That gets things backward, of course. Teachers don’t pass students; students pass themselves by learning what they’re supposed to. If they’re unwilling or unable to learn what they need to, they’ll fail.

A Norfolk State spokeswoman blamed Aird. “Something is wrong when you cannot impart your knowledge onto students,” Sharon Hoggard said. “We are a university of opportunity, so we take students who are underprepared, but we have a history of whipping them into shape. That’s our niche.”

But a niche that’s going unfilled. Jaschik notes that, “According to U.S. Education Department data, only 12 percent of Norfolk State students graduate in four years, and only 30 percent graduate in six years.” The problem, again, isn’t with a professor who refuses to pass unprepared students. It’s with a system that delivers unprepared students to the professor’s class.

If a college degree is going to have any meaning, it needs to stand as proof of an achievement -- showing that a student has worked hard over several years and learned important lessons.

As a friend who teaches at a community college writes, “once the college places students into freshman-level classes, we as professors have to assume they have a certain baseline of ability and skills, and hold them all to the same standards. Failure to do that renders the degree meaningless.”

Exactly. As a society, we do need more people going to college. But we also need to make sure that only those who are ready -- able to commit the time and learn the material -- get a degree. Lowering standards may make us feel good in the short term, but will only harm society in the long run.