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About the Author
Stan Katz teaches public and international affairs and directs the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at the Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is a past president of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society for Legal History. He comments frequently on policy issues relating to higher education, particularly liberal education, and on the humanities and social sciences, philanthropy, scholarly relations with Cuba, and the interplay of civil society, constitutionalism, and democracy. And on his beloved Cubs.
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The Real World of Higher Education
A good many of you have written to remind me that I write about the experience of the elite institutions, not about “higher education” generally. I know that, of course, but I teach in an elite institution and most of my career has been spent in comparable universities. It is the world I know from first-hand experience. But I am frequently reminded of the range of experiences even across the leading institutions simply by comparing notes with my two children — one teaching at New York University, and the other at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
But last week I attended the second session of a new seminar for scholars of higher education that meets monthly in New York City. I had made the presentation to lead off the first seminar in March, and was a little surprised (we were meeting in the Century Association, where the Gotham elite meet to eat) at how vigorously many in the group objected that the problems of Harvard, Princeton and Stanford were not indicative of the real problems of higher education. In response, the organizers asked Paul Attewell and David Lavin of the City University to talk about the findings in their important new Russell Sage volume, Passing the Torch: Does Higher Education for the Disadvantaged Pay Off Across the Generations?
To say the least I learned a lot, mostly by way of giving concrete reality to aspects of popular higher education that I have an intuitive feel for at best. I suppose the most important message is that we should stop talking about the “traditional” student, since what we used to think of as traditional students — those who go to college immediately after graduating from high school, reside on campus, attend school full time, and graduate in four or five years — constitute no more than one-fourth of all those in the four-year higher education systems. More than half of postsecondary students are of course in community colleges, and many of them will not proceed beyond the AA degree. But even those who do will be part-time students, working at least half-time, and frequently dropping out to earn enough money to continue their education. One-fourth of these students live on campus. They will attend several institutions before receiving a bachelor’s degree — 60 percent will earn a B.A. from a different institution than the one they started college in. And it will take them a long time to receive a degree. Over the long term, though, 60 to 70 percent of students will in fact earn a degree. Overwhelmingly, their problems are economic — no one is offering them the sort of aid that Harvard and Princeton provide to all their admits.
Moreover, these “new traditional” students are making very different sorts of curricular choices. Only about one-third will major in academic (arts and letters) subjects, for they are mostly (and for obvious reasons) opting for what Attewell and Lavin call “career” majors — those with the most obvious and immediate economic payoffs. Fewer than 10 percent are majoring in the arts and humanities and even fewer (3 percent) major in mathematics and the physical sciences. Further, given the explosive growth in college attendance, most (75 percent) of our postsecondary institutions are nonselective — despite the focus of the press on the pressures and importance of selectivity. The norm is closer to open enrollment than to Amherst College.
I learned a lot more, and I would encourage anyone who cares about the relationship between economic disadvantage and higher education to read Passing the Torch. But to say the least, those of us (whether or not we are in truly selective institutions) who care about the arts and sciences tradition and the viability of liberal education need to think more broadly than I have been doing.
Posted at 02:17:08 PM on April 20, 2008 | All postings by Stan KatzComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Thank you for your posting. It will likely have a broader audience among the elites than the usual websites and blogs which state these same arguments.
Comments on several of the CHE blogs have criticized the elitist, research-university perspective which dominated much of the discussion. It would seem to be obvious that once one leaves the coasts (and even in the public institutions in those states), higher education is dramatically different. The non-traditional has indeed become the traditional experience — both among the student body and the faculty (part-timers in both).
The Ivory Tower isn’t what it “used to be”, for better and for worse, and the faster we all begin to face the hard facts of the realities in most post-secondary institutions in the nation, the faster we can begin to improve the situation for all.
Again, thank you for directly opening up the dialogue on your blog.
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 20, 04:00 PM · #
At Yale, one out of every seven students majors in history. Across the nation, about 2.2 percent of bachelors degrees awarded annually are in history. I have yet to see a community college that allows students to major in history. What we need are studies that tell us more about who is majoring in history. What percentage of people who earn a bachelors degree in history these days started out at a two-year school or community college? What do the ones who started out at an associates school major in before they become history majors at four-years schools? What percentage of history majors are coming from upper class and upper middle-class families? Why is that when white males make up only 29 percent of college enrollments across the country they are still receiving 50 percent of all history bachelors degrees?
— PhDinHistory · Apr 20, 04:48 PM · #
Yes, and I would go one step further: What/How does it mean to “major” at all?
How are “majors” constructed within the disciplines across the country? To what extent are traditional “majors” seen as real estate belonging to the faculty of entrenched departments, to be constructed as they personally see fit, often in the image of their own research interests?
Take the Communications/Communication Studies major: a hallmark of public education. Why does it not have a counterpart in the Ivies, for example? What is gained and what is lost by this bi-furcation of the distribution and nature of majors in various types of institutions?
Why is there a disconnect between the words of the nation’s top CEOs who stress their belief in the superiority of the liberal arts major for their hiring processes —- and the fact that students in the non-elite institutions perceive as a necessity specializing in the very “majors” that these CEOs profess to spurn?
What does it mean when the CEOs of industry are more dedicated to the philosophy and utility of the liberal arts for the well-rounded and critically-thinking individual (and employee) than are the administrations and faculty of higher education institutions themselves? (The salary structures alone in higher education tell us something here, do they not, with the dramatically higher pay in the professional schools.)
To what fears does higher education pander in the students from a “middle class” or “under”-privileged background? And why? Does American higher education actually respect its students and all of its faculty and take them seriously? Is the increasingly developing and deplored disrespect for faculty simply the students’ “returning the favor”, as it were, and learning/reflecting institutional priorities?
A hint at at least a partial answer: “There’s gold in them thar’ hills” of the more easily adjunctified “majors” — and the professional schools are among the most building-construction-intensive of the enterprise, as has been explored in earlier threads of this blog.
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 20, 06:20 PM · #
OMG, this is embarrassing. It’s like something out of a William Hamilton cartoon.
— first marci · Apr 21, 12:15 PM · #