The Crisis of American Higher Education

[bluebayou]

<p>zap:</p>

<p>given the fact that the author discusses graduate school educ for most of the piece, do you think he/she would support online educ as one way to address the “crisis”? :rolleyes:</p>

<p>[News:</a> Model of the Moment - Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/05/09/western_governors_university_and_online_competency_based_learning_model_gain_traction]News:”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/05/09/western_governors_university_and_online_competency_based_learning_model_gain_traction)</p>

<p>

The author of the article summarized many of the current challenges impacting American higher education, which he characterized as a “crisis”. He published it in “The Nation”. He didn’t write a data-based research study for a peer-reviewed journal.

</p>

<p>Agreed, which is why I think it is an Op-Ed piece. Nothing wrong with opinions – I have plenty of them – but such focus is why I disagree with ctp’s review, and your’s for that matter (“good overview”). Actually, it’s a well-written, but unsubstantiated “overview” of the author’s opinion.</p>

[poetgrl]

<p>

Poetgrl, where did you read that the author stated that someone deserves a tenure track position just because they “got on a PhD track.” The author never said that. You also don’t understand the purpose of tenure. It was designed to protect academic freedom. The system isn’t without flaws, but academic freedom continues to need protection.

</p>

<p>I have a PhD, as well as post grad work, and ABD in another subject, I certainly understand the original intention of tenure. The result of tenure has, however, been a bunch of old guy profs staying wayyyy past their prime. Profs who can’t teach continuing in their job without reprisal, etc…</p>

<p>

As for your incoherent comments about the “old style life of the old style professor,” one hardly knows where to begin. Suffice it to say that you have some fairy-tale picture of the life of college professors. After pursuing a PhD for 4-10 years, if a new PhD can get a tenure-track job (not a sure thing), it takes another 6-8 years to come up for tenure, and not everyone will get tenure. In the time before coming up for tenure, the professor needs to keep up with his/her field (often with many out-of-pocket expenses to do so), conduct research and publish, teach, advise, and perform other forms of university and community service. It’s not exactly a stress-free occupation. It’s also not a 9-5, 40 hour/week job. Not too many jobs have such a long preparation and probationary period. If the new PhD does not find a tenure-track job, he essentially has to piece together a sufficient number of teaching assignments, sometimes at one school, sometimes at several, schools (or a series of short-term postdoc research positions for those in the sciences) in order to scratch out a living. He may not have an office, benefits, time to do any research, etc. In either case, your fantasy image of the academic life is far from the reality.

</p>

<p>NO. The author, and you, clearly, believe the PhD ‘ought to’ have some other life options. Well, so should many people. However, they will get what the market values their skillset at. No different than anyone else.</p>

[cptofthehouse]

<p>Bluebayou, not a problem that you disagree. I didn’t really eyeball the stats carefully, nor do I know all of them, so I do want to qualify, that the article was one of those easy reading ones for me. I didn’t look at it as something new, striking or informative, but a reiteration of a lot of old ideas that flowed easily to me. Whether the details and examples the author gave are accurate, I did not even register. The only time I give details like that a hard look, research and question, is when something new, startling, actionable and relevant directly to me is being addressed. So the article to me was just a light read with the same old stuff and I didn’t really do more than a skim read of it. </p>

<p>There are some striking, spiking trends that I am noticing in the college world that do scare me and attract my attention, but not anything that this author has addressed.</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>I have to side with cptofthehouse on this one. there are about four different articles (approximately one per online page) dealing with different aspects of higher education, loosely tied together by some nicely turned rhetorical flourishes. However, I think the author confuses the role higher education plays in the marketplace with the effect the marketplace has on higher ed. His treatment of public universities illustrates the confusion. Public universities flourished at a time when the average U.S. head of household was a factory worker with pretty good benefits and whose kids could plausibly look forward to either a decent white collar job or, at worse, a job in the same factory if things didn’t work out. So long as the demand for a decently well-educated working class existed, public universities could support a professoriate which included a supply of Ph.Ds that, in turn, could support a vast network of graduate schools to attend.</p>

<p>All of that was slowly turned on its head as manufacturing jobs disappeared overseas and more and more people began to compete for a finite supply of engineering and investment banking jobs that in generations past might have been considered the poor relations of the American learned professions. </p>

<p>Public colleges can’t be the engines of income redistribution and middle-class aspiration that they once were because corporate globalism has taken that completely out of play, so, it’s no wonder that they now feel compelled to fish in the same waters as private LACs and universities. As the article imples, that puts even more pressure on the Ivy League (and its fellow travelers, the little ivies and public ivies) to protect their market share by making their own product more and more expensive and out of the reach of the few middle-class families venturous enough seek educations outside their traditional comfort zones.</p>

[ucbalumnus]

<p>

@TheGFG

Some of my S’s boyhood acquaintances are taking a fifth year to graduate. According to their parents, it was because they hadn’t properly planned their schedule to ensure timely graduation, had unsuccessfully tried to sign up for classes after the deadline, had failed classes, or were generally “having too much fun.”

</p>

<p>Yes, that’s probably true in a lot of cases for graduating late.</p>

<p>However, it is worth noting that counting graduation rates in calendar years also penalizes “good” reasons for graduating “late”, such as taking a semester (or quarter) off at a co-op job or internship (somewhat common among engineering majors). Such students may still spend only 8 semesters (or 12 quarters) in school, even though they will graduate later than four calendar years.</p>

<p>Sometimes, transfer students from community colleges are “behind” a semester because they could not get all of the needed courses at their community college. But it is still usually less expensive to study 4 semesters at community college and 5 semesters at a four year university compared to studying 8 semesters at a four year university.</p>

[zapfino]

<p>bluebayou,</p>

<p>That was an interesting article you linked. I’ll have to consider it some more. Online courses, etc. as described in the article attempt to address only certain aspects of the current crisis. I think Deresiewiscz would not support only online courses as the solution. He wrote:
“Nearly all involve technology to drive efficiency. Online courses, distance learning, do-it-yourself instruction: this is the future we’re being offered. Why teach a required art history course to twenty students at a time when you can march them through a self-guided online textbook followed by a multiple-choice exam? Why have professors or even graduate students grade papers when you can outsource them to BAs around the country, even the world? Why waste time with office hours when students can interact with their professors via e-mail?”</p>

[zapfino]

<p>Poetgrl,</p>

<p>I certainly won’t defend the tenure system as it current exists. It does need reform for some of the reasons you mentioned (profs staying way past their prime, continuing to employ people who can’t teach, etc.). If there’s a better system to protect academic freedom, and that addresses the issues of contingent instructors, I’d certainly be in favor of it. BTW, in his article, Deresiewicz does acknowledge some of the problems with the tenure system that you noted. He writes: “Tenure certainly has its problems. It crowds out opportunities for young scholars and allows academic deadwood to accumulate on the faculty rolls.” </p>

<p>“NO. The author, and you, clearly, believe the PhD ‘ought to’ have some other life options.”
There’s no entitlement, and I never said there was. </p>

<p>“However, they will get what the market values their skillset at.”
Theoretically, that’s true. No matter what side of the issue you’re on, though, I just don’t know of any market that isn’t shaped by deliberate public policy decisions. Do you?</p>

[kxc1961]

<p>Teaching is not the only career available for Ph.D.'s. Yours truly was trained as a Chemist with a very famous Prof at a very good graduate school and trained again, as a postdoc, with another very good Prof. at another great school. Now I am working in a field that is not precisely what I was trained for, albeit the knowledge gained in training is useful in my daily work. I see graduate school as a place to learn the skill to learn. It is a place to learn how to catch a fish as opposed to getting a fish. Obtaining the skill of fishing will benefit for a life time, not just one meal.</p>

[poetgrl]

<p>

There’s no entitlement.

</p>

<p>No. There isn’t.</p>

<p>As to my “incoherent comments,” which weren’t, by the way, incoherent, the reality is that the author is harkening back to an old style system which no longer exists because it doesn’t suit the current needs of the current educational climate.</p>

<p>Colleges have become part trade school, in an effort to meet the needs of the states and in an effort to enroll the largest number of students. That a trade school isn’t providing tenure ought not surprise anyone. That colleges are now increasingly in the business of educating the public for the trades has been a choice which has changed the nature of the academy forever.</p>

<p>To harken back to the old days of tenure track humanities teaching is to harken back to the days before the internet, or the days when doctors were barbers and medical schools hadn’t yet met rockefeller. The past is past.</p>

<p>Incoherent as you find that to be.</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>

To harken back to the old days of tenure track humanities teaching is to harken back to the days before the internet, or the days when doctors were barbers and medical schools hadn’t yet met rockefeller. The past is past.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>You make it sound as though nothing of signicance occured on anyone’s watch between the discovery of penicillin and the founding Facebook. :D</p>

<p>

Incoherent as you find that to be.

</p>

<p>Yeah, a little. :p</p>

[poetgrl]

<p>

You make it sound as though nothing of signicance occured on anyone’s watch between the discovery of penicillin and the founding Facebook.

</p>

<p>Yes, clearly THAT was my point, john.</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>All I can say, is that finding that elusive balance between “teaching for the trades” and teaching for the sake of learning has been a goal since the founding of the republic. Every innovation along the way, whether it was the first school of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania or the first American college building devoted exclusively for the teaching of science (at Wesleyan) brought with it fears that it would overwhelm the teaching of the ancient verities. But, somehow the humanities have persisted and there always seems to be another social science paradigm to shake loose the hold of the previous champion. Sure, people need to be employed. But, we still need Big Ideas to help employ them.</p>

[zapfino]

<p>“…the reality is that the author is harkening back to an old style system which no longer exists because it doesn’t suit the current needs of the current educational climate.”
The author acknowledged some of the problems with the current tenure system. He also looked at some of the proposed alternatives and found them wanting. Clearly, there’s a need for reform. What shape that takes is undetermined, and the author didn’t propose a clear or detailed solution.</p>

<p>“Colleges have become part trade school, in an effort to meet the needs of the states and in an effort to enroll the largest number of students. That a trade school isn’t providing tenure ought not surprise anyone. That colleges are now increasingly in the business of educating the public for the trades has been a choice which has changed the nature of the academy forever.”
Many colleges have provided vocational majors for many years, long before the current crisis. Vocational training in colleges is not a new development. </p>

<p>“To harken back to the old days of tenure track humanities teaching is to harken back to the days before the internet, or the days when doctors were barbers and medical schools hadn’t yet met rockefeller. The past is past.”
Well, that’s one narrow perspective. True, the place of the humanities is reduced in the curriculum and fewer students choose to major in those fields, they nonetheless remain important areas of study. Oh well, I guess people just want to watch TV, drink beer, and live their unexamined lives—sounds wonderful.</p>

[NewHope33]

<p>Someone help me here … what are we arguing about? That individuals with PhD’s should have no greater expectation of finding a job than newly-minted undergrads have of getting that first job in corporate America? That starting work at age 32 with significant education debt isn’t a marked disadvantage compared to joining IBM debt-free at age 22? That’s it’s OK to dump that same PhD at age 55 (before the education debt is even paid off!) “because we can hire someone else for less?”</p>

<p>If we, as a society, want our educational enterprises to emulate business enterprises, why don’t we simply “cut to the chase” and close all the (high cost) private universities?</p>

[JHS]

<p>I’m not certain what you guys are fighting about. I think, on examination, we are all pretty much agreed that the article is incoherent, and full of unexamined premises. It embodies a problem with the author’s (and my) cherished humanities – it is possible to write “well” about a topic without actually saying anything worth saying.</p>

<p>Here’s the crisis, according to the author, in a nutshell: We are training too many PhD students because we need them to teach undergraduates and run lab equipment cheaply, but we’re not providing them any career path other than teaching undergraduates and running lab equipment cheaply. Oh, and by the way they are not teaching undergraduates very well, or the right things, or something. We need to make teaching and researching a better-paid profession than it is, and give teachers and researchers more to do. Especially in the humanities, where no one seems to want them. Damn those state legislators and management-oriented administrators! They are hastening the collapse of Western Civilization. Soon, all our ideas will come from China or Singapore, where they will have been shoddily (but cheaply) thought up.</p>

<p>Or something like that.</p>

<p>Here’s my favorite set of unexamined premises and unsupported conclusions in the article: “Everyone agrees” we need universal post-secondary education. “Everyone knows” that people learn more effectively in small classes with lots of one-on-one attention. Therefore we need more tenure-track professors.</p>

<p>Well, everyone doesn’t agree that we need universal post-secondary education. And to the extent anyone agrees that it’s because we have made such an utter hash of universal K-12 education that we need universal 13-14 education, at least, to get everyone up at least to a 9th grade level.</p>

<p>And everyone doesn’t know at all that smaller classes are more effective. There is good research to support that premise . . . up to about 3rd grade. After that, it’s religion; the data doesn’t support it. I’m not a maven in this area, but I think the data says, at least, that in high school you would rather be one of 40 kids in a class with a good teacher than one of 15 in a class with a mediocre teacher. </p>

<p>I certainly agree with the notion that we need more good teachers at higher levels, and that to get them we have to pay more than we pay teachers now. But tenure is an awfully clumsy way to increase pay, and the best scholars don’t even want or need it. (They don’t want it because they “fire” themselves with regularity and go with a higher bidder.) Tenure in the sciences is empty anyway, as a practical matter, since everyone with tenure is engaged in a cyclical dog-eat-dog competition for research funding to maintain a lifestyle well beyond what mere tenure offers, and when people tire of that they seem to take well-paid, untenured jobs in industry.</p>

<p>And how about the romantic notion – a notion I love, by the way – that the best researchers/scholars are also the best teachers? The article simply takes that on faith. I believe it’s true, but only for the highest-level students, the ones who already know the basics, or who can figure them out for themselves. If you are going to talk universal post-secondary education, you need a cadre of people who are actually effective teachers, not researchers resentful of time away from the lab or library. Where are those teachers coming from? From the ranks of today’s PhD students – who are often actually downgraded if they are caught paying too much attention to their teaching effectiveness? When no one went to college but a tiny intellectual elite, having them sit at the feet of working scholars was the perfect educational system. If they didn’t learn, it was their own damn fault, and they could go take a job in a bank. But if everybody is going to go to college, everybody had better find some professors there capable of teaching them something, especially if they didn’t learn it from the people who tried to teach it to them in 11th grade. To say the least, that’s not the skill set anyone is picking up in their Russian Literature PhD programs.</p>

[poetgrl]

<p>If the newly minted PhD’s can find a tenure track job, they should take it. If the graduate schools begin to run out of students, I’m sure they will find a new paradigm. But, the fact is that anyone who wants to go and study in the humanities today ought to be aware of what the are getting into.</p>

<p>

True, the place of the humanities is reduced in the curriculum and fewer students choose to major in those fields, they nonetheless remain important areas of study. Oh well, I guess people just want to watch TV, drink beer, and live their unexamined lives—sounds wonderful.

</p>

<p>oh, the drama. Many people love to read books, to learn new languages, to go to concerts and plays and films. Many even continue to learn about history long after they have left college. Whether or not this requires a tenure track professor to teach it to you? doubtful</p>

[SaintSaens]

<p>The other unexamined, self-evident premise: any reduction in breadth of a curriculum will destroy intellectual development during undergrad years. I don’t like when people find this self-evident, and I’ll be attending a college with a broad core curriculum.</p>

[ucbalumnus]

<p>

@SaintSaens

The other unexamined, self-evident premise: any reduction in breadth of a curriculum will destroy intellectual development during undergrad years. I don’t like when people find this self-evident, and I’ll be attending a college with a broad core curriculum.

</p>

<p>Universities’ breadth requirements vary all over the place, with Brown having no breadth requirements at all (just concentration/major, writing, and minimum number of courses and semesters for a bachelor’s degree – see [here](<a href=“Complete Your Degree | The College | Brown University”>Complete Your Degree | The College | Brown University)</a>) except for ABET-accredited engineering degree programs.</p>

[charlieschm]

<p>In some non-technical fields of work, having a PhD is actually viewed as a negative. I would much rather hire a person with a Masters and 3 or so years of practical experience than someone with a PhD. The attitude is that a PhD is often out of touch with the real world of work, and wants to spend too much time researching and over-analyzing everything.</p>