Pascarella and Terenzini 1991

The authors debunk long standing myths about student development, but some of these ideas have become common knowledge. I would like to focus on just a few of these myths.

Myth#3: Institutional resources and prestige equal educational quality.
Prestige increases the institution's ranking which brings in more customers. Famous graduates also increase a college's publicity. These are easy ways for a university to look prestigious. I remember learning from one of my mentors that a persistent and motivated individual can do well at any institution. She proved this by saying that just because a person chooses to go to a lesser known university doesn't mean that they weren't accepted to Harvard for example. This person had the skill set and motivation will likely do well in life, no matter what institution she chooses to grace. Thus her future successes will bring prestige to the lesser known university. This is the explanation I used to convince my parents that I would do well at UCSD even though I was accepted to Berkeley. Granted, UCSD is growing to become a more prestigious school, but my parent's have only heard of a limited number of schools, so this explanation worked for them.

Myth#8: You can't teach people to become good teachers.
Then why have teacher education schools in the first place? When Jarrett co-facilitated our class last week, he asked whether or not there should be a class on teaching skills for PhD candidates. I said yes because that would boost a researcher's confidence in the ability to teach and encourage them to try to do better, rather than just discount teaching altogether. A good teacher must effectively engage the student, which leads up to the next myth...

Myth #9: Faculty members' impact on student development and learning resides in the classroom
If we look back to the history of higher education, we see that faculty were in fact in charge of most of the functions that student affairs staff currently hold. Since faculty have such a profound influence on students in the classroom, they can not only increase their influence, in effect student engagement and development, but increase student satisfaction.