Why Research Universities Must Change
Quote:
The airwaves are rife with predictions of disruptive change coming to the economic model of higher education. It is no wonder that parents paying and borrowing for a college education steer their children toward practical majors that seem to promise instant employment, and discourage them from studying the liberal arts and sciences in pursuit of a well-balanced education. A private interest in education today means a purely economic one.
From this inversion of values flows our second problem: a redefinition of the purpose of undergraduate education. Fifty years ago, when I started college, there was a widely shared view in America that the purpose of a college education was to prepare students to become educated citizens capable of contributing to society. College was in the public interest because it gave graduates an understanding of the world and developed their critical faculties.
Today, many Americans believe that the sole purpose of going to college is to get a job -- any job. The governors of Texas and Florida are quite clear on this point, and draw the corollaries that college should be cheap and vocational, even when delivered at major research universities like the Universities of Texas and Florida. A university education is more than ever seen as strictly utilitarian. The reasons are clear: a) as more students and families pay a large share of the costs, they naturally want a ready return on their investment; b) the most desirable jobs in this highly competitive job market require a college degree; and c) the gap in lifetime earnings between college and high school degree holders is huge.
Today, as many Americans hold a purely instrumentalist view of undergraduate education, they want a detailed accounting of its value. Hence our third problem: close public scrutiny and political accountability. Parents want to know, what did my daughter learn, and how does it contribute to her career? State legislatures want to know: what is the graduation rate at our university? How many undergraduate students do faculty members teach? And much more.
|
This matches my own observations. In real life I don't know a single college student or recent college graduate who attended college because they had a passion for learning. Maybe I am looking at my past through rose colored glasses, but it seems to me that this was not the case when I was a college student. This year marks the 35th anniversary of my graduation from college (admittedly it was a small private liberal arts college, not a major research university) and, to the best of my recollection, most of my classmates did not view their college education as primarily being vocational education. Nor was that view held by most of the faculty. In fact, I recall that my alma mater was engaged in a major debate over whether or not to offer a degree in Social Work. The concern being that offering a program that was narrowly directed toward a specific vocation would undermine the sense of value attached to a liberal arts oriented curriculum. At that time the only such program offered by the college was the nursing program and those students, despite the demands imposed by the nursing curriculum, still had to fulfill the requirements imposed by the liberal arts curriculum. They were never just nursing students.