Soapbox rant

What has happened to teaching kids how to read, write, spell, and use basic grammar? I am sickened by the pitiful displays of English skills seen almost daily in my online college classroom. I speak not only of the students, but also of some of the instructors. It is painful enough to have to meet the participation requirements by engaging in discussions with folks who have no clue how to use a spell checker, but to have college professors whose grammar and spelling skills are as bad or worse than those of their students' is sheer agony.

I actually had a professor for my "Financial Matters for Health Care Professionals" class who posted the following, "Great job. You did well. Class, everyone must have a budget-business or personal. But there are ethical issues with a business who does not act physically responsible because they employee people who depend on their jobs. What would happen if they did not have a budget and operate in it?"
That was her reply to the student who posted this, "I think budgeting among not only companies in the health care industry, but also every business sector in the world."

Maybe I am just being picky but, where do I begin???? Should I start with the student who wrote that incomplete thought . . . or with the instructor who replied that the student did a "great job" and "did well?" I would just like for someone to explain to me how to "employee" someone. And please do not make me even talk about acting physically responsible! Physically? Really???? Surely . . . please, oh please tell me, that a college level instructor who teaches any kind of a class on finance, is at least required to know the difference between physical and fiscal responsibility. Maybe my standards are just too high?

Then there was the professor who used a spell/grammar check program to grade papers and would simply copy whatever the program told him was incorrect, then post it to the student as his feedback on a paper. I guess he was too busy to actually read the papers submitted by his students. The first paper I submitted to this professor had points taken off because he said I had a sentence fragment. This was because the program he used told him that it was a fragment because it read the period after lbs. as the end of a sentence. Had I been dinged for using an abbreviation within an academic paper, I would have no quarrel.

The following quote was taken from a student's post in response to the Capstone discussion question for the Financial class. When reading this collection of words, bear in mind that with this post, this student will have completed the requirements for her Associate of Arts degree in Health Care Administration.

"You have to have a budget to help with the spending expenditures so that all ends are covered. Over spending can cause future outcomes to become downfalls like insufficient profitable loss. Along with other financial accounting responsibilities, an organization will have an effect as a whole on how to operate and maintain the budget, expenses, and cash flow of the organization."

Here are more words of wisdom from the Financial Class for Health Care Professionals. The discussion question reads, "How does discounted cash flow valuation work? How does it differ from the other valuation methods? Why do you think the text refers to discounted cash flow as the valuation method best justified by financial theory?" And the answer from another of my classmates was, "This is a financial theory that the cash flow is approached by the assertion. This is a asset that tells one what is the present value is the cash flow. This will then generates for the owners. Usually the bond market value should equal to the cash flow and it issures the buyers by promising the buyers the equal pay.
One example is that one may buy something that has a good value and hopes that in the future, the value will rise. It may occur but in the same time it may not go the way that one wants it to go. It just depends on the product that was bought. I feel that this is a good value depending what is bought because one may get back what one may have paid but at the same time they may get more than what they have bought it for. If this were to occur, it would be nice for the purchaser."

Sometimes I just have to scream. I have a headache now. Goodnight all!