Sorry, I don't mean to be sending you all of today's Inside Higher Ed,
but I think this is an important development:
http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/06/10/publics
Essentially, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and
Colleges had a meeting recently at which they arrived at something of a
consensus about how higher education in the US should change:
"At the core of that consensus was the view that states and their public
colleges need to focus most directly on the need (for economic and
social reasons) to essentially double the number of Americans receiving
a meaningful higher education over the next two decades, and that most
of that increase will have to be attained by educating lower-income and
underprepared students who are least likely to get such an education
now. While that idea has been part of most of the major analyses of
higher education in recent years, including the final report of the
Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education,
Monday’s gathering was unusual for the extent to which it elevated that
issue over others that often compete with it."
On its surface, this sounds like a good thing (who can be against more
people getting higher ed?), but I fear that it will profoundly change
colleges, massively exacerbating the intellectual problems most of us
professors complain about daily. It will turn college into (more of) an
extension of high school (than it already is). For those of you who
value your academic freedom (at least in the classroom), doubling the
number of students in colleges will scotch it for good. There will be no
way to run such a system but to have (even more) standardized curricula
(and the attendant political interference that comes with such), more
"accountability" (i.e., to administrators, politicos, etc.). And (as we
have seen all too clearly over the past few decades) admitting many more
students will not mean that they will all learn what we now teach
(watered down as many of us feel that it already is). On the contrary it
will inevitably mean a further -- fairly drastic, I expect -- watering
down of the curriculum so that a large proportion can "pass" and
"graduate" (because no system would be allowed to fail a large
proportion of its paying participants). And don't expect that there will
be a concomitant doubling of professors. It will also mean many more
very large classes, less direct contact with students, more textbooks
(and other corporate-publisher mediation of the learning process). And a
new wrinkle: It will probably mean that a large proportion of these new
students learn almost entirely at a distance over the internet.
I do not know how to solve (or even effectively address) such a problem.
In principle I would like to see lots of people get a college education,
but I see no evidence that lots of people who are currently not in the
system (even many of those who are) are really interested in getting an
education, properly speaking. Many are just interested in getting
credentialed for a "high paying job" and out with as little effort as
possible (or course, supply and demand will dictate that a BA/BSc is no
longer sufficient for such). The problem of the students unwilling to
engage in the learning process (just like in high school) will rapidly
go from being a "problem" to being the "new normal" if the size of the
higher ed system is doubled.
I suspect that any semblance of higher education (as traditionally
conceived) will quickly evacuate the undergraduate part of the system,
and move to the graduate part. (Even now, I find that so many people are
getting MAs that it is turning into a bit of a "credentialing factory"
rather than a means of personal intellectual growth.) Or perhaps we are
on the verge of creating a more complex system, with a variety of
different kinds of schools (with the differences being more formalized
and rigid than they currently are (e.g., between "private," "public,"
"state," "regional," "community," "graduate," etc.) Perhaps (is this a
possible solution) we will see the re-emergence of the
commercial/professional/technical school, and the academic stream will
once again be separated from business schools, and the like? On the one
hand, it would be nice to be free of that sort of interference again. On
the other hand, you know who will get the money if the choice in the
legislature is between the business school and the humanities/social
science school.
I would be interested in other people's thought about this.
Regards,
Chris Green
York U.
Toronto
---
To make changes to your subscription contact:
Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
