Wallowing in Mediocrity

Wallowing in Mediocrity: Or Rising Above the Dismal State of Education provides a comprehensive comparative look at educational programs in several key countries across the globe. The myriad advantages of these countries’ programs are counterpoised to the many fault lines in education as practiced in the United States. To offset these problematic areas, this book takes a critical look at how the United States could rectify the many problems associated with its system of education, especially concerning inefficient and unsustainable practices at the secondary and postsecondary levels.Examples include the lack of universally-accepted parameters for admission to most schools of higher education; the lack of exit exams from both secondary and post-secondary schools; the illogical repetition of propaedeutic courses the first two years at the university; the misdirection of community colleges, forcing them to make up for the shortfall of too many students not prepared for acceptance to a 4 year university; the shenanigans associated with for-profit schools, which, for the most part, prey on veterans and those seeking a better job through education; and the almost preposterous system in place for students to finance their education.Most of these shortcomings concerning the American educational system are not part and parcel of systems across the globe. For one, the Bologna Process unified degrees among participants, providing a logical means for member states to collaborate and, most important, to provide students the opportunity to transfer from one institution to another without penalty. Several countries do not charge any tuition whatsoever; others have established a fair and logical means for repayment.

Goldstein summarizes and analyzes educational systems in European and other countries to offer solutions to many of the problems of the U.S. post-secondary system. His book explains how our current fragmented approaches generate students who are under-prepared and poorly trained yet become mired in debt.

Jerald Goldstein has taught in both university and corporate settings, both in Germany and the United States. He has taught communication, comparative literature, English, and German for several universities, including Rutgers, The New School, NYU, Princeton, and the Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany