Veterans deserve a chance in college

Discussion in 'Military-related education topics' started by Kizmet, May 30, 2016.

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  1. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  2. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    Sounds like a case of sour grapes; "I did it, they should have to also".
     
  3. novadar

    novadar Member

    The article has a whiff of elitism - the author is attending Columbia University after all.

    Colleges and universities are free to set what ever standards they wish for awarding credit. To me granting credit for military experience is much like a portfolio for credit arrangement -- knowledge was gained at some point in time and the context and extent of that knowledge has been quantified in large part thanks to ACE. I am a veteran with degrees pre, during, and post military. I have no qualms with credit for military training and experience.

    Mister "Marine" needs to get over himself and realize not every veteran or every situation is like his is or was. I guess 6 years in the Marines did not teach him that point, something he should have picked up at Parris Island very early on during his time in the Corps.
     
  4. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    ACE recommendations for military training aren't overly generous.

    My SMART transcript basically gives me somewhere around 25 credits in such useful courses as "Basic Seamanship" and "Nautical Navigation." Each of those for about 1 credit, by the way.

    If I remember correctly I got somewhere around 18 credit recommendations for human resources and small business management. But I was a personnelman. And I went to school to be a personnelman. Those seamanship credits came from boot camp which was most assuredly not a course to be completed in a single day on a website.

    Though I don't have the basic fitness course recommendation in front of me I would wager it is no more than 1 credit (and possibly half a credit or even a quarter credit). He makes it sound like veterans are showing up to colleges with a week's worth of learning allowing them to skip half a bachelor's program.

    Of course, if you're going to take on ACE you might as well take on CLEP. Why would it be fair for a person (veteran or non-veteran alike) skip a class just because they took a test? This guy had to sit through it; so should you.
     
  5. CryptoJones

    CryptoJones New Member

    Man.. fuck this guy. I busted my ASS taking every MCI I could find that had college level credit.

    He is a Blue Falcon if I've ever seen one.

    S/F,
    CJ
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 3, 2016
  6. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    CJ, I know that wasn't funny, except... it actually was pretty funny.
     
  7. novadar

    novadar Member

    LOL, we used "Bravo Foxtrot-er" (very literal) in the Army often to describe this type of dude. Blue Falcon has more eloquence, I like it.
     
  8. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    In the Navy we just called them Buddy F-ers.

    We spent most of our time thinking up clever names for everything else. I guess we ran out of steam by the time we got to the Blue Falcons of the world.
     
  9. novadar

    novadar Member

    True, true. It's amazing how little you can accomplish if you work hard at it. Sounds just like a Seinfeld episode.
     
  10. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    It's funny because I have read a number of books where authors comment on how odd Naval terminology is as if they were the first to uncover the oddity.

    It goes beyond swabbing the deck. Because, attached to the deck you'll find bulkhead (walls) which, in turn, connect to an overhead (ceiling). All of these things can be found in a passageway, or a "P-way" (hallway).

    But the acronyms were downright absurd at times. I once had a little literary exercise with some shipmates where we attempted to tell an entire story using primarily Navy acronyms. The winner came up with something to the effect of:

    Besides, "Blue Falcon" sounds a bit too noble. If you need to keep it clean in mixed company, Bravo Foxtrot serves nicely, otherwise, call them what they are.
     
  11. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

    Seriously, I don't know what is this clown talking about. The military prepares you enough to attend college, from partying all night to most disciplined individuals. I completed my degree within 24 months while serving active duty in the Marine Corps at a Combatant Command. You have a choice going out to party all night or sitting in your barrack to study. I prepared myself enough to transfer to civilian workforce, after 8 years of leaving active duty working in the private sectors. Now my annual income is $200,000.000. It is all about individual, and his contributed article is useless.
     
  12. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I have met quite a few people who studied at top tier universities who have very poor opinions of, what they consider, inferior education. You can easily transfer CC credits to most state schools in many situations. But Harvard probably won't take them.

    The Ivys tend to like you to come in fresh and their transfers seem fairly limited to other elite schools with a few occasional exceptions. Yale isn't going to let someone walk in with 60 credits from Clovis and walk out 60 credits later with a degree from Yale. Doing so would basically admit that a Clovis education is equivalent to a Yale education.

    Some of it is snottiness. Some of it is a desire to ensure that a person coming into Calculus II is actually prepared for it. And there is a difference, in terms of rigor and competitiveness, at the top tier. Malcom Gladwell did an interesting Ted Talk about this very thing.

    Where the author of this article went off the rails, aside from being a condescending d-bag, was to basically try to claim that military training has no relevance to academia. Did my PN coursework compare to traditional HR coursework? Uhh, yeah it did. And I have spoke to Corpsmen whose training directly translated into credits for their post-military programs in Nursing, Respiratory Therapy, Paramedic Studies and other allied medical professions. I've also known Storekeepers whose training absolutely prepared them for continued study, and work, in logistics, inventory management and small business management.

    These are all transferable skills that are directly relevant to the work and study they undertook when they got out of the military.

    There tends to be less transferability when you start getting into the liberal arts. Even a service member assigned as a defense attache at an embassy only has a narrowly focused, and practical, insight into politics and diplomacy. That isn't a substitute for the theoretical study of political science. It's like the difference between being a gifted app designer and a computer scientist.

    So this guy went to a university and into a degree program where his experience doesn't really matter. And he acknowledges that. He wrongly assumes, however, that such is the case for every veteran and that every academic degree works just like his.
     
  13. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

    I just found out this guy, the author Alexander Baldwin McCoy attends School of General Studies of Columbia University. It is a backdoor getting into Ivy league, but if he think he is Ivy league material so be it. However, I think he is an individual Marine veteran have no clue what to do in life. If he is really Ivy league material, he is actually at Columbia College of Columbia University. Anyway, I found out from my brother, many veterans do not like Alexander Baldwin McCoy at Columbia University.
     
  14. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I have a problem whenever a veteran aims to speak for other veterans or to say or do something incredibly condescending because they are doing it "for" veterans.

    This guy has an opinion. Good for him. But to write an editorial like this comes off as incredibly patronizing. And, at the end of the day, who the hell is this Marine veteran who hasn't even graduated from Columbia yet to tell me (and you and everyone) how best to manage my own education?

    The answer is that he doesn't. I don't object to his having an opinion. But I do take issue with his publicly blasting it out as if he is simply looking out for the best interest of all veterans when he clearly only wants to take care of veterans named Alexander Baldwin McCoy.
     
  15. lawrenceq

    lawrenceq Member

    Maybe ACE should hand over all of their duties to this guy.
     
  16. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    The guy implies ACE military training is bad because soldiers can skip general education liberal arts requirements. This is straight out false - these things are vocational and general electives. So much for his "elite" education.
     

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