finances

Long before two bombs exploded under a bright blue sky on Boylston Street on Marathon Monday, English professor Richard Larschan would take the time at the beginning of the semester to look up students enrolled in his class.

“I made very active use of the student information system,” Larschan said.

Larschan wanted to know whether his students were ready to meet the expectations he had for them. Could they cut it? Did they understand the course workload?

In the past ten years, he noticed a disturbing trend at UMass Dartmouth: More and more of his students couldn’t cut it; they didn’t understand his expectations.

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