N.J. Governor Wants to Merge Thomas Edison Into Rutgers

[TMW2010]

And you didn't put enough effort into yours. As you can tell, I have some trouble with what appear to be unsupported sweeping generalizations. By any standard--I think the number of people who have a problem with the prestige of a TESC degree in this thread or any other fall far short of "everyone." Far short.

Couple things -

It’s interesting that you use Rhashad's post out of context. He was talking about going to TESC for a Masters under the hope of coming out with a 'Rutgers' degree, not because the TESC program is anything special beyond that.

The ones that are most vocal for the merger all want 'Rutgers' degrees. (Except for the one person who mentioned that it’s a waste of his tax money to keep TESC open because they're so inefficient and require the state’s help.) Yet you don’t mention these posts either, even though they occur in the very time frame that you’re quoting from, and are the more obvious to pull from. The posts where Taylor really wants to be able to wear his sister’s Rutgers sweater, and if I recall, a few posts focusing on the lack of name recognition for either TESC or EC. Ah, wait, you did use one of those, yet downplayed the intention of it.. Hmm.

Morally or Ethically, is 'I got a degree from Rutgers through a loophole!' much better than 'I got a degree from Rutgers from Kinkos!'?

A number of those speeding to get into TESC aren’t doing it worrying that they might not be able to graduate from TESC in time, it’s the hope that they’ll get a ‘Rutgers’ degree too.

Obviously it’s not going to hurt anyone else if these people get their wish, right? ‘I CLEPed out of a ‘Rutgers’ degree!’ I’m sure the people at the actual Rutgers campuses would have something to say about that… Or people who maybe went to a smaller school than Rutgers that wasn’t as well known, and get passed over for jobs, because it came down to people looking at the degree names. See, if those silly people who went to those lesser known schools could wear sweaters that say Rutgers on them, I mean, wow, they’d have gotten that job. :p

I guess real problem that I have with the extensive argument you’ve posed, Michael, is that you seem to go out of your way to only put forward the little bits of the argument that support your side (while having to twist some to fit, like the Rhashad post, I mention above), while ignoring or deriding all else.

Honestly, if Rutgers does take over TESC, I hope that they’re able to continue to serve the same scope of students, hopefully much more efficiently. Good luck to them. I have a feeling that if Rutgers did absorb them, the TESC classes will be overhauled in a big way, to make them more rigorous and worthy of the Rutgers name.

I’ll repeat myself –

What it comes down to is that we're all armchair quarterbacking on this. It’s a (long) game of wait and see. Unless someone here can actually divine the future, and if that's the case, I need some lottery numbers... (as well as get a some insight on the stuff I need to work on for my Science & Religion class... )