{"id":17368,"date":"2010-02-11T01:16:45","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T06:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=17368"},"modified":"2010-02-11T01:16:45","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T06:16:45","slug":"asu-is-not-too-smart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=17368","title":{"rendered":"ASU is not too SMART"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those of you who don’t know, I am currently a student at Arizona State University. Yesterday, I picked up a copy of the State Press<\/a>, ASU’s student newspaper, on my way to my history class. I usually read the State Press for entertainment purposes, since most of the articles are written by self-righteous 20 year-olds who think they are superior to the rest of the world since they have spent two years at ASU. In Tuesday’s issue however, there was a well-written and well-researched article about how ASU’s does not accept SMART transcripts from the military<\/a>. The article and a follow-up editoral<\/a> also mention how the veterans service office hasn’t been giving out accurate information on receiving credit for military experience.\u00a0 This is despite the fact that ASU is recognized as “among the most military-friendly schools in the country” by GI Jobs magazine and is a member of Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges (neither\u00a0 of which I had heard of until I read the article) according to the article.<\/p>\n

For those of you who don’t know what a SMART transcript is, it is a document that you can get from the military that lists all your military training and what type of college credit can apply to that training. For example, lets say you completed an electronics course in the military and obtained an MOS in that field. Your SMART transcript would list this training along with an equivalent similar college course and credit hours. Completing a correspondence course in basic grammar or math (like the ones offered through the Marine Corps Institute) along with leadership schools like Squad Leaders Course and Ranger School are also listed on your SMART transcript. I have never heard of any school granting credit for every course listed on a SMART transcript (and I would not expect them to either), however most at least give a few elective credit hours to veteran students. It makes perfect sense to me to give credit for military experience. Why not give a soldier or Marine who has done a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan credit for a cultural awareness course? Why not give a Navy electronics specialist credit for basic electronics class? The answer might be obvious for some: money. The longer a veteran is using either the post-9\/11 GI Bill or another educational benefit, the more money ASU gets.<\/p>\n

ASU is now the largest university in the country, with over 50,000 students on four campuses around the Phoenix area. Thousands of veterans are using the new GI Bill in Arizona and if they find that is easier to graduate from another one of Arizona’s universities (U of A or NAU) or community college they will go there over ASU. This would be ASU’s loss, not ours.<\/p>\n

I’m not at ASU for the “college experience”. I’m there to get a piece of paper that will validate my existence as a worthy human being and move on with my life.\u00a0 The less time I have to spend there, the better and I think most of the other vets in my classes feel the same way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those of you who don’t know, I am currently a student at Arizona State University. … ASU is not too SMART<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/607"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}