Thursday, May 03, 2007

College Graduation 

Many of you know I'm an adjunct instructor of Management Information Systems at Metropolitan State University (MIS) in Minneapolis. This semester, I was asked by a former student to attend her graduation.

It was a most delightful evening. Our students are older, average age is mid-20's. They were excited, proud, and had a wonderful time. Their kids, spouses, parents and other relatives were in attendance. The atmosphere was very upbeat.

Speakers as a general rule kept their remarks short. But we had to have the politically correct (PC) talk about the difficult economy (what's so difficult about 95.5% employment, house ownership at an all time high, etc.), the status of women and race. We need to stop this mantra of looking for doom and gloom amid strength and success. We will never get pass the race/sex issues if we keep throwing them out to people in talks. Tonight there were more female graduates than male and now there are more women in college than men. This lack of men getting higher educations is a far greater problem than any of the race/sex issues. I will cheer the day when we can get through a positive event like tonight without the comments on diversity, men, sex, hard times, etc.

In the meantime, I sent a note to my students encouraging them to participate in their graduation ceremony. It was a night to remember.

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