Excuse Manager BA

It was absoultely no wonder that the previous posts  have been about responsibility shifters all the time. Namely, there's not just a lot of them, but also, their beliefs in their own unaccusableness and in the deepest possible guiltiness of the world are so steadfast, that in my opinion, a separate major should be started for them, like this:

Or maybe, if the university management gets a fit of honesty, it can be Lame Excuse BA as well.  It's a Bachelor of Arts because what some people are doing on this head (not inside the credit system, but against it for now) is a form of art.


Seriously, we could try this. We have to find the points at which wide abysses that cannot be leapt over lie between the market and education, and between education and the abilities and/or demands of the students.  Under the aegis of the latter, we should at last really measure the fact that a significant percent of the students will never ever take responsibility for anything.

I failed? It's the teacher's fault! It's the subject's fault! It's the faculty's fault! Or of the university as a whole! Moreover, we can even puddle over to political waters, everyone is adept in that anyway, or at least they try head over heels to act like it. This is how we reach the simplest solution. It's the actual government's fault!


I got no signature? I wandted to attend the class! I had all the intentions to attend the class! It's only that reasons unforseeable and unavoidable to me came came on the highway of my life, the unavoidableness of which lead to devious consequences. Oh, force majeure, natural disasters and other species!

Everything is somebody else's fault. For arbitrary reasons. Even if they got crucified they wouldn't face the fact that they themselves were the ones at fault.


For example, I once came across a clear case of plagiarism - and I'm putting this gently. The dear young man, when presenting (somebody else's) work, looked for the answer of every question by pointing his finger at the computer screen, and searching line by line, saying "I'll find it in a moment".

After a few of these, it wasn't hard to ask a question to which he automatically gave the wrong answer, and afterwards, the conversation could be ended cruelly by saying "I'm sorry but you cannot convince me that you wrote this."


I got a really effective response to this. Nothing. Nothing at all. Dead silence. He just got up and left. Then, half a day later, I got an email in which I get addressed in all possible honourable ways, and he asks if we could do a supplementary presentation, as he "does not want to be plucked on this".
(Here, being plucked means that the dear student has to stay an extra year, as he successfully plagiarized for the one single subject which is still the precondition of some compulsory course, even though the subject preconditions have already been bombarded to tiny bits by now. And there isn't even an exam course! Strangely enough, this was the one subject he couldn't find the time for.)

Well, first of all, it is really probable that you will be plucked if your stand out with somebody else's work, which results in immediate leaving, resignation, and things like that. Secondly, if he has already agreed on plagiarising with his silence before, what would he like to do on the supplementary presentation? Convince me that it isn't true? That he just accidentally came with something he has no connection to, and on the supplementary presentation, he'll get his top hat, and in a heavy rain of confetti, after three rabbits and two decorative female helpers, he'll just pull the One, the Only Self-Made Homework from it?

You receive these kinds of letters, and the imploring and promises joined by begging puppy eyes for the same reason. Because this kind of student will always grab on to the last possible chance of not having to face his/her own responsibility.

And that is why Lame Excuse BA would be so popular. Because it would give a tool to them, they wouldn't have to resort to emotional blackmail, and palpable idiotic lies, but they could manufacture their little white lies and working alibies on university level.

And then, I wouldn't have to listen to things like that I have to give the signature, or else the poor stundent will have to go to a passive semester, and have to start redeeming student loans. However, as far as I know, student loans are given to you to give you the opportunity of learning, not to make it clear that you don't even have anything to do with things as complicated as the multiplication table. And, as far as I know, it's not my responsibility wether he/she claims it or not.


And I wouldn't have to listen to the dear student claiming that having vanished for three weeks is due to going home for the funeral of a relative, but only realizing there that another relative died! This is no joking matter! A double funeral - I say, an outstanding excuse.


So let this be an open letter, a call for attention, or as you like it! Let's reform the system of university majors, and teach things for which there is demand, with which people spend their time every day! Somethig that isn't about abstract and theoretical things, but that gets us near to solutions to practical problems (or blanketing them)! Something, that the students can valiantly use in their future workplaces, or even in their private lives! Excuse Manager BA!