College Level Writing

This is a big question on my mind right now because I'm about teach a graduate course for high school and college English teachers this spring, but I can't seem to find anyone who is able to define what "college-level writing" is. It troubles me that this definition eludes my field, because if we don't know what we're trying to teach, it seems like we might have a difficult time teaching it.

Rather than despair, though, I've decided to hope that my graduate students and I will be able to combine our experience with the experience of all the other teachers, researchers and theorists we will read in our class to come to some useful conclusions about what student writers should be able to "do" with their writing by the time they enter college. For me, this is more than a question of practicality: It is a question of politics and of ethics, because students who are labeled "underprepared" for college writing are often shunted to the margins, forced to take basic writing courses which don't carry degree credit and which can be alienating to a student whose intellectual spirit is defeated by the label "remedial." So I am very much looking forward to spirited discussions on this topic, and in the meantime, I am embarking on a bit of an intellectual journey of my own, reading Patrick Sullivan and Howard Tinberg's collection, What Is 'College-Level' Writing? Sounds like a promising place to start finding answers.