Editorial: Is this too much of a good thing?

Tuesday, Feb. 24, 1998 | 11:21 a.m.

Anyone who has held down a job while also going to school at the same time must marvel at UNLV student Eric Coyle, who is taking more courses and pursuing more bachelor's degrees than anyone else in the university's history.

As the SUN's Steve Kanigher documented in an in-depth report on Sunday, Coyle is taking four times the normal course load for a full-time student at UNLV.

If all goes according to plan, Coyle will graduate with five separate bachelor's degrees.

This feat may stand out as a record that may never be broken at UNLV, analagous to baseball great Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. But some academic experts question whether it is a record worth attaining.

"You have no time to study if you go to school all the time. How in the world can he possibly be doing that?" Wayne Becraft, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, says. "If he's able to pull it off, in some ways it isn't a good statement about the rigor of the courses he's in," Jack Warner, vice chancellor of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, says. "But he must be doing something right. If he's able to do it, in one sense you say more power to him, but it would certainly raise questions about the (academic) standards."

The question isn't whether the dean's honor list student is a bright enough individual, the question is how bright is the university for letting Coyle embark on his quest.

A university's mission is to provide students a top-flight education. But the quality of that education is bound to diminish if a student is allowed to take too many courses. Students should be encouraged to take rigorous and demanding classes, but UNLV should consider whether quantity is necessarily synonymous with quality.