... on the San Diego-based Why Not Do It Right blog:  Education and Economic Recovery.  Good read; please comment ...

Because there are bad colleges and universities - yes, even in Sunny San Diego - the public wants to know that there are ways to separate the wheat from the chaff. In this situation, low-hanging fruit in the performance evaluation process are student evaluations. At more and more institutions of higher learning, student evaluation scores have therefore grown in importance to the point where they may even determine singlehandedly an instructors' continued employment. Some people may say, "So what? Great, fire the shmucks, who can't get good scores from the students!" Of...

Students have no idea how political the relationship between the various educational institutions in San Diego really is. What schools are we talking are we talking about?  SDSU, CALSM, UCSD on one hand, and the community college districts on the other.   What do we mean by "political"? Relationships become politically tainted, when selfish interests trump shared interests, and when institutional priorities come before serving students.  Community colleges provide a broad range of course programs, including university transfer programs....