollment , in order to show the world that they are great people (and deserve a new wing in their school to be named after them).

Why hasn't this such thing happened earlier? School leaders will argue that it is because more people are now able to get into school and that a higher % are mentally ill. Perhaps. But I would argue that the relative % has probably not changed and that in the past people were not even diganosed. There is no way to prove it. We can only assume that, proportionally, there have always been people in the school system with mental illness. But why now is the number of suicides in college so high? We must ask oursleve whether the educational systems have not overextended their expectations and pressured the vulnerable students into these situations. Sadly, enough hasn't been done. The people i n high places have not looked seriously enough at the pressures that today's students face. They have not sat through a semester a Graduate Biochemistry to watch almost every student score miserably because the volumes of knowledge (which has taken even experts years to discover!) that they are forced to ingest, digest, and regurgitate intelligently. Even the (several) profs teaching these types of courses cannot possibly regurgitate all the details that students perceive that they are expected to know perfectly. It has simply gotten out of control.

Hope. There is hope. People must voice their opinions and pressure the educational institution officials to review their programs (in detail) and eliminate the "impossible" course requirementsand program expectations that have proliferated out of control.

Action. Talk to the educators. Educate yourself about mental disease. Point out the extreme overexpectations of school programs and courses, and suggest ways to provide reasonable and more lenient timelines for those diagnosed with mental diseases. Most importtantly... don't stop talking about it.

Sincerely, A very concerned, surviving Post-Graduate

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