Emmett Keyser

Review of CCSF

I enrolled in a calculus course last year. First t...

I enrolled in a calculus course last year. First thing the professor went over was purchasing access to Cengage. If you're not familiar with Cengage it's a "digital learning" platform. This is complete nonsense. The reason I want to take an in-person course is to be in class and learn via lecture. Cengage and similar extortion schemes should be prohibited.

So, first day, we're told class needs to figure out how to purchase Cengage because that's the only way the professor will accept homework. Not only that, it's going to be the only way to access midterm and final exams. Again, this practice should be prohibited for obvious reasons.

I'm lucky enough to be in halfway good place in life where it's really not a burden for me financially. It's a much larger burden when it comes to principles, though! ;-) But part of this financial freedom had to do with learning how to be frugal and responsible with my money. I can only imagine what burden this is for people who have a hard time making ends meet. They want to better themselves by going to school and then have to pony up $120 just to get access to the course material. We don't have enough glass ceilings and financial burdens in society already that we need to create additional ones where they are totally unnecessary?

There are literally more calculus books on this planet than people! Calculus is centuries old. It really hasn't changed that much and there should be nothing the keeps you from using one of the bazillion calculus books you can find on Amazon, eBay or the public library to use as learning material for a calculus class.

I'm going to name names here in hopes of shaming so that this practice stops but I imagine that it's a department policy as well. The professor is Prof Bravewoman. This professor may be good at what she does but I wouldn't know because I dropped the class. Now, if you're thinking to yourself that maybe I'm being a tad extreme, well, perhaps although I don't think so. SF passed a law to make CCSF free for residents not to replace tuition with corporate paywalls.

CCSF should change this policy and allow anyone who wants to take a class the ability to learn from whatever material works best for them and to not be restricted from proving their knowledge with corporate extortion schemes that block students' ability to even take exams.