3 Reasons Higher Education Is Broken — and How To Fix It
“Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”
Alas, I can’t accurately attribute that quotation because, appropriately enough, its authorship is disputed.
Another truism of contested paternity holds that the absurdity of the modern world long ago rendered satire impossible.
Conveniently enough, these two sayings go together like keggers and frats. Having cleverly avoided going to college myself, I have it on good authority from the less fortunate that fictional spoofs of academia (Moo, Lucky Jim) are more like grimly amusing documentaries.
Doesn’t Philip Roth’s The Human Stain (2000) — about an African American professor passing for white who’s falsely accused of racism for calling ghosts “spooks” — sound more like a news story than a novel?
Especially this week.
The depressing saga of Naomi Schaefer Riley demonstrates how hard it’s become to distinguish fact from fiction — or in her case, The Onion from The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The latter (supposedly more sober and reputable) publication fired Riley on May 7 merely for blogging about “some of the absurdities appearing in the field of black studies.”
Ron Radosh reported on what happened next:
Noting that there were legitimate problems to address about the plight facing the black community today, Riley argued that they were not being addressed in black studies departments. Instead, she argued, all they want to do is engage in arguments that blame everything on the white man.
The result of Riley’s article — again, her opinion — was an avalanche of protest to the Chronicle’s letters section. The editors told readers that they received “thousands” of protests.
Then, of course, Riley’s dismissal provoked another flurry of commentary, this time — like Radosh’s post — in her defense.
The narrative was irresistible, a veritable Tom Wolfe novel in miniature.
Everything about the story — from the ponderous, pretentious titles of the dissertations Riley mocked, to the unedifying spectacle of black scholars “lynching” a “racist” white writer (whose husband happens to be African American) – epitomized the stubborn root rot afflicting the groves of academe.
So now seemed like the perfect time to ask Riley – previously best known as the author of last year’s The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons You Won’t Get the College Education You Pay For — what she thinks are the biggest problems facing higher education today, and whether or not reform is even possible.
The author comments, “Worse, every thesis must be completely original, a ridiculous demand that results in the proliferation of absurd, self-indulgent topics on offer in every college course catalog.”
How very true. Having dropped out of a doctoral program (I guess I’m a quitter but don’t really feel that way), it was astounding to me to see some of the subject matter said to be “original” research for their dissertations. One was based on why African-American students tend to sit by themselves in the college’s student union. I tried to read a couple of research papers from the professors on my committee and it was frightening to see their reasoning on some of the most inane subjects – - and these folks were supposedly going to judge my efforts on my dissertation. No thanks.
The problems in academe are long standing and should be traced back to the ascendance of such “pragmatists” as Josiah Royce, William James and Charles Sanders Peirce,all of whom attacked the notion of objectivity and universal standards of conduct in favor of [conflict resolution]. I wrote much about this, but the best essay is here: http://clarespark.com/2010/01/02/jottings-on-the-culture-wars-both-sides-are-wrong/. The humanities in academe have been discredited as hopelessly ideological, and we must now put up with America’s enemies taking advantage of the excellent engineering and technological advances taught in our beleaguered and often failing universities.
“…Is the average worker really living in fear that they could be fired tomorrow?”
Yes.
That was so 10 years ago.
Today the grimness is over the dysfunctional job markets in which there are millions of job ads for temp gigs not real jobs, no e-mail addresses in the ads, no hiring managers’ telephone numbers in the ads, but instead they are referred to immigration lawyers. Meanwhile, we’ve got 16M able and willing people out of work (based on historical and current population and employment/population ratios).
And if you do happen to get a call back from a bodyshopper or “recruiter” it’s to find a pretext on which to declare you “unqualified”. Is the job location not at the very top of your preference list? disqualified Do you not have the wherewithal to relocate yourself? disqualified Sure, you’ve programmed in a dozen languages, but do you not recall the 3rd comma of the 2nd sentence of the 3rd paragaraph on page 187 of the standards manual for any of a score of programming languages? disqualified
The immigration lawyers are doing OK, though, charging big bux for coaching the HR people in how and where to place job ads so as to garner the least number of inquiries from US applicants, and how to find barely legal excuses to reject all US candidates who do reply.
Today’s professors are rewarded for conducting research, not for actually teaching, a tiresome task they leave to underpaid, overworked, and under-qualified underlings.
Please, this has been true at least since the 1960s.
Money has been an issue for colleges since forever.
And tenure has been debated for about that long, too.
Doesn’t sound like this book has much in the way of original research, nor by this report is it concerned with what are the current issues, of political correctness, the oversupply of even the best graduates, and the soaring cost of tuition beyond any reasonable basis for repayment. And two of these may be more economic issues than educational anyway.
Unfortunately, education (across all the academic spectrum) is a refuge and haven for the incompetent. Not everybody is that way, but enough are to taint the entire system. Incompetence is a system-protected state. Quite often this incompetence is shrouded in what I would describe as ‘heroically obtuse and abstract subjects’ offered as relevant subject matter.
Dare I say, most in academia would not be capable of finding or holding a job in their chosen degree area out in the ‘real world.’ That includes both the faculty and staff.
If it were not for the unlimited federal funding of the higher academia most schools would be out of business in a heartbeat. Or so down-sized they would become irrelevant.
Strike that last comment… doing away with the (fill-in-the-blank) Studies programs universities would probably become more relevant. It would be the faculty populating such programs that would become properly irrelevant.
Well said. Both faculty and students at universities include a high number of people who couldn’t hack it in the real world. And Studies – beware of any program that ends in “Studies”.
The social “sciences” and the humanities are not worth bothering with in the context of college or university. You can educate yourself about those topics on your own, via the Internet or any library.
There is no point in requiring anybody to write a PhD thesis on such topics (which no one will ever read).
The problem with STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) degrees is that there are few jobs on US soil for American-born graduates. You can thank BOTH parties for that – tax and regulatory policies that favor outsourcing and offshoring.
How to fix higher education?
Don’t go, don’t pay for your kids to go, and don’t contribute.
Keep your pocketbook firmly shut until the colleges and universities stop being left-wing, secularist, anti-Christian indoctrination camps.
There are a few colleges that aren’t leftist. Fransican University of Stubenville (OH) comes to mind. The Theology and Philosophy departments require their professors to teach from a Catholic pov – as this is a Catholic University.
Hillsdale college might also be non leftist.
But this comment brings to mind the idea that bypassing and building our own is what is needed. I see acrediation beinga problem, but the reality is it is time to end the main (lame?) stream ownership of higher education.
Yet, even Hillsdale College – which prides itself on not taking a dime from the fed – costs over 30,000 a year (Tuition for 2011-12 is $20,760. The annual cost is $29,610 which includes tuition, room, board, and general fees. Books and course fees are additional expenses). Frankly, I find that 30,000 for four years is insane, let alone for just one year.
I’d think the reasons would be, 1) you pay to receive an education, but obtain an indoctrination; 2) as a student, you are not treated as a consumer, you are treated as a subject; 3) the costs of merely having someone impart some information to you has reached ludicrous levels.
“Since Taylor’s book came out a few years ago, warnings about the “higher education bubble” have increased exponentially, but concrete solutions or prevention strategies seem scarce on the ground.”
I have a concrete solution. Stop allowing intelligent, experienced, well-trained faculty and administrators to take advantage of naive, idealistic young people by selling them expensive educations that have no economic value. Make the colleges and universities cosign their students loans. If the student doesn’t graduate, or can’t repay the loan, the institution should be on the hook. The adults are the ones in a position to judge the economic value of what they have to offer. Let them assume the risks. Let’s see how many of the “grown-ups” are willing to bet their pension on the salability of a GLBT Studies degree.
I can’t say I am surprised.
Jerome: You sound like those folks who were calling for reform of Fanny and Freddie back around 2005, 2006 and 2007.
The first consideration of any college or university should be the quality of education presented to its customers…the students. Tenure only gives poor instructors the opportunity to foist their incompetence on youngsters year after year. No other profession or business would dare to do that!
Students should be able to make an up or down vote on professors, after all, it is their money that’s paying for classes!
Based on the quality of many high schools today, it seems college is a repeat of much of the material kids have already been taught. Besides, as worldly as youngsters are today, is the eighteenth century concept of a “well rounded” education still relivant? Many degrees require 5 years of study, many fields require a masters in addition to the BS degree.
Considering the cost of modern education (add years of work lost to tuition, board, books, fees, etc), why can’t we cut to the chase, shorten the legnth of time in college and just train people for occupations?
There is a legitimate argument for what used to be considered a liberal arts education, to provide enough knowledge to be a good citizen of the Republic. Unfortunately, because some professors regard social sciences and humanities as an excuse for political indoctrination, it is difficult to sell this concept to much of the American population today.
It is also true that a lot of this knowledge used to be taught in secondary education. I am disappointed at how poorly prepared many of my incoming freshmen are. What were they doing in high school?
I taught my tenth grade math teacher how to do algebra.
Then I wrote the tests for the civics class. Hard ones.
Then I wrote a research paper a week for a class, rather than attend.
Then I dropped out.
Of course, I am uneducated. The valedictorian is educated. She has a piece of paper to prove it. She can’t read. She graduated pregnant. She lived in public housing.
Did you have any questions about what the kids were learning?
Students should be able to make an up or down vote on professors, after all, it is their money that’s paying for classes!
I can’t agree completely with this point.
In retrospect, the professors that taught me the most were the most demanding ones. That kind of effort isn’t widely appreciated. Too many students are more interested in just getting a good grade with the least amount of effort. They want a high GPA and a credential, not an actual education. They’d be most likely to recommend the least demanding professors and get rid of the ones who’re actually trying to give them an education.
Have you ever noticed how happy students are when a class is canceled? As one of my professors noted years ago, education is the one area where people don’t complain when they get less than they’re paying for.
I do agree that student input should be considered in the case of bad teaching ability. I remember one graduate instructor who was so awful that I contemplated hanging myself during a class break rather than going back for more.
Excellent point. Anonymous facile ratings via the internet can give all sorts of facile conclusions. There should be detailed criteria which commenters have to use in their evaluation. Most people have no idea how resentful students can be about receiving a grade lower than what they “feel” they are worth. That dynamic is yet one more factor pushing grade inflation. Why enrage the masses?
It has been argued that there are only four circumstances in which one should seriously consider going at university, especially in the humanities.
1. Your name is Pierre Elliott Trudeau, you are heir to your father’s business fortune, and you need something to do to keep you from taking to the bottle or to aiding and abetting the King’s enemies for sport. (The University of Montreal was some help there—it kept him off the drink anyway.)
2. Your husband’s name is Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and if he’s going to pay for your hobbies they’d better involve curling up in bed with Plato and not Mick Jagger.
3. Your father’s name is Mordechai Richler, and if you have a degree from the University of Toronto he’ll have an easier time finding you a sinecure at a major newspaper and a book deal with a Canadian publisher.
4. You are a common-as-muck dingbat with no family or qualifications even for marriage, you keep body and soul together with a make-work government job with few responsibilities beyond trading cat videos, going to birthday parties and checking Facebook, and your superiors are insisting that you get a degree (at taxpayers’ expense) as a condition of promotion to another make-work job with higher pay and even fewer responsibilities.
“Mr. Taylor’s rhetoric may be overheated, but the gist of his claim is certainly correct. As he notes, Harvard has a formidable endowment, but it is also $5 billion in debt.”
And these are the same people teaching your kids everything they need to know about “business administration.” I don’t know about you, but for about $60K a year, I find that quite alarming.
I think every business administration prefessor at Harvard should be forced to watch Rodney Dangerfield’s movie, “Back to School,” especially the part where Dangerfield destroys a business administration professor with a lot of real world common sense. Not only is it hilarious, it is all too real. Watch it if you can.
but his cramming for the oral exam in order to spout nothing but a myriad of factoids was, sadly, all too true
That was a funny movie and the classroom scene was classic Dangerfield.
for most, if not all, academics, is the time-honored Mediocrates, and that’s the problem.
The guiding philosopher of today’s universities is Mediocrates, that’s the problem.
As a psychologist, I’ve had my share of involvement with colleges and professional organizations. I never saw much ideological bent in hard sciences, but the social sciences definitely lean left. This is not just true of university professors, but, in my opinion, it infuses professional organizations like the American Psychological Association as well. I can understand the social activism of social workers, given the roots of that discipline, but psychology is supposed to be “the study of behavior”. Instead, APA seems to see itself as an agent of change. In fact, education takes on the same mission.
The best argument I’ve heard in favor of tenure is that it forces universities to make hard choices. Do you keep the popular young professor, whom everyone likes, but whose work is a little weak, or do you let him go because he hasn’t really done anything original and interesting and doesn’t seem likely to? Of course, this really only applies to the very small handful of top tier research universities, not to the vast majority of the 3,000-odd institutions of higher learning in the US.
That was not much of an interview. Where are the quotes from Riley?
Get rid of tenure and give even more weight to student evaluations… yeah, sure, that will most definitely increase the quality of postsecondary education – right! If you want professors to dumb down standards even more than they already do, then go for this. But, if you want them to have high standards and actually challenge students, then the first thing you need to do is get rid of those evaluations.
On Tenure: Tenure is ordinary job security, of the sort enjoyed by janitors and clerical staff at universities. Having it means that one cannot be dismissed without cause. The difference between what is enjoyed by janitors and clerical staff and professors is that janitors and clerical staff have only a period of probation, nine months at my university, and they do not have to prove that they are better than other staff who might be hired. Professors are only granted the privilege of not being dismissed for cause after six years, and then only after they have proven themselves better than others possible. This policy is frequently used to fire professors after six years in order to hire others who will be cheaper. The tenure policies at universities treat faculty as dirt.
“Today’s professors are rewarded for conducting research, not for actually teaching”
As pointed out by Josh above, this has been true for a long time, probably a couple of centuries. Universities are supposed to be places where students learn from people who do research, as opposed to learning from people who learned from textbooks. Further, there are probably fewer people with the talent and aspiration to do research, than people with the talent and aspiration to teach.
“Except that, ironically, the humanities are so politicized that much of this “research” is conducted in the exact reverse order of the scientific method: ideological students and instructors form conclusions first [...] then “prove” their thesis, instead of the other way around.”
You have a strange view of the scientific method. The reality has always been that scientists “form conclusions” first (or more precisely, formulate hypotheses first)
and then look for evidence to validate their pet hypotheses. What keeps “real” scientists on their toes is that there are rival scientists hell bent on _falsifying_ their rivals’ hypotheses. The problem with the “humanities” is that there is too little rivalry, or perhaps it’s just too difficult to falsify hypotheses.
“Worse, every thesis must be completely original, a ridiculous demand”
Is it? what do you propose instead, that people be allowed to plagiarize?
Since at least the fifteenth century in Florence, education has served the needs and desires of the wealthiest and most vital members of society. Wealthy Florentines for example were merchants and the humanities, as they were then defined, met those needs.
Our colleges and universities no longer serve society; most professors are activists trying to change society (through their students) according to their usually Progressive agenda.
On the other hand, apart from the STEM disciplines, our society doesn’t seem to know what it wants. The history of rap music and pornographic performance art do not qualify as humanities. At some universities you can earn a PhD in “Queer Studies.”
Don’t let the facts intrude here. Most people don’t realize that the most popular majors are business and management. It’s not even close. Yes, psychology is #2, but even that might have some value in the real world. Next, totally impractical majors such as nursing, biology, and education.
Other majors in the top 10: economics, communications, computer science, and government. What could students possibly be thinking?
Yes, we can whine and moan about college silliness, but students full well know what pays and what will land you in your parents basement.
To belabor the obvious: In the 1700′s, the average male person (in Massachusetts, one of the more “educated” states) would learn to read and write at least a little and be out of school and into the fields or shops by the time they were teenagers. A few stayed in the system, mostly those who would become ministers or lawyers.
Each era brought more education to more people; after the Civil War, maybe 5%, more than half female would stick it out through four years of high school. Now, the average person of either sex in Mass. (certainly the 30th percentile and up) expects to go to at least four years of college, postponing real work for at least those four years (and eight, when compared to the old norm). The business of education has both shaped and responded to this cultural change.
People here may grumble, wail, or rant about it, but is a major cultural dynamic SHARED across the political spectrum and will be changed only slowly…or by cataclysmic events, economic, or otherwise.
I would not want to work for a company that immediately discounted me because I lacked some official degree or background experience. I routinely have to make hiring decisions, and now realize that degrees have little value. They get you past HR gauntlets, and setup an initial impression, but that is all. I am most impressed with projects completed outside of school (or work) that were the result of the candidate’s own initiative.
When are people going to realize that public schools have nothing to do with education or students
government and the unions run schools, to make money for unions, no other reason.
Schools are means to raising money for unions and democrats, students are an incontinence, education is a joke,
If someone wants an education in America they have to go to a private school,
As far away from the corrupt unions and the incompetent government
Many years ago I commented that there are too many in college who do not belong there, requiring too many professors who do not belong there. Trade schools probably get more bang for the buck. Let’s cut the student body in half and make the positions open to competition. No seats reserved, no bonus points.
Any discussion of the American higher education system is incomplete if it does not mention the 1971 Supreme Court decision Griggs v.Duke Power. Duke Power is an electric power company originally located in North Carolina but now expanded a great deal wider. In days gone by they had two personnel policies that brought them before the Supreme Court. They had a policy of restricting black employees to only low paying menial jobs and they had a policy of administering an IQ test to white employees applying for higher paid jobs that required more skill, training and mental ability.
When the Civil Rights act was passed in 1965, Duke Power complied with the law and ended all race based discrimination. They allowed any employee to take their IQ test in order to apply for the higher skill/higher pay jobs. The problem was that blacks generally scored lower on the test and were still unable to get the higher paid jobs. The Supreme Court decided that the test Duke Power administered, while not deliberately discriminatory, had a disparate impact because fewer blacks could achieve passing scores.
Duke Power and every other employer in the United States was in a quandary. They could try to come up with another test and hope that it would pass the muster of the Supreme Court but it would be expensive and time consuming to devise another test and they had no assurance that it would meet the ever changing standards of the courts. Instead American employers started requiring college degrees for jobs that did not really require a college education but which did require a minimal level of brains and enough initiative and determination to get to enough classes and pass enough exams to graduate.
Not only was requiring a college degree acceptable to the courts but it saved the companies the trouble and expense of devising their own tests and shifted all the expense to the job applicants.
This system worked well enough for years but institutes of higher learning have been raising their prices to extract the pay differential between degreed employees and uncertified employees to the point where it no longer makes economic sense to get the certification from a college or university. When you add in all the leftist indoctrination clap trap that goes along with spending time in a university today, it just is not worth it. At least that is the evaluation that an increasing number of young people are making.
I believe you mean “provenance,” not “paternity.”
If you’d gone to college, you’d probably know that.
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug.” –Mark Twain.
I believe you mean “provenance,” not “paternity.”
If you’d gone to college, you’d probably know that.
Not necessarily. Many of today’s college kids don’t know the different between “there” and “their,” “its” and “it’s.”
I got all the way through this article without getting a single direct quote from Riley that isn’t from a secondary source. Are you sure this was an “interview” and not just cribbing from others?
This article is based on a false paradigm, or a paradigm that is rapidly disappearing from most colleges and universities:
1. Research: Professors are often hired based on their research capabilities, but they are given tenure, or contracts are renewed based on teaching and student evaluations. Many teach a full load of classes year-round, which leaves time for research on evenings and weekends. The “research professor” model is true for only a fraction of the full-time faculty members.
2. Money: the increases in tuition are not going to faculty. In fact, class sizes are increasing as faculty numbers are dwindling. The money is going to a bloated administration and offices of this-ethnic group, and that-ethnic group. Also the construction of fancy dorms, cafeterias, and state-of-the-art technology that colleges swear students demand these days.
3. Tenure: Tenure is also disappearing. Most new Ph.D.s are looking at year-to-year contracts based on teaching performance. Many universities are not renewing tenure lines when older faculty retire and are resorting to part-time, adjunct labor to fill in the gaps.
There are many problems with higher education–in fact, I could write a five-page litany of gripes. But the ones Riley mentions are not the issues. I have heard Riley interviewed, and her gripes are behind-the-times. (In fact, I don’t think Riley has a Ph.D. or has even worked in a long-term faculty position at a college or university). The paradigm of the professor who makes obscene amounts of money to teach two courses a semester while he takes the summers off just doesn’t exist any more.
It really irritates me when people who have never worked in higher education attack it as a way of promoting their particular socio-political agenda.
On another note: Shaidle loves to bash higher education in her articles and claim that she never went to college and has faired just fine. In reality, she attended several years of community college.
I went to a major state research university as an undergraduate and masters student, and research remains king. In the sciences, professors might teach one course per year, with the rest of the time being devoted to cranking out papers. The reason is that the university gets a cut of the grants researchers receive.
Also, teaching skill is not considered valuable by tenure boards, and the professors demonstrate this. Teaching is something fobbed off onto TAs and the non-tenured faculty.
Many colleges and universities are not “research” universities, and what you describe is more often the case in the hard sciences anyway.
Students should avoid research institutions and apply to study at teaching colleges, which are normally four-year institutions without graduate programs. Also, community college for the first two years is an economical idea and offers just as good an education.
Instead of griping, parents and students need to become savvy consumers in terms of choosing a college, then choosing particular professors and classes. Students should make the four years count with hard studying, networking, and internships, rather than partying. A lot of eighteen-year-olds are too young to make good choices, appreciate the education they are getting, and take advantage of career-building experiences.
The main problem is that the educational establishment has taken on an impossible task (self appointed)- teaching dumb kids how to be smart.
The sentence above could be expanded into a book, but it really is that simple.
Privatize it all. Some of the best post-secondary institutions are tiny new ones. They survive on a nickle and produce people who can think, read and write and research . Canadians & Cdn gov’ts might not appreciate the increase in ‘free-thinkers’, but it sure would be refreshing.
Excellent opening, Kathy! Beautifully conceived and wonderfully written. Sad to say, the corruption of education has a long history. Already in the 1870s, Nietzsche asked, “Who is going to teach the teachers?” About higher German education in his time, he wrote that if the great philosopher Schopenhauer had a university position, “He would flee from his colleagues, and his students would run away from him.” He could already see the process at work in which higher education would become a breeding ground of nihilism and general decline, and there was only one rule, he said, that should be the motto of every school: “Learn or perish.”