Preliminary report on state of higher ed

It is difficult to comment on a work in progress especially when all one has to work with are bullet items rather than more lengthy explanations. But a few thoughts come to mind.

The report finds three areas problematic:

1. K-12 education is uneven and indadequate.

2. There is no effort to control costs. Tuition has been rising at twice the rate of inflation at my school for the past 23 years.

3. Lack of any reliable feedback on how much students are actually learning and an accompanying fear that graduation standards are declining.

The statement of problems seems pretty obvious but the real question is the remedies.

In the short run there is not a great deal that colleges can do about the problems of K-12 education. It can raise requirements such as requiring three or four years of mathematics, a year of chemistry, physics and biology, three years of a foreign language as well as four years of English, and similar requirements in social studies. But it has no way to ensure that those courses will be adequately taught or that the student outcomes have been sufficiently verified.

In the long run it can insist on higher standards for content knowledge for education majors, particularly for future middle-school and high school teachers.

But it can’t really deal with the social and political problems that create the vast descrepencies in student preparation.

A lot can be done to cut costs starting with the outrageous growth in executive salaries, numbers of administrators and by looking at what is really essential in staffing. Then it can look at teaching loads, numbers of students per class, load reductions for administrative duties and so on. It might also be more ruthless about requiring faculty who do no research to teach more classes. Some of these increases in faculty teaching responsibilities could be made up for by reductions in committee work, most of which is utterly worthless. Untold hours are devoted to the development of strategic plans, learning goals, and endless meetings about everything that goes on in the university. Campus bureaucracy takes on a life of its own at the administrative, faculty and staff level and there is virtually no pressure to cut back.

Technology is another area that eats up huge amounts of money and from an educational point of view it is unclear how much student learning has improved by using power point presentations and putting all of the assignments on-line. In fact, students may learn a lot more if they simply have to show up on time to find out what is going on in their classes and the teacher uses a blackboard for visual presentations. Fancy audio visual equipment may be good public relations but for the most part it may simply be a lot of high priced toys.

Measuring assessment is a complicated matter. It depends on the goals of the institution. Do you want to assure students have learned the contents of their courses or do you want to make sure that students remember what they have learned when on the day they graduate.

Whichever goal is deemed important I believe it is best to start at the level of individual courses. At schools where faculty members have vastly different standards, common exams with common grading make a great deal of sense. In fact, without such procedures, it is hard to see how more comprehensive measures of testing such as exit exams can be implemented intelligently.

Finally, no study of higher education can be taken seriously without addressing the use of student evaluations in judging teaching performance and the effectiveness of particular courses. What is the overall impact on academic standards of consumer sovereignty in the evaluation of teaching. This is not a question of whether it is fair or unfair to individual teachers but whether or not the process inevitably leads to lower expectations. There is no more divisive issue in higher education than this one but as universities increasingly rely on the numerical scores from evaluations to make decisions on hiring, promotions, and merit pay, its impact on standards can’t be ignored.

Jonathan Cohen, at 6:50 am EDT on June 27, 2006

comparison?

The bullet points in the draft statement remind me very much of reports about the healthcare industry—continually rising costs, the need for greater efficiency, better accountability, and better relations with the clients. If the comparision holds, the commission’s real task and the government’s real task is to make the reforms work. Then they can take on healthcare, right?

KEL, at 8:25 am EDT on June 27, 2006

Those Who Can’t, Teach.

America is in the business of being in business. The idea behind higher education is to prepare young men and women to enter the workforce as productive workers. Whether technology, medicine, law, military, law enforcement, or private sector, the field into which a graduate enters is still run as a business. The problem with higher education is that academic institutions, generally speaking, hire faculty members with inflated credentials – PhD in particular. Those in the business world will attest to the fact that real life experience counts a heck of a lot more than a piece of paper. This is the gap between higher education and real world must be filled.

College professors teach theories; real world with real problems require real solutions. Educators with real world experience will far better prepare students than some overpaid PhD holder that has never spend a day in the real world.

JCA “Bubba”, at 8:45 am EDT on June 27, 2006

How utterly impoverished!!

“America is in the business of being in business. The idea behind higher education is to prepare young men and women to enter the workforce as productive workers. Whether technology, medicine, law, military, law enforcement, or private sector, the field into which a graduate enters is still run as a business.”

What an utterly impoverished and banal perspective on both our society and our system of higher education. NO!!! America is not in the business of being in business. America is in the business of cultivating a free and democratic society in which individual citizens can develop to their full potential as human beings. Yes, in order for that to happen, higher education must provide students with skills that are marketable in the workplace, but it cannot, must not limit itself to so paltry an objective. Higher education must be in the business of producing what Thomas Jeffferson called an educated citizenry, something he recognized as the only sure guarantor of our liberties. This means people with a broad education, flexible minds, the capacity to think critically and independently, and to construct arguments in both verbal and written form. No, American higher education is not producing this, but that does not mean that this should not be its purpose and goal. Let the business community pay for the specific training it needs. Let our taxes pay for something richer, more worthwhile, more in keeping with the central principles upon which our country was founded.

Ricardo, at 9:30 am EDT on June 27, 2006

Assessment

The irony is that the response to this push for “assessment” and “accountability” is to generate more wasteful, expensive administrative positions and committee work. We now have an Office of Assessment with a staff of bureaucrats and support staff and spend time contriving “instruments” for assessment at their behest on the assumption that if we “police outselves” we can avoid being crushed by outside assessers.

Of course there’s fat in the system but in my experience when there are campaigns to eliminate waste it isn’t the really big ticket items—unnecessary bureaucracy and administrators salaries or perks—that get cut but minor benefits for minor players, like me. The real goal is to proletarianize faculty positions. “Hey, you jerks just work 9 hours a week. We’re gonna fix it so that you punch the clock at 8 am like the rest of us and teach 5 classes a semester. We’re gonna get rid of tenure so that bums like you actually have to perform. We’re gonna get rid of all those worthless classes like philosophy, see to it that English teachers are teaching grammar and spelling, and get college Back to Basics.” Etc.

LogicGuru, at 10:05 am EDT on June 27, 2006

Three comments:

1) If there was, in fact, a heyday of U.S. higher education from which it has fallen, was this heyday characterized by more or less access than today? By more or less mandated accountability? By more or less state subsidy? By more or less need-based federal financial support (in relation to costs)?

2) Why are institutions to blame for increasing costs when they are so closely associated with state and federal policy changes that promote, if not require institutions to be more “market driven?”

3) The work of this Commission provides numerous textbook examples as to how data can be shaped to support any side of an argument rather than to test publicly the merits of assumptions and hypotheses. Since the first draft appears to rely on data-supported polemic, it is essential that the final draft incorporate a more balanced set of viewpoints and then be open to public debate.

Victor Borden, at 11:15 am EDT on June 27, 2006

Best of the List

I am perfectly happy to see real reform in the K-12 system (how about 220 school days per year, higher standards, and kingergarten starting at age three?), and I suspect such reforms, if allowed to bubble up through the system would get us a more qualified set of colleges students in just over a dozen years. However, here is what the commission has proposed that is most intriguing to me: interoperability.

OK, so they don’t use that term, but the suggestion is there. From a curricular standpoint, the balkanization in U.S. higher education proves itself to be one of the greatest impediments students face. Students don’t need to switch schools every time they switch majors (thankfully), but the ability to get courses accepted at other institutions is essential for those students who do transfer.

Along with this is the suggestion that higher education develop a means of tracking student progress from start to finish. While such a program might seem Orwellian to some, potentially making fresh starts for those who have had trouble even more difficult to come by, I see the potential to identify greater underlying problems to success (student overloads across campuses, consistently weak performance in secondary subject areas but spread lightly over years). Furthermore, it would be nice if each school kept, with those records, the IDs of the faculty members who taught the courses, allowing for outcomes-based evaluation (I may be lynched by some of my colleagues for this, though I have proposed it before).

There are plenty of opportunities to improve higher education, but I suspect that Emile Piscitelli is right in saying this will take a while to fix, worsening along the way. Sadly, JCA’s outmoded and underinformed commentary is neither helpful nor rare, and that sector of the population is the greatest threat to real reform.

Andrew Purvis, at 11:15 am EDT on June 27, 2006

While I do not argue that education — at all levels — needs improvement, I feel that this debate lacks an element of personal responsibility for students and their parents. As a student, education is at least as much what you put into it as is what is provided to you. As a parent, your child’s education — and more importantly the appreciation of and respect for that education — is not solely the responsibility of our schools and universities.

I have two further concerns with the trends I see developing towards higher education. The first ties in specifically with this idea of personal responsibility. Affordability and access are important topics; it is a worthy goal to promote these ideas, and certainly there are students who need and deserve help. However, students do benefit from their education with increased opportunities and earnings. As such, students must take at least some responsibility for the associated costs.

Second is a grave concern for what I see as a preoccupation with workforce development. Universities are not vocational schools. Some majors, of course, require more specific skills to be taught. But the most important skill that a university (or education at any level) can give its graduates is the ability to think, to learn, to adapt.

Paula Bales, at 12:05 pm EDT on June 27, 2006

what IS happening

It is interesting that the study and the article seem to tackle the problem as if the post secondary system is in isolation and can be examined like a car in a repair shop, separate from the environment that brought it into the shop in the first place. Education is changing: more credits available through high schools, moves to encourage use of community colleges, rise of for-profits, global competition, virtual institutions,internationalization, corporate universities,. . . The commissions report is much like the response to the market by American automobile manufacturers (like the cliched rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic) It is not a stinging rebuke, but more a poultice on a business-as-usual model

It is a paradigmatic example of a solution designed by a committee-one haunted by political ghosts and collegial conservatism.

tom abeles, president at sagacity, inc, at 12:05 pm EDT on June 27, 2006

Let them eat cake

The people who think public education can be run like a factory need to move out of fantasy land. Factories can control the quality of their raw materials. Public education institutions cannot. We can cut cost and raise the quality of the finished product by simply getting rid of students who lack the ability to perform at the level that business requires.

Now, someone tell me what society does with these students when they become adults. Do we put them in prison? Do we increase the welfare roles? Do we raise minimum wage so they can support themselves with minimal skills? Do we ignore them until we experience something akin to the French Revolution?

The main advantage to being a U.S. citizen is that people have substantially more opportunities to start over than citizens of most other countries do. This gives all of us more opportunities to succeed. This makes us the wealthiest country in the World.

There are ways to improve the quality of education in the U.S. but we cannot improve quality, cut costs, and educate everybody to the same level, regardless of ability. Maybe school vouchers are the way to go, but if we do that, we need to insure that every child has the same amount to spend on education regardless of family wealth. I am sure the people complaining about public education will not like that idea, because education is not the issue. The issue is the troublesome lower classes who are not content to remain lower classes, but lack the ability and opportunities to be anything else. No amount of testing will change that.

JD, at 1:30 pm EDT on June 27, 2006

Grade inflation: An academic standards bellwether

Grade inflation: An academic standards bellwether.

http://www.ent.ohiou.edu/~manhire/grade/BM050228_Final.pdf

Brian Manhire, Professor at Ohio University, at 1:50 pm EDT on June 27, 2006

The problem is not the problem

The problem with the report is not the problem. The problem is with the politics.

We know the answers. (my bullet points)

-Universities should be free as they are in many nations — picking students on merits, not ability to pay, and letting students study, not work three jobs. -There should be really high national standards for K-12 schools in terms of (a) students on the college track, and (b) within an entirely different curriculum for students who will not go to college but need vocational training (the current insistence on college prep for everyone is anti-human). -The federal government should cover health care so that k-12 schools (and universities) are not spending ungodly sums on that (putting us on par with other industrialized nations). -K-12 schools and colleges should drop interscholastic and intercollegiate sports, eliminating that money-suck, and leaving this activity to clubs the way it is everywhere else in the world. -Teaching (especially at k-12 and among adjuncts) needs to pay much better, so the best people will be attracted to the field and will stay. -Funding for k-12 education has to be increased, thus taxes must be raised. -And, ok, colleges should let state ed departments know when students from a particular high school are failing. -Finally, because Jonathan Cohen continues his Luddite agenda, schools and universities must invest in contemporary technology, because, first, it is the connection to knowledge in today’s world, and second, it is essential for future employment.

So, yes, the problems and solutions are obvious. It is just that George W. Bush’s department of education is unlikely to recommend or pay for any of the solutions.

Ira Socol, Michigan State University, at 2:50 pm EDT on June 27, 2006

Competencies

I’d just like to know, outside of these people holding pursestrings thanks to election based on popularity contests, what qualifies these people to make such evaluations. What are their credentials? Where is their demonstrated success rate? Are they really all that wonderful or are they more like the people that brought us things like the Enron Scandal?

This report is supposed to tell us two things that it utterly fails to do:

1. Tell us something new2. Tell us something useful

Failing the first account, they utterly fail on the second. It’s a good thing there’s the qualification that this is a first draft or I’d be suspicious that there is a heavy element of researcher confirmation bias.

The worst fault of this report is placing sole blame on universities when including systems like primary and secondary education where those institutions themselves, their communities, and political forces all play a role in the failures. These contributing groups are apparently so utterly irresponsible that all power and influence in these matters rests in the hands of universities. GREAT! We will be happy to be their dictators! Please hand over their budgets now. Oh, wait... You don’t want to do that? Ooops!

For example, let’s consider the utterly ridiculous idea that increasing unviersity educational standards for teachers will improve the quality of k-12 education. Who do they hire? The MA or the BA? Maybe this is a tough call for you, so I’ll explain: they have to pay for the MA and their budget is constantly being pulled tighter. So what we’re being asked is for the creation of a class of unemployable students.

Let me get this straight too: THIS year’s graduates are going to remedy all the problems of k-12 education? The very people that will be unemployable because they are over-educated at the MA level? That’s cute.

Of course, I am being kind. I could focus on the financial aid issue and how that is almost completely out of the hands of higher education. I feel quite assured that, if this recommendation means that control of these resources will be handed over from the politicians that this matter might actually be resolved, but we all know there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of that!

I try to imagine a more useless waste of taxpayer money in terms of furthering our republic than this report outside of, for example, embezzlement and coin investments — and I am sure there are many — but I’m too outraged to fathom it.

Advisor Ian, at 3:55 pm EDT on June 27, 2006

At the risk of being too wordy, I woould like to provide this commentary that I published five years ago. The total structure of public higher education insures that it does not fullfill its promise.

THE EVOLUTION OF 2IST CENTURY PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION: THE URBAN UNIVERSITY AS PROTOTYPE

By

David L. StocumIndiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

Address

School of Science IUPUI 402 N Blackford St Indianapolis, IN 46202

Telephone

(317) 274-0635

Fax

(317) 274-0628

e-mail

dstocum@iupui.edu

David L. Stocum is Professor of Biology and Dean of the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. His teaching and research activities are in cell and developmental biology, and regenerative biology and medicine.

Published in Metropolitan Universities Journal 12 (#2): 10-19, 2001. Abstract

The current structure of public higher education in each state is a hierarchy dominated by land-grant research universities. These universities have set the standards of performance and respect by which the other, less well-funded, universities in the hierarchy are measured. The interests of the dominant public universities, which are oriented primarily toward maintaining an advantage in accruing prestige, do not match up well with the educational and economic needs and challenges of the 21st century. Selective forces are operating to eliminate this hierarchy by pushing public universities evolving toward a balance of excellence in teaching, research, and service, a model already embodied in today’s urban universities. In 1968, armed with a PhD from a distinguished private research university, I began an academic faculty career in a “flagship” public research university. Two decades later, I became a dean at a large urban public university. Examining the differences between these two institutions and others like them has convinced me that the current structure of our public higher education system is unsuited for the issues and challenges society will face in the 21st century. First, I would like to explore the nature of this structure and its origins, and explain why it will not serve us well in the rapidly changing world of the new century. Then I would like to propose a different structure, based on today’s urban university, that I think would more effectively address these issues and challenges.

The Current Structure of Public Higher Education

Public higher education in the U.S. is a highly differentiated and complex structure. It is an hierarchy, dominated by residential, Carnegie-I state research universities who have claimed elite status for themselves. These universities, many of which are land-grant institutions, define excellence in terms of quantity of resources, relative selectivity in admission, and snobbish trappings of pomp and power, all of which have become ends in themselves. They keep a jealous eye on one another and compete fiercely for status and rankings, predominantly in athletics, numbers of PhDs produced, and federal research dollars awarded. Such universities have little sense of community outside the one that exists within their walls. They have great political influence within their states and they receive the highest levels of state funding.

By definition, the other four-year institutions in the state hierarchy are regarded as inferior lights doing necessary but lesser work. They are less visible, usually less selective in admissions, have more modest physical plants, and receive fewer resources from the state. The bottom feeders are the urban universities, which are supposed to educate large numbers of students with diverse academic backgrounds, but with minimum state investment. The faculty and students of urban public universities are viewed with considerable disdain by their colleagues in the residential state universities, even those who do not claim Carnegie I research status. Only the medical schools of the urban publics have a modicum of respect because of the money they generate, and they are often treated by faculty and administration as being separate from the rest of the institution. Serving constituents is made even more difficult and convoluted for urban universities if their direction and rate of development is under the control of a parent institution or institutions within a state system.

The euphemism for this caste system—-and it is a caste system—- is “mission differentiation”—-the assignment of different academic “missions” to universities based on the presumed intellectual quality of their students and the apportioning of resources according to those missions. Mounting evidence, however, suggests that the caste structure is maladaptive in the context of the issues and challenges facing higher education and the nation as we prepare to enter the 21st century.

Origins of the Caste System of American Higher Education

The higher education system of today is the product of 1200 years of evolution. The first European university was established in the 9th century in Salerno, Italy, followed in the 12th century by Bologna in Italy, Paris in France, and Oxford and Cambridge in England. The earliest American universities (Harvard, William and Mary, Yale) were founded in the medieval tradition of Oxford and Cambridge. The curriculum consisted of the classical Seven Liberal Arts of the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the Quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy). The universities were controlled by the clergy, who viewed the purpose of education as the imparting of mental and moral discipline to students (mostly male) so they might become worthy servants of God(1). A large number of denominational colleges patterned after these originals were founded throughout the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. Many failed, but those that survived constitute a major fraction of the nation’s private liberal arts colleges today.

Practical subjects like science and engineering were largely missing from the curricula of early American universities and research efforts were minimal. Gradually the domination of the clergy waned and more secular subjects were introduced into the curriculum as increasing numbers of students attended college. During the period from 1800 to the Civil War, the increasing representation of science and technology in the curriculum resulted in a corresponding increase in tension between the classical and the practical(1). In an attempt to ease this tension that (thank goodness!) has proved largely unsuccessful, universities established curricula in which the classical and the practical were yoked in parallel. Thus were born colleges or schools of Liberal Arts and Science.

Following the Civil War, two powerful forces accelerated the trend toward secularism and practicality in the curriculum of the American university.(1) The first was an economic struggle between poorly paid labor and industrial and financial barons, such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius and William Vanderbilt, and Jay Gould. The life of the working man on the railroads and in the mines, steel mills, and factories of the nation was hard, with little prospect for improvement. Many of the laborers were recent immigrants who were subjected to ethnic and economic discrimination. Economic depression led to strikes and violence against managers and owners, which were ruthlessly put down by corporate police, the courts, and Army troops. Two depressions, in 1876 and 1893, made the lot of the working man even more marginal.

The second force was the belief, promulgated by the German research universities, that the acquisition of knowledge was the path by which progress and prosperity could be brought to the common man.(1) Created in the early 1800s, the German research university emphasized individual scholarship and the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake and promoted the idea that social reform and quality of life for all could be achieved through the use of knowledge obtained by scientific reasoning. German research universities became meccas for aspiring young 19th century American scholars and idealists who wanted to change their own universities and their society.

The first American research universities were founded by the very industrialists who resisted social reform.(1) Their motive was the prestige gained by stamping their name on a university. The first of these private universities was Johns Hopkins, followed by (Ezra) Cornell, (Leland) Stanford, and the University of Chicago (John D. Rockefeller). Their clientele was the wealthy elite and their presidents were practical men of science, engineering, and business. Their purpose, in the words of William Rainey Harper, first President of the University of Chicago, was “to make the work of investigation primary, the work of giving instruction secondary”. The students in these universities were exclusively graduate students apprenticed to faculty mentors. Later, however, the desire to field football teams to compete with those of the private undergraduate universities required the introduction of undergraduate curricula.(1) Not to be outdone, private undergraduate universities, such as Harvard and Yale, added programs of research and graduate study. The recruitment of star faculty and star football players was a high priority and competition for the best in the country was fierce.

But bringing progress and prosperity to the common man through the acquisition of knowledge required a further step—-a more revolutionary, uniquely American, idea. This was the land grant state public university, established by the Morrill Act of 1862.(1) The land grant universities were funded by the principal and income from federal lands set aside by the Morrill Act or donated by private citizens, and by direct appropriations from state legislatures. Their purpose was to educate the sons and daughters of the state’s working class citizens and to produce research and technology of benefit to the industrial and agricultural needs of the states. This broad focus on research, educational, agricultural, and industrial needs defined the land grant universities for the next 85 years. Their low tuition, subsidized by the state, greatly increased access to higher education. There is no question that these universities have contributed greatly to the agricultural, scientific, technological, and civic and cultural strength of the nation, to the upward mobility of its citizens, and to the building of a more equitable and opportunity-filled society. The state universities, too, fielded football teams. Over time, they would prove their superiority to the teams of the private universities, which were eventually reduced to playing the game for fun.

Following the Second World War, the land grant universities underwent massive changes. During World War II, professors in both private and public universities were instrumental in helping the war department develop weaponry and defense systems. The most notable of these efforts was the Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb. Shortly after the end of the war, Vannevar Bush wrote a treatise titled “Science, the Endless Frontier”, in which he promulgated a long-term vision of government/university/industrial partnerships to increase the economic strength, security, and international prestige of the nation. Driven by the Cold War with the Soviet Union, this vision transformed the structure and function of public higher education. State universities underwent a dramatic expansion in enrollment due to the influx of returning servicemen on the G.I. bill. Weary of the experiences of war, this highly motivated generation of students was the epitome of what both private and public universities could do to promote success and prosperity. The “G.I. generation” wanted its children to be highly educated as well, and in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, its offspring, the “Silent” and “Boomer” generations, further increased student enrollment. State “normal” schools became smaller versions of the land-grant universities. Graduate education became a top priority, partly to meet the labor demands of faculty research programs, partly to meet the rising demand for faculty to teach the swelling ranks of undergraduate and graduate students, and partly to fill the needs generated by corporate expansion. American graduate schools became the envy of the world—and still are. Large numbers of foreign graduate students have studied in them to become the academic, industrial, and government leaders of their own countries. Perhaps inevitably, however, the state and federal funds poured into the state universities after the war, and the rapidly increasing enrollments, also led to the creation of an academic caste system for both professors and students.

Prior to World War II, professors taught most of the courses taken by undergraduates in state universities. Many did research in equal measure, but their teaching mission was viewed as coming first. To paraphrase Indiana University’s Tracy Sonneborn, one of the great American cell biologists, first he gave the 40 hours he owed to the University, then he gave his 40 hours to research. But with the expansion of national and international research roles in academia, the oldest and largest of the state universities were defined as “flagships”, entitled to more state dollars than other public universities and aspiring to the same academic prestige accorded to the elite private research universities. To get it, they too engaged in high-stakes bidding wars for superstar research faculty.

Simultaneously, the student population in state universities became progressively more stratified. Until the early to mid-1960s, most land grant state universities would accept anyone who graduated in the upper three-quarters of their high school class. Once accepted, the student was responsible for staying there to graduation. But as the number of college-going students soared, and the economic need for education beyond high school increased, the research and teaching missions of the land-grants clashed. The way out of this dilemma was to become more selective in admissions. The brightest and best prepared students would not need as much attention from professors, who were then freed to spend most of their time on research. Furthermore, the research prestige of the university could be used to attract the best professors and students, and to thus build up the capacity to generate more federal research dollars. The lower-ranking students who were also once their clientele could go to the “lesser” institutions of the state, according to the principle of “mission differentiation”. In this process, the urban universities were neglected and pushed to the bottom of the heap. Those that were once magnificent starships deteriorated, while many of the newer ones formed from extension services were never funded adequately.

The state research universities now set the standards by which all public universities were measured. Publications and grant awards became the sole basis for professorial advancement and reward. The teaching of undergraduates was increasingly relegated to graduate teaching assistants or to professors who had gained tenure, but were considered to be research failures. The old joke that God would never get tenure at the state university because he had only one publication and it wasn’t in a refereed journal, is a fairly accurate parody of the scene. It is thus little wonder that many observers have noted the increasing isolation of professors from each other and their students in the state research universities and their turning away from civic responsibility, concern for the common good, and institutional loyalty.(1) Years ago, I came across a description of public research universities written by a highly acclaimed professor who had abandoned the pack. The characteristics he saw were “…. minimal good will, inturned protectiveness of self, intense competitiveness, glee in belittlement….., insecure self-esteem, plodding progress through life with little of its joy, loss of ideals of integrity, of concern for others, of the beauty of life and sharing it with others”. I cringe at these words, because many of us who have worked in or are working in these universities do not fit this mold. Nevertheless, the description is accurate for the organism as a whole.

I believe that the public research universities at the top of the hierarchy offer much to a few people. But the educational and economic needs and challenges of the 21st century demand that every public university offer much to most people. Changing economic environments and student demographics have rendered the caste system of public higher education ineffective in meeting these needs and challenges. There has been a progressive loss of high-paying line manufacturing jobs as the world has transited to a knowledge-based economy that is much more dependent on critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and on technology. This means that to compete for most jobs, a university education is no longer an option, it is a necessity. Increasingly, that is coming to mean a complete four-year education. Thus the number of students enrolled in higher education continues to rise. In 1996, 5.4% of the total U.S. population (~ 13 million people) was enrolled full or part time in all institutions. Based on projections of high school graduates, university enrollments are expected to swell to record numbers by 2010. A large fraction of these students will be under-prepared to do college-level work and will need to correct deficiencies. This will be true regardless of what position in the hierarchy a public university occupies, because increasingly, the As and Bs earned by public high school students are proving to be hollow. Another way of saying this is that the student populations at all levels of the institutional hierarchy are looking more and more alike in their degree of preparation and commitment to university-level work

The “flagship” research universities enroll only a small fraction of the total number of students admitted to their own systems and to other state universities. It makes little sense to try to properly educate the majority of students, who will form the bulk of the work force, including most CEO positions, on shoestring budgets, while providing a relatively small number of students with every available resource. It makes even less sense to say that this majority should not have, or does not need, an educational experience of the same quality as students in the state research universities, or that the faculties who teach these students should not aspire to excellence. But that is the message of mission differentiation: these students do not deserve this kind of quality. The faculty should spend all their time in the classroom and do no research unless it is on “teaching”. Faculty and students alike should be content with substandard facilities and infrastructure and, by definition, their institutions should receive less state funding for their operations. This view has particularly insidious consequences for students who, of necessity or choice, attend non-residential (usually urban) campuses. Mission differentiation assumes them to be a homogenous population of inferior quality. But, just as on the campuses of the state research universities, they are not homogeneous, and many are extraordinarily bright and motivated. No matter how bright or accomplished, however, they find themselves less competitive for jobs because of the public and corporate perception of the academic status of their university. Worse yet, this situation fosters a culture of low aspirations that negatively affects the economy of a state.

The public research universities do not necessarily have better faculty or better curricula. They are simply larger and historically more privileged. Murray Sperber(2,3) believes that undergraduate education in the state research universities is mediocre because of their overemphasis on research and their substitution of athletic and social events for quality learning experiences. Sperber would raise admissions standards (only at leading public universities, however) and improve community colleges, downsize graduate programs and shift the funds into undergraduate programs, and emphasize good teaching and reward it. Unfortunately, using admissions standards to maintain the position of the “leading” institutions simply perpetuates the caste system in a different form.

Alexander Astin (4), an astute student of American higher education, has observed that, contrary to working for the benefit of students, segregating them into institutions whose missions are differentiated on the basis of prescribed activities and resources actually sends the message that we don’t value their education. It insures that the differences between the haves and have-nots in our society will be perpetuated and exacerbated. In addition, fostering of collaboration between institutions is made difficult and the state is thus rendered unable to maximize the use of available financial and human educational and research resources.

Robert Reich (5) has also pointed out how the trend toward increasing selectivity, especially regarding how higher education resources are allocated by state legislatures and by universities themselves, widens existing inequalities, due to the disparity between the supply and demand for workers with the education and skills needed to meet the demands for innovation in today’s economy. I do not, however, agree with his solution to the problem, which is to expand scholarship resources for students at technical institutes and community colleges. This is a view that is widely embraced, and makes sense within the framework of the existing caste system, but it does not alter that system. In fact, selectivity and mission differentiation, carried to logical extremes, would mean adding more strata to the hierarchy to efficiently segregate students into appropriate compartments.

A New Species of Public University

What kind of public higher education structure would work more effectively? In my opinion, no progress will be made until the caste system of public higher education is eliminated, or at least highly modified. I am convinced that society in the 21st century would be better served with a system in which there is no mission differentiation. Ideally, I would replace the current system with one in which all state universities have equivalent missions and legislative financial appropriations. Each such university would have the same missions of teaching, research, and service. Each would be responsible for educating the full range of students and offer the full range of degrees, from the baccalaureate to the Ph.D. I would integrate the currently separate community colleges into the baccalaureate universities. Every state university would have a research function in order to maximize the number of new ideas that can be explored. The mix of research might vary from campus to campus, but its common element would be the provision of a more intellectually vibrant and diverse environment within which learning can take place, as well as playing a role in technology transfer to industry and business and being a driver of economic and cultural development. By leveling the playing field, this structure would insure that each university gains its status and respect solely by virtue of how well it performs, not by differentially allocated resources. In essence, this is exactly the kind of environment in which private universities operate. Although they choose the parameters within which they wish to operate, their success is dictated only by how well they perform their functions, not by outside agents.

What would be some of the specific characteristics of this new species of 21st century public university? These characteristics will fall under three broad areas of excellence: (1) effective student learning, (2) research, scholarship, and creative activity, and (3) strength through engagement with the broader society. I cannot overemphasize the need for these functions to be balanced, synergistic, and rewarded equally. This lack of balance and reward is one of the biggest obstacles to maximizing service to constituents throughout the current hierarchy of public education. A university that puts equal emphasis on the quality of research, teaching, and service, and the synergy between these three missions, gives the best value to its constituents.

Each of these activities will be characterized by collaboration within and across disciplines and with constituent communities, a commitment to ensuring diversity, and pursuit of best practices. There will be a commitment to change as an agent of creative growth, a commitment to ethics, integrity, character, and credibility, and a commitment to continual improvement.

1. Effective Student Learning

Administration and faculty should be committed to first-rate instruction using modern technological tools to advantage. We need to provide academic and support systems that serve the needs of a wide array of beginning students and promote their ability to persist in achieving their goals. Students should be provided the proper advising and mechanisms of evaluation of learning. They should have a first-rate general education component that includes basic skills and integrates the arts and sciences. Flexible programs of study should be available, but they should not be so flexible that they become incoherent. Curricula should be evaluated periodically to insure that they offer students the best learning opportunities relative to aspirations for advanced study, employment, and preparation to be productive citizens and leaders. We should strive to make a university education fit the timeless definition of the goal of education, as articulated by Princeton Professor Charles Grovenor Osgood: “The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things—-the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit”. Students, too, must be held accountable for their learning. The university must make it clear that students need to put a priority on going to class, studying, doing homework, and doing the research for papers, that is greater than play. Students who have family and work obligations should take fewer courses at a time in order to maintain that priority.

2. Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity

Faculty should conduct cutting-edge basic and applied research. Research activity is of value at the university, community, state, and national level in several ways. Research activity ensures that faculty are current in their disciplines, which in turn provides a more rigorous, higher quality academic curriculum and a more vital intellectual environment for undergraduates. This includes the opportunity for undergraduates to participate in faculty research programs, which has been shown to be a powerful learning and retention tool. Academic programs taught by a research-active faculty are recognized as superior in quality by potential employers, as well as by graduate and professional schools. Graduates of such programs, at all levels, are more competitive for employment.

Research activity is essential to supply the advanced graduate training sought by many employers, as well as by persons fresh out of undergraduate school. It is a powerful stimulus for local and state economic development. For example, it is estimated that the federal research funding attracted by research-active faculty is leveraged 3:1 through a combination of creating new jobs, sales of goods and services, and increased tax revenues.

The presence of research in a university provides tremendous cultural enhancement for a region. Not only are a number of the university’s scholarly activities direct cultural resources, these activities also enrich other cultural institutions in the region: museums, historic sites, and the literary and artistic communities.

Finally, a hallmark of the new 21st century university will be its ability to put together traditional disciplines, or evolve them to create new multidisciplinary initiatives that will address complex societal problems, forge research in new areas, and create new commercial opportunities.

3. Societal Engagement

Societal engagement may be defined as a collaborative activity that builds on the resources, skills, expertise, and knowledge of a university and other elements of society to improve the quality of life for that society as a whole. Education, technology transfer, health care, cultural events, the bringing to bear of faculty expertise on societal problems such as alcohol and drug addiction, poverty, and racial discrimination are just a few of the problems that can be attacked, not just through theoretical study, but through hands-on engagement and collaboration with agencies in the community and state that are charged with implementing solutions. It should not be forgotten that, in today’s global economy and culture, societal engagement means that the university of the 21st century should be connected not only to its local community and state, but to the world at large. This is again one of the major problems of the current hierarchy. Mission differentiation denies national and global connections to all but research universities. Conversely, it de-emphasizes local community connections to research universities.

This structure would have a number of benefits for public higher education. First, it would harness the full educational power and expertise of the state universities in training a multi-leveled work force to meet the state’s economic needs. Second, it would send the message to all students—-whether they are engaged in technical training or pursuing a course of doctoral study—-that their education is seen as valuable by the state as a whole. Third, it would make course credit transfer between institutions easier, which in some states is a problem because the “flagships” resist accepting credits from “inferior” institutions, even ones within their own systems. Fourth, more expertise would be brought to bear on the problem of student retention and graduation rates, because this problem would now belong to everyone and everyone would have a stake in it. It would eliminate the corrosive effects stemming from the abuse of institutions lower in the caste order by higher education commissions, state legislatures, and university trustees. Fifth, the full economic and cultural power of the deep pool of faculty research talent and expertise could be applied over a much broader area of the state. Furthermore, the diversity of research ideas generated by faculty would be increased, generating more technology transfer and providing a greater cultural resource. Sixth, with such a structure, states would have multiple connection points for national and world commerce, rather than one or two. Seventh, this structure would make it much easier to join with the K-12 system in setting standards of student preparation for university work and teacher training, and in forming collaborations to address educational issues. University students will be no better than what the K-12 system produces. In short, this structure would again do what the single, original land-grant universities were designed to do, but with a more global range of responsibilities. Greater collaboration between institutions would be possible for all academic and research endeavors, thus maximizing the investments made in the higher education system.

How realistic is this scenario? Not very, if one thinks of it in terms of sweeping away the current structure and replacing it with something new. The inertia to be overcome would be tremendous, and the outcry deafening. There would be fierce resistance from the faculty and administrators of research universities accustomed to relative privilege, from alumni and students whose identities are wrapped up in their school’s rankings, and from the politicians who perpetuate the status quo. But it becomes much more possible if thought of in evolutionary terms. We are at an evolutionary crossroads in higher education. The factors I have mentioned— changing demographics, a global information-based economy, the shift to technology-oriented manufacturing, the rising number of students and the need to provide all of them with the opportunity to have a high quality education, the need for cities as cultural centers and centers of economic development to have strong, multipurpose public universities, the tendency of state research universities to be wrapped up in themselves and disengaged from the real world——all are powerful selective forces converging to change our higher education system so that each institution, in order to survive, must serve the whole spectrum of constituencies well. To serve the needs of the nation in the 21st century, I believe each type of university in the current hierarchy must evolve toward the kind of university I have described.

Lest there be some misunderstanding, I do not claim that what I am advocating here will make every student equal in ability or achievement. That, obviously, will never be the case. But by providing academic programs, within the same institution, that benefit the whole range of student aspirations and abilities, each student will at least have the opportunity to pursue those aspirations to the fullest extent of their ability, within a context that does not devalue them.

The Urban University as Prototype

When can we expect this model of the 21st century university to emerge? In fact, the prototype already exists, though it has gone largely unrecognized. This is today’s urban university, which Donald Langenberg, Chancellor of the University of Maryland, has called “the next great invention in higher education”. This may come as a surprise, since most urban universities are under-funded, many do not have football teams, and their function is viewed as one of rendering only local service to working students who can’t go anywhere else and who need little intellectual stimulation. Nevertheless, it is they who best fit the balance of activities that best address the needs and challenges society will face in the 21st century.

Urban universities engage in the same national and global activities as a land grant research university. But several features distinguish them from the land grant research university. First, their student populations represent a true cross section of society and , they are deeply committed to learning in the context of this diversity. Second, they do basic and applied research equally well. Third, this research is often of more direct and immediate relevance to broad societal issues, such as addiction, health care, and poverty. Fourth, urban universities have a deep sense of both internal and external community. For these reasons, a number of urban universities across the country are emerging as leaders in integrating teaching, research, and service into a balanced whole that serves their local, state, and global constituents with the maximum impact.

I conclude by recalling an impressive book called “An Education for our Time”, authored by Josiah Bunting III, Superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute6. Bunting, too, argues for the establishment of a new kind of university, focused on the development of student character and morality rather than vocational and technical aims. Students in Bunting’s university would be isolated on the high plains of Wyoming in order to develop these attributes in the absence of distractions. I would like to believe we might better combine these features in the model represented by today’s urban university. This will be the evolutionary prototype by which higher education in the 21st century will be transformed to truly provide the citizens of our nation with “an education for our time”.

References

1. Smith P (1990) Killing the Spirit, Penguin Books, New York. This book by Page Smith , founding Provost of the University of California at Santa Cruz, is an excellent history and analysis of the structure of public and private higher education. I have relied on it here for much of the history of the beast.

2. Sperber M (2000) Beer and Circus, Henry Holt and Company, New York.

3. Sperber, M (2000) End the mediocrity of our public universities. The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 20, 2000.

4. Astin A (1999) Rethinking academic excellence. Liberal Education, Spring issue, pp. 10-18.

5. Reich RB (2000) How selective colleges heighten inequality. The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 15, 2000. Astin A (1999) Rethinking academic excellence. Liberal Education, Spring issue, pp. 10-18.6. Bunting J III (1998) An Education for Our Time. Washington, D.C.: Regenery Publishing.

David Stocum, Professor at IUPUI, at 5:10 pm EDT on June 27, 2006

It is just a draft

The Commission for the Future of Higher Education has just released a draft report, which was apparently prepared by staff, not the Commission members. Thus we can expect that the Commission will wade in and carry our a significant rewriting. So, rather than respond to the draft (other than to say that I find some of the things in it to be right on target, and others to be just silly), I will describe a few things I would like to see in the final report.

First, a discussion of the changes they see in the world, and why those changes put our higher education system at risk. There are surely many things wrong with our system of higher education (and those of all of our competitors, for that matter), and we are unlikely to have the enthusiasm or resources to fix them all. What threats do they believe their solutions are protecting us against? At present, we cannot judge the utility of their solutions, since we do not know the problems for which they are solutions

Second, what should we be teaching students in today’s world? If we want to do outcomes testing of learning, we had better be real sure we are testing for the desired outcomes, because the test will become the driver. Reports show that offshoring is creeping up the educational-attainment ladder. The key issue seems to me to be, what do today’s students need to learn so that they have a good chance of being successful in the increasingly globalized competition for jobs?

Third, States everywhere around the world are moving from being policy driven to being market driven. Almost every system of higher education globally is seeing decreasing State support, and an increasing dependence on the market. The Commission should address the question “What about higher education is of sufficient importance to the nation that there should be a policy response, and what should be left to market forces?” Then we can talk about costs and prices.

Lloyd Armstrong, Professor, at 8:35 pm EDT on June 27, 2006

No answer

” .. This is indeed something you could “just throw money at.” “

Sorry, sir. That will never happen. You were asked to make some calculation at expected cost; you just want to “throw money” at the problem.

Well, GWB did, and got 0 results. You think the public is going to keep that up, you’re out of your mind.

You want more money — make a case with tangible results. Otherwise — keep dreaming. You’re good at that.

L.L., at 9:55 am EDT on June 28, 2006

Please know something before speaking...

L.L. Please, do just a touch of research, without even dealing in the question of Wall Street earners, here’s the United States Department of Labor’s comparison of teacher and “financial sales” categories, re: annual compensation (quoted from their website, so you could have found it as well):

Median annual earnings of kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers ranged from $41,400 to $45,920 in May 2004; the lowest 10 percent earned $26,730 to $31,180; the top 10 percent earned $66,240 to $71,370. Median earnings for preschool teachers were $20,980.

as opposed to brokers...Median annual earnings of securities, commodities, and financial services sales agents were $69,200 in May 2004. The middle half earned between $40,750 and $131,290.

Median annual earnings in the industries employing the largest numbers of securities, commodities, and financial services sales agents in 2004 were: Other financial investment activities $94,670 Securities and commodity contracts intermediation and brokerage $85,350Management of companies and enterprises 67,690

As far as GWB “throwing money at the problem,” GWB threw money at Testing Companies that were major campaign contributors. Spending money on testing is something different than spending money on teaching and educational environments. I know this may be difficult to understand, but testing is not learning, unless your goal is to teach students to take tests. Unlike you, I’d rather they learned to discover, analyze, and use relevant information.

Ira Socol, Michigan State University, at 12:30 pm EDT on June 28, 2006

K-12

I have taught as a substitute in high school while teaching at the university. I noticed several things that have interfered with higher education:

1. The dumbing down of high school programs to the lowest common denominator in class.

2. Lack of liaison between high school and college (both the high school and the college are just 1 mile from one another and seemingly, neither one knew about the requirements, the teachers, the professors or the programs available at one another’s institution.)

3. Behavioral problems, mental deficiencies in K-12 courses that interfere with the learning of the majority in the class. This was a battle that caused me to quite subbing. The behavior was never addressed by the principal and parents did nothing to discipline their children.

One example that sticks in my mind is a teacher harping on her students to remember to get 10 pages of a history book read. The students had 2 weeks to get that done! I hope that they managed, given that “short” period of time. Really, there are no challenges in K-12. How can one expect students in college to “learn” when they have had so little expected of them previously? No wonder the “powers that be” are attacking higher ed. It’s the last bastion left to dumb down now that they have basically finished off K-12. I have students in college who can barely write. The sad thing is that there are also university administrators with 6-figure incomes who can barely write. But try trimming that fat.

Madla Margalis, Associate Professor, at 2:15 pm EDT on June 29, 2006

Even the most able of teachers cannot control many of the factors that lead to student success. The tone of the ‘draft’ is too accusatory without understanding the challenges in our society—well beyond higher education’s ability to solve alone.

liz, at 6:15 am EDT on June 30, 2006

Still going after all this time...

A few responses...

Kevin makes the mistake that many American undergrads (and others) make, in misunderstanding the purpose of the corporation in society. The corporation is a “false personality” constructed by the government to shield capitalists ("capitalists” in the best sense of the word) from responsibility should their businesses fail. It is truly a “socially subsidized” structure that is granted to investors, and in exchange for this, there are (or, in my opinion, surely should be) compensatory expectations from the corporations back to the government. I remind Kevin that no one need be a corporation... if one really believed in capitalist risk they would own all as individuals or partnerships and thus avoid both “double taxation” and questions about corporate spending. The prevalence of the corporate structure testifies to the remarkable value of this gift from government to business.

Scott also repeats a FoxNews “old saw” without question. Government spending is riddled with corruption? Academic spending is excessive? Perhaps. But I’ll point out a few things. Medicaid, for example, pays less than a third in “overhead” what private US medical insurers pay, and both the French and Germans fund their entire medical system for fewer dollars per national resident than the US federal government alone pays for health care. Also K-12 education in the US costs less per hour than most American babysitters. Finally, every corporate construction project is, of course, funded by the government, as are their corporate salaries and corporate jets. I don’t get to deduct the cost of my bicycle from my tax return but GE can deduct the cost of jets for retired executives from theirs. The state I live in will give massive grants to help GM build buildings, and make huge infrastructure improvements to help build retail stores. My state is spending more on what are effectively driveways for corporate buildings than they are spending in total on academic construction at the higher ed level.

The point is not that I don’t oppose waste, I certainly do. But the state-of-the-art technology that Scott opposes are essential to training students for the future, and the controversial profs Kevin opposes are essential to his chances of working in multinational environments. To me those are things an intelligent nation would value over Jack Welch’s golf games. But that’s just me.

Ira Socol, Michigan State University, at 3:40 pm EDT on July 2, 2006