With the publication of Arum and Roksa’s Academically Adrift, Hacker and Dreifus’ Higher Education?, and other indictments of undergraduate experience, governors expressing disappointment with the skill levels of college graduates, the public angry about tuition, and an embarrassing fact about the university appearing every week on cable news, higher education in the United States seems to be reaching a critical point. Thomas Benton termed it in his “Academic in America” column a “perfect storm,” and his summary of the “wreckage” is one of the most concise and accurate portrayals of the situation that I’ve seen.
One passage is worth noting:
To many students, “much of the academic program, particularly general education, seems disconnected from the practical skills needed to secure those jobs. In order to maintain that Potemkin Village, faculty members and students have entered into a ‘disengagement compact,’ in which they place fewer demands on each other so that other interests—research for the professor and social activities for the students—can be pursued with fewer distractions. Professors pretend to teach, students pretend to learn. That results in the cultivation of students’ instincts, guided by checklist rubrics, for doing the least amount of work necessary to receive the desired level of distinction, in a context in which the A- is the new C.”
The “disengagement compact”—yes, it works for everyone. Students like it because it lowers the workload. Teachers like it because it lowers the workload. Administrators like it because it reduces complaints and raises retention rates. Who on campus has the incentive to push re-engagement?
For that matter, which campus group has the incentive to reverse the other unfortunate trends Benton lists? The expansion of “social and extracurricular commitments” doesn’t much concern the faculty as long as it doesn’t interrupt their work or bring the classroom atmosphere down too much. It costs a lot, but if loads of extracurriculars help the institution acquire a reputation as a fun school, then applications go up and tuition can, too. “Alienation from professors” can turn teaching into a dreary affair, true, but individual professors can’t do much about it and they make their peace with it. Besides, they also discover that a teacher who overcomes it finds student contact hours outside class a burden as much as an inspiration.
None of this criticism is to be aimed at individual professors. From what I’ve seen, the canny, careerist professors who shortchange undergraduates for reasons of laziness, selfishness, incompetence, or dereliction are fairly hard to find. The problem is the system, whose many subtle and steady pressures force most of the rest to operate according to prevailing norms. Push back too hard and you get into trouble.
This is why the problems Benton and others identify are so hard to address. Everybody recognizes them more or less, but, like the publish-or-perish formula, they can’t see any way to fix them. To a large degree, they’re cultural, for instance, students operating as consumers. It’s a deep-set condition that students and their parents bring to the campus, and to counteract it requires a contrasting culture of academics and non-market-based values. To many administrators, that’s a formula for hurting the campus. What high-school senior wants to leave home and end up in a place like that?
The distinction between individual and system should be kept in mind when reform discussions come up. It isn’t hard to convince this or that professor or dean that decadent and anti-intellectual things are happening on campus. To go from there to policy changes, though, is a quantum leap.
