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[betterslac]

I love how Selingo in this piece (http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2011/10/06/the-self-absorbed-higher-education-system/) starts with a commentary on American academia's lack of modesty and references David Brooks' "expanded conception of the self," then is quick to tell readers he is reacting to his participation in a

forum where I gathered with a dozen education, business, and think-tank leaders for a spirited discussion of the state of the American higher-ed system.

Maybe part of the problem is the concept that a reporter who has never (according to his Chronicle biography) held a faculty or administrative position on a college or university campus could be considered by himself and others a "leader" in higher education?

[fiona]

Selingo's not just "a reporter." He's the editor-in-chief of the Chronicle, and (I suppose) the boss of these fora.

Show some respect for your boss!

The Fiona

[prytania3]

Sorry, but I think he's dead on.

 

[educator1]

I agree with you, he is dead on, particularly his discussion of the multiple purposes of post-secondary education and our confusion of who the actual customer is.

[larryc]

I think he is both a weenie and more or less correct in his points.

[lyndonparker]

I agree. I think he pretty much gets it right.

[hegemony]

Yep.

[egilson]

Sybil's comment on that thread is so spot-on that I've copied it out into a text file so that I can read and think about it at length.

[hegemony]

Thank you for drawing attention to sybil's comment.  I also agree with it wholeheartedly, though it doesn't wholly agree with the article.  Perhaps I'm easily convinced.  I also appreciate 3rd tyrant's comment: "Sibyl, if you were sand, I would build a woman out of you and marry it."  No one ever says that to me.

[jackofallchem]

When I read the article, I can't figure out what he is trying to say.  He starts out talking about modesty and being self-absorbed, but ends up just regurgitating the same old "we need to concentrate on nontraditional students" and "we need liberal arts graduates to think and technical people to do things" mantra that has been going around for at least 20 years.  I didn't read anything new, innovative, or productive in the article.  It sounds like that roundtable discussion was a waste of time and money. The people talking about who the customer is are so far removed from the problems that they have no chance of solving them.  They come up with new initiatives like "learning communities", "cooperative learning", etc that sound good, but accomplish little.

While the higher-ups are trying to decide who the customer is, we have a problem of declining standards.  It has gotten bad enough that we are running out of people who know how our technology works.  My brother's company hasn't been able to hire a programmer younger than he is for about 10 years because they can't find anyone who can program a computer in C at the level they need. The same is true for a lot of our technology and science.  When I filled out the science ACT survey I was sent, it focused on all kinds of advanced topics they thought the students in high school should know.  The truth is, the incoming freshmen don't know what mass is.  They  don't know what the metric system is.  Testing them on the Copenhagen interpretation is meaningless when they don't know that a meter measures length.

When asked by the ACT how secondary ed help their students be better prepared, I answered:

(1) Teach math

(2) Actually teach the topics in the high school chemistry textbooks

(3) Have grading standards

(4) Give an ACS standardized final worth 50% of the grade and don't fudge the results.

[macadamia]

A large part of higher education is not viewed as higher education at all in other countries, and this lumping together obviously implies that it is ridiculous to have one mission for all.

But the point is that the primary mission of universities is to preserve, enlarge and disseminate knowledge. It is not enough to view either the student or the patient as the customer of a med uni.

And I suspect that the decline of skilled workers in rich countries comes from the relative decline of their salaries and job security in comparison to other careers and the decline in societal respect for skilled workers, because *exactly* the same problem exists in countries where the education of skilled workers is not in the hand of academics (however true it may be that they are immodest and self-absorbed).