Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk Edited by Richard H. Hersh and John Merrow Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 244 pages, $24.95 Books critical of higher education in America used to … Continue reading “Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk”
Late in 2005, government officials in the National Center for Education Statistics released the results of the most recent study done by the National Assessment of Adult Literacy(NAAL). The study finds that the already weak literacy of American adults – including college graduates – has declined since the last assessment was done in 1992.
More than 19,700 people participated in the study, which was conducted between May 2003 and February 2004. The tasks involved three kinds of questions – to assess prose literacy, to assess document literacy, and to assess quantitative literacy.
The prose literacy questions were designed to see how well the individual could perform prose tasks such as searching for and comprehending information contained in written material – for example, describing what a poem is about. Document literacy questions were designed to see how well the individual could understand documents – for example, finding what time a certain bus arrives at its destination. Quantative questions were designed to see how well the individual could perform mathematical tasks such as calculating the cost per ounce of a brand of peanut butter.
A lament frequently heard by college professors is that many incoming students are not ready for college-level work. Even though what passes as “college-level work” isn’t what it used to be at many institutions, professors still report that their students struggle with reading, writing, and basic math. (Lest one think that such laments are only heard at unselective, fourth-tier schools, Patrick Allitt’s book I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student, which recounts Professor Allitt’s difficulties in teaching American history at Emory University will serve as an antidote.) The question is, what can be done about this problem?
In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Charles B. Reed (chancellor of the Cal State system) and Kristin Conklin (a program director at the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices) address that question.
The fall semester has recently concluded at many colleges and universities. Some students have now completed the necessary credit hours and received their diplomas. That is the tangible evidence of having gone to college and for most it serves the purpose of satisfying the B.A. degree requirement that so many employers now insist upon.
Has the college experience, however, given the students more than just a piece of paper attesting to their having completed enough credits to qualify for a degree? Are they better at thinking and writing than when they entered? Unfortunately, we don’t really know.
Former college president Richard Hersh writes in the afterword to his recent book (co-edited with John Merrow) Declining by Degrees, “to date, we have no measures of the cumulative result of an undergraduate education.” While it may seem to be perfectly clear that some graduates (for example, the kid who knocks himself out in a pre-med curriculum) derive an enormous benefit from their studies and others (for example, the scholarship athlete who never takes a remotely challenging course) are educationally no different than on their first day as freshmen, we just don’t know.
Most people don’t like to be compelled to pay for things they don’t want. Taxpayers rarely think, “The government sure is taking a lot of the money I earn, but I trust that in the wise judgment of the politicians, the money is being spent for the greatest overall good, so I’m content.” Quite a few revolts in history have been sparked by the perception that taxation was mostly funding high living for the favored few.
Mandatory student fee systems are a sub-species of the taxation beast. Most colleges and universities these days have established a policy of adding on to the tuition, room and board, and other education-related fees, a “student fee” that provides the school with a substantial pot of money which is then doled out among various student groups on campus. Exactly how the money is divvied up varies, but the principle is the same as taxation: We’ll take your money, then other people will decide how it’s spent.
Advancing technology has brought about dramatic change in many industries. The transportation industry today looks nothing like the transportation industry of a century ago. The same is true of medical science, communications, the production of food, and so on. But what about higher education?
For the most part, college teaching today is done in pretty much the same way it was done a century ago. Indeed, it’s done in pretty much the same way as in the day when Socrates taught. Sure, technology has made some inroads at the margins – professors today are apt to use power point presentations rather than blackboards, and if a student loses his syllabus, he can get the information online – but nothing essential has changed.
If Yale computer science professor David Gelernter is correct, however, a technological revolution is just around the corner, a revolution that may bring about a sea change in the way the higher education industry works. Writing in the November 28 issue of Forbes Professor Gelernter entitles his piece “Who Needs a College Campus?” It is a thought-provoking piece that everyone concerned with education should read.
Consider, if you will, the virtue of simple rules. The First Amendment to the Constitution is a simple rule. It says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Although the government hasn’t always followed it, having a sharp constitutional line has undoubtedly spared the country a great deal of meddling with free speech. With a simple rule, violations are readily apparent.
Now imagine that the First Amendment instead went like this: “Congress shouldn’t enact laws that abridge the freedom of speech unless it thinks that there is a pretty good reason to do so.” If the Founders had given us so vague and equivocal a rule, there would probably be much less freedom to speak without fear of legal repercussions today.
Throughout their history, college newspapers have mostly enjoyed the same rights under the First Amendment as have other newspapers. A recent decision by a federal appellate court, however, jeopardizes their freedom.
Here are the facts.
In 2000, Margaret Hosty was the editor of The Innovator, the student newspaper of Governors State University (GSU), located just west of Chicago. Like many student newspapers, The Innovator was supported mainly by student fees. That fall, Patricia Carter, the university’s Dean of Student Affairs, told the company that printed the paper that in the future, school officials would review each issue before it could be printed. She took this action despite written GSU policy stating that the student staff of the paper would “determine content and format of their publications without censorship or advance approval.”
Last April, UNC released its “Chancellor’s Task Force on Diversity” report, 58 pages in length and loaded with eight big recommendations for making the Chapel Hill campus more diverse. And in his State of the University speech, Chancellor Moeser devoted several paragraphs to this subject, saying that “Diversity is a key component of our academic plan,” and lauding “improvement in the diversity of our full-time permanent faculty.”
Alas, UNC is not yet diverse enough. The Task Force report recommends, for example, that the university increase the number of “minorities” in executive, administrative and managerial positions. That might be accomplished through a heavier emphasis on “diversity” in hiring and promotion.
The UNC presidential search committee has done its work and the new president of the UNC system will be Erskine Bowles. Although the North Carolina Press Association has said that it may challenge the legality of the selection process under the Open Meetings Act, no one doubts that Mr. Bowles will succeed Molly Broad in this important position.
An accomplished, multi-talented man, Mr. Bowles will take the UNC helm with this notable advantage — he isn’t an education “insider.” People who have been immersed in higher education administration for most if not all of their careers tend to uncritically accept most of the “conventional wisdom” about how our colleges and universities supposedly need to function. That fact produces tunnel vision much like a horse with blinders. Bowles doesn’t appear to be wearing them.