These days we are welcoming our new vice president for student affairs and The Daily Collegian is discussing Student Rating of Teaching Effectiveness (SRTE) forms again.

What's the connection? The vice president's mission will be to help Penn State become a more student-centered university. A wonderful goal, but what exactly does it mean?

We do want the students to feel at home away from home. So, yes, let's all join the vice president and help the students exercise their rights in the most satisfying way.

But let's also insist that students and faculty fulfill their responsibilities in a more satisfying way. Too often we delude ourselves that this means taking the path of least resistance: dumb down the courses, rely only on SRTEs to evaluate learning and teaching (as if learning were cable TV and Nielsen rating were king) and hope that, once the students reach the "real world," they will fill the knowledge gaps that such a path leaves behind.

In today's globalized economy, a more student-centered university is one in which we acquire/provide life-lasting learning skills and knowledge that is both broad and deep.

Fortunately, these days there is an easy way to accomplish this: focus only on fundamental tools of your "major," be sure to understand the connections with other "majors" and "minors" and leave everything else to the Internet and the Google's of this world. Anything short of such a mission is not only delusion; it is deceit.