Only incoming freshmen have this requirement. Folks who transfer in (a common practice) aren’t required to live on campus.
“Yeah, right. That way it’s easier for the predators to pick out the virgins and have sex with them without the parents’ protection.”
That would be the cynical view of it. I’m not sure that I disagree with it. However, the university has a perspective and it’s not without some validity. Maryland’s a big place. Over 30,000 undergrads. The university believes that students are less likely to drop out if they exercise a bit more supervision the first year.
“Cost of education up, quality of education down,...”
At the college level, I’m not sure it’s fair to say generally that the quality of education is down. In some places, it probably is down, especially in the first year at places that are open enrollment. This is because folks come in so poorly prepared from high school. Open enrollment colleges become remedial education centers. Fortunately, many of them do a good job at it.
But frankly, our better universities are the best in the world. And many have improved in recent years. When I was in high school, U of MD was a party school. When applying to schools, we’d put it down as our “safe” school - just in case we didn’t get into where we really wanted to be.
Now, U of MD has a multitude of programs that are in the top 25 in the country.
Maryland’s a big, tough place. It’s definitely not for everyone. I’m not sure it’s such a bad idea to require freshmen to live on campus.
sitetest
I disagree 180 degrees from your position on other points.
Firstly, I couldn’t imagine how naive and vulnerable young women are their first year away from mom and dad (and that’s if both her biological parents are still living as a family; it’s worse when she’s from a broken home). Oh, and it’s far easier to “pluck” a young man when in the company of incorrigible “friends”. Those unscrupulous young men who learned the knack of taking off a young girl’s knickers off said that it was easier than taking candy away from a baby...and that the girls thought that easy sex was suppose to be the norm.
Perhaps Maryland would do more favor for freshmen if the anti-God state didn’t play surrogate parent. Yes, Maryland is a socialist state, pro-abortion/homosexuality/sin etc. The type of “authority” not to be allowed to have ANY power over your children, and the type of local government not deserving of your money. Why would anyone trust such a government who’d say that the Teachings of Christ are considered “hate crimes”? Why would knowing parents willingly sacrifice their children to such a beast? Why would knowing citizens surrender their retirements to a blindly indoctrinated generation that will eventually support and harness state sponsored euthanasia? AND, how far off is it that a nanny state college system would have your pregnant daughter get an abortion without your knowing because she's a first year college kid fresh for the picking?
Secondly, I don’t doubt that today’s college kids are “technically” more adept than those who graduated 3 decades ago, but many of the young adult I know don’t know spit about why state sponsored Atheism is so horrible. And many don't know why the pro-sin politics today is the exact same environment that drove Europe and Asia into Socialist/Communist Atheism and perpetual total war. Sure, our youth can cruise the Internet to find any easy fact about how to fix up a car, build a house, invest finances, discover ancient arts of fine cooking, and how to clean tattoo needles, etc. But, they’re also the generation who looked to MTV and college professors who smoked their brains out with drugs to form a worldly opinion. If younger generations have learned to reject sin, then I’ll be happy to be shocked at such an occurrence. It would mean that sin has lost it’s fancy even for the youth that’s easily bored and easily succumbs to passions. But reality usually reveals terrible weaknesses in youth—I know, I was once young. Maybe others around here were young once too.
"Over 30,000 undergrads. The university believes that students are less likely to drop out if they exercise a bit more supervision the first year." It's really not much of a statistic when the only real chance of dropping out is when your heart ceases to beat. I really don’t care about the numbers of grads per college, especially when most of them know only too well the disheartening answer to the joke, “What does a (fill in the blank) graduate say at his/her first job?” Answer: “Do you want fries to go with your burger?” I'm a graduate too. I found Catholic grade schools more challenging for the mind, body, and soul. How accurate would it be if the paper company that prints college degrees uses the same paper size and format for the local fish market to wrap the daily catch?
Another point of “safety” on campus: Virginia Tech. I don’t think Colleges are all that safe unless you’re talking about the FBI Academy. Boosting a more secure environment means a direct increase in the very cost of education. But that’s only physical safety. Spiritually, universities and colleges are a lot worse for the soul. College student morals are literally the blind leading the blind. Considering how our education industry is suffering the string of professionals that loathe America and honest work, if the spiritually blind students are bad enough leaders already, then many professors are literally the devil in the flesh.
Thankfully, many Internet savvy students are quickly policing their own campus and there are web sites where students rate teachers. That doesn't do much good, though, if students can't discern right from wrong. Since many have grown up within the nakedness of sin on exhibition, many yet to question the reason why sin is so awful (why is pornography bad? What? Porno and masturbation is bad? Impossible! Smoking Pot is bad? How? it's less dangerous than shots of whiskey!). Though, I doubt change can come quick enough (and the reactionary fixing of heavy liberal bias could lead to worse hardened hearts, ie extreme patriotism and mere human zeal for worship can get unhealthy like the 1950’s red scare), we’re going to have to slog through many decades of reconciliation from having moved away from “Free Market” education.
What do I mean by Free Market Education? Simply that school systems must have Right to Work environments (that can reject a union monopoly), and the customer chooses the product and can “fire” the teacher and school simply by switching schools and classrooms. “Public” education needs massive deregulation of funding and simple regulation via standards. If teachers and students don’t meet the standards, then it’s unfair for them to receive their documents. OR, we’ll just have to become the underperformed nation on the global market which eventually chooses better leadership. Who would that be? I suppose it would be whomever hustles more for it.