CANTON, N.Y., May 21 (AScribe Newswire) -- At its commencement ceremony held on Sunday, May 20, St. Lawrence University President Daniel F. Sullivan blasted U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, calling a recent report issued by a commission she appointed 'a national embarrassment.'
In his remarks before 551 graduates and their guests, Sullivan said that the education department is out of touch with what America wants and needs from its educated populace and lashed out at the Spellings' proposed reforms.
'Almost every day we read in the newspaper of efforts by Spellings to dumb down the education for life we seek to provide at St. Lawrence and substitute something that is woefully inferior,' Sullivan stated.
He added that the report of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education (the 'Spellings Commission') was 'meant to be a bold outline for how higher education in America should be reformed to meet the needs of students and the nation in the 21st century. Instead, it is in its major thrusts, in my view, a national embarrassment.'
Sullivan said, 'The vision of higher education suggested in the report is a cafeteria 'grab-and-go' system about as far removed from intentional, serious, dedicated and demanding study as one can get. And in the entire document, the word 'faculty' is used only once, in an aside, as if the future strength and vitality of the nation's professoriate were somehow irrelevant to creating and sustaining excellent higher education in the 21st century."
Just in time for Spellings appearance on the Daily Show?
UPDATE: Which was pretty lame.
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