Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, former Harvard President Derek Bok examines how much progress college students actually make toward widely accepted goals of undergraduate education. His conclusions are sobering. Although most students make gains in many important respects, they improve much less than they should in such important areas as writing, critical thinking, quantitative skills, and moral reasoning. Large majorities of college seniors do not feel that they have made substantial progress in speaking a foreign language, acquiring cultural and aesthetic interests, or learning what they need to know to become active and informed citizens. Overall, despite their vastly increased resources, more powerful technology, and hundreds of new courses, colleges cannot be confident that students are learning more than they did fifty years ago. Looking further, Bok finds that many important college courses are left to the least experienced teachers and that most professors continue to teach in ways that have proven to be less effective than other available methods. In reviewing their educational programs, however, faculties typically ignore this evidence. Instead, they spend most of their time discussing what courses to require, although the lasting impact of college will almost certainly depend much more on how the courses are taught. In his final chapter, Bok describes the changes that faculties and academic leaders can make to help students accomplish more. Without ignoring the contributions that America's colleges have made, Bok delivers a powerful critique--one that educators will ignore at their peril.
Our Underachieving Colleges
A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should be Learning More
By Derek Bok
Princeton University Press
Copyright © 2007
Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-13618-9
Introduction
During the 1980s, as major U.S. companies felt the hot breath of foreign
competition and Japanese goods invaded our stores and showrooms, Americans
began to ask what had gone wrong with the economy. Government officials,
journalists, and analysts of every kind looked for anyone or anything that
might be responsible for our seeming competitive weakness. Business
executives were the first to bear the brunt of public scrutiny.
Education's turn came soon after. In 1983, a national commission on the
public schools wrote a widely publicized report,
A Nation at Risk, which
referred to "a rising tide of mediocrity" and warned of "unilateral
educational disarmament." A flood of commentary followed, urging all
manner of reforms.
As public schools came under heavy assault, old university hands predicted
that higher education would eventually suffer the same fate. They were
soon proved right. Within a few years, Secretary of Education William
Bennett and Lynne Cheney, head of the National Endowment for the
Humanities, issued sharp critiques of the undergraduate curriculum along
with concrete proposals for reform. Public intellectuals, such as Dinesh
D'Souza, and journalists, such as Charles Sykes, quickly weighed in with
harsh attacks on a broad array of university policies.
Professors too-almost all from the humanities-began publishing critical
essays of their own. The titles of these books capture the prevailing
tone: The Closing of the American Mind, The University in Ruins, The Moral
Collapse of the University, Tenured Radicals, The War against the
Intellect, Impostors in the Temple, Killing the Spirit. Allan Bloom's The
Closing of the American Mind made the New York Times Best-Seller List.
Other books were not so fortunate, but almost all were published by
well-known houses and respectfully discussed in the pages of leading
reviews.
The authors do not come from the same point on the ideological spectrum,
nor do they all emphasize the same concerns. Nevertheless, their writings
have certain features in common. Almost all their criticism is directed at
leading research universities rather than the full range of undergraduate
institutions. Their books are mainly polemics, containing little that is
positive about the work of universities or the professors who teach there.
Among their complaints, moreover, certain common themes recur that seem to
have resonated widely with their readers.
Many of the authors deplore the lack of any overarching purpose in the
undergraduate curriculum. As Allan Bloom declares, "There is no vision,
nor is there a set of competing visions, of what an educated human being
is." In the words of Bill Readings, "The story of liberal education has
lost its organizing center-has lost, that is, the idea of culture as both
origin and goal, of the human sciences." Without a compelling, unifying
purpose, universities are charged with allowing their curricula to
degenerate into a vast smorgasbord of elective courses. Knowledge itself
has splintered into a kaleidoscope of separate academic specialties with
far too little effort to integrate the fragments, let alone show students
how they might connect. Hence the education offered undergraduates has
become incoherent and incapable of addressing the larger questions "of
what we are and what we ought to be," a point elaborated at length by
Bruce Wilshire in his Moral Collapse of the University.
A number of the detractors have pilloried universities for cheapening
their students' education by allowing intellectual standards to
deteriorate. As they see it, discourse on campus is seriously inhibited
by the orthodoxies of political correctness. Affirmative action has
undermined the integrity of faculty hiring. The great canonical
masterpieces of literature have been downgraded to make room for lesser
works whose principal virtue seems to be that they were authored by women,
African Americans, or Third World writers. The very ideals of truth and
objectivity, along with conventional judgments of quality, are thought to
be endangered by attacks from deconstructionists, feminists, Marxists, and
other literary theorists who deny that such goals are even possible.
Another theme in several of the critical writings emphasizes the growing
tendency to turn colleges into training camps for careers. As former
Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch has observed, "American
higher education has remade itself into a vast job-training program in
which the liberal arts are no longer central." According to Eric Gould,
"What we now mean by knowledge is information effective in action,
information focused on results.... We tend to promote the need for a
productive citizenry rather than a critical, socially responsive,
reflective individualism." Those who share this view observe
disapprovingly that the number of students majoring in vocational programs
has risen sharply over the past several decades, while the percentages
majoring in traditional liberal arts subjects, especially the humanities,
have declined. With students flocking to courses in business
administration, computer science, and the allied health professions, more
and more colleges seem preoccupied with serving the occupational needs of
undergraduates instead of preparing them to live a full life as widely
informed, reflective human beings.
A final complaint accuses the faculty of neglecting their students.
Authors such as Charles Sykes in Profscam have assailed tenured professors
for caring only about their research and appointing new colleagues almost
entirely for their scholarly reputations, with little heed to the quality
of their teaching. The few young faculty members who manage to inspire
their students are regularly passed over for promotion. Meanwhile,
according to the authors, professors content themselves with lecturing to
large audiences, leaving the real teaching to inexperienced graduate
students in small sections. Lost in the crowd, many undergraduates finish
college without knowing a single faculty member well enough to ask for a
letter of recommendation.
Many people were surprised that books about undergraduate education, such
as Profscam and The Closing of the American Mind, could sell so many
copies. Yet their success is not so difficult to explain. More than half
of all young people in America go to college, and more than a quarter
receive a bachelor's degree. Virtually every aspiring lawyer, doctor,
minister, scientist, and schoolteacher must earn a college diploma, and
almost all future corporate executives, legislators, and high public
officials will do the same. If colleges miseducate their students, the
nation will eventually suffer the consequences. If they can do a better
job of helping their students communicate with greater precision and
style, think more clearly, analyze more rigorously, become more ethically
discerning, be more knowledgeable and active in civic affairs, society
will be much the better for it. Small wonder, then, that critics care
enough to write with such passion and that large numbers of people want to
read what they have to say.
Since most of these books were published, developments overseas have given
a new reason to care about undergraduate education. A revolution in
technology has enabled any work that can be digitized to be performed
virtually anywhere on the globe. Today highly skilled employees in
Bangalore, Beijing, and other distant places on the planet can communicate
with colleagues in American companies almost as easily as if they were
working down the hall. Already, several hundred thousand U.S. tax returns
are being prepared every year in India; CAT scans from American hospitals
are being analyzed by doctors in Australia; scientists in China are doing
research for Microsoft; Russian engineers are working on aircraft design
for Boeing. No longer are bright Americans who went to the right schools
protected from overseas competitors in forging careers in the world's most
prosperous economy. Ambitious young men and women all over the world are
eager to take their place and are empowered by technology to do so. In
this environment, the quality of education in American colleges has
assumed greater importance than ever before. Reason the more for casting a
critical eye at what goes on in undergraduate classrooms across the
nation.
American universities, too, face the prospect of growing competition from
abroad. Over the past half century they have come to take their
preeminence for granted, while higher education in other advanced
countries has suffered from low faculty salaries, overcrowded conditions,
inadequate facilities, and excessive state control. Educators in the
United States have grown accustomed to being able to attract the ablest
students from around the world to enrich their faculties and raise the
quality and quantity of highly skilled people working in American
companies, hospitals, and other institutions. In recent years, however,
there have been signs that countries in Europe and Asia are beginning to
pay more attention to their universities, recognizing that first-rate
research and advanced education are essential ingredients of success in
today's global economy. As India and China continue to develop, they can
offer more challenging, better paid jobs to the hordes of young scientists
and engineers graduating from their universities. In the future, it may no
longer be as easy as it has been in decades past to have our pick of the
world's talent.
In view of these developments, neither American students nor our
universities, nor the nation itself, can afford to take for granted the
quality of higher education and the teaching and learning it provides. To
be sure, professors and academic leaders must keep a proper perspective.
It is especially important to bear in mind all the purposes universities
serve and to resist efforts to turn them into instruments preoccupied
chiefly with helping the economy grow. But resisting commercialization
cannot become an excuse for resisting change. Rather, universities need to
recognize the risks of complacency and use the emerging worldwide
challenge as an occasion for a candid reappraisal to discover whether
there are ways to lift the performance of our institutions of higher
learning to new and higher levels.
Unfortunately, the widely publicized critiques of the past 20 years are
not a particularly helpful guide for deciding what needs to be done.
Indeed, there is something very odd about their indictments. If they were
anywhere close to correct, prospective students and their families would
be up in arms. After all, going to college costs a lot of money, even in
public universities. Those hoping to attend and those who pay the bills
presumably expect a first-rate education in return. If colleges were truly
in crisis, burdened by incoherent curricula and uncaring professors,
students would hardly be applying in such large and growing numbers. Nor
would parents be seeking out well-paid counselors to help with college
applications or paying for special tutoring to teach their children how to
get higher scores on college entrance exams.
Critics may reply that students are not affirming undergraduate education
in its current form but are merely anxious for an impressive credential
now that a college degree has become so important to future success. But
this response will hardly bear scrutiny. Survey after survey of students
and recent graduates shows that they are remarkably pleased with their
college years. Americans may dislike their government and distrust most
institutions in the society, but 75 percent or more of college alumni
report being either satisfied or very satisfied with their undergraduate
experience. Just after many of the hostile books appeared, a nationwide
poll found that more than 80 percent of undergraduates expressed
satisfaction with the teaching at their college. In subsequent surveys,
large majorities of students have reported being satisfied with their
contacts with professors. Two-thirds would choose the same institution
if they had to make the choice again. Among the most selective colleges
that are repeatedly singled out by critics for special scorn-the
Stanfords, Princetons, Harvards, and Yales-the percentages of contented
graduates are even higher, and alumni support their alma maters with
exceptional generosity.
How can writers condemn our colleges so harshly if students, parents, and
graduates value them so highly? On this point, the authors are silent.
Whether they are simply unaware of student opinion or consider
undergraduates incompetent to judge (this was clearly the view held by
Allan Bloom), they fail to explain why those attending college do not
complain more loudly. Are the critics right and the students wrong? Or is
it the reverse? Or are both right or both wrong? These questions provided
the initial impetus for writing this book.
Having examined the evidence on the effects of college, I find good reason
for the satisfaction of most alumni with their education. Countless
studies have found that college students, overall, achieve significant
gains in critical thinking, general knowledge, moral reasoning,
quantitative skills, and other competencies. Most seniors agree that
they have made substantial intellectual progress. The marketplace affirms
these conclusions by giving large additional rewards to those who carry
their education beyond high school to acquire a B.A. degree.
These positive results suggest that the critics were too harsh and too
one-sided in their judgments. They do not prove that all is well with
undergraduate education. Far from it. Despite the favorable opinions of
undergraduates and alumni, a closer look at the record in the chapters
that follow shows that colleges and universities, for all the benefits
they bring, accomplish far less for their students than they should. Many
seniors graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their
employers. Many cannot reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing
complex, nontechnical problems, even though faculties rank critical
thinking as the primary goal of a college education. Few undergraduates
receiving a degree are able to speak or read a foreign language. Most have
never taken a course in quantitative reasoning or acquired the knowledge
needed to be a reasonably informed citizen in a democracy. And those are
only some of the problems.
These weaknesses are not the ones discussed in the widely publicized
critiques of American universities. There is little in these polemical
books that takes a serious look at how much students are learning or gives
hard evidence of what is actually being accomplished in college
classrooms. Fortunately, however, the more important weaknesses have not
gone entirely unnoticed. Most of the problems have been recognized and
many have been investigated in detail by specialists in educational
research who try to discover how much students are learning and what
methods help them learn best. But these researchers rarely spend much time
describing the policy implications of their work. Moreover, their findings
normally appear piecemeal, usually in specialized professional journals
and little-known reports that few people (other than educational
researchers themselves) ever read. Although some professors are aware of
the problems and try new methods of teaching to overcome them, their
concerns are rarely shared by the faculty as a whole. Even the faculty
committees that periodically review their colleges' curricula give little
sign of having studied the relevant research or recognized the weaknesses
it exposes in their undergraduate programs. Throughout undergraduate
education, a great wall separates the world of research from the world of
practice-even though the practitioners involved are professors, trained in
research, who would seem ideally prepared to take full advantage of
whatever findings empirical investigators have to offer.
In writing this book, I have tried to breach this wall by making ample use
of the published work on how students learn and what effect colleges have
on their development.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Our Underachieving Colleges
by Derek Bok
Copyright © 2007 by Princeton University Press.
Excerpted by permission.
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