"Let’s Start Requiring Some Right Answers"

"When I was growing up, my mother—who, like me, was a 'contingent' professor—would sequester herself for days to grade, emerging Medusa-haired and demanding of sympathy. But the older I got, the more that sympathy dissipated: 'If you hate grading papers so much,' I’d say, 'there’s an easy solution for that.' My mother, not to be trifled with when righteously indignant (that favored state of the professoriate), would snap: 'It’s an English class. I can’t not assign papers.'"

Rebecca Schuman in Slate calls for an end to college essay assignments.