 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
About the Author
Bob Zemsky describes himself as being old and round enough to be mistaken for a pooh-bah. He was a member of the Spellings Commission and, as an author and researcher, has focused on making colleges and universities mission-centered and market-smart. He has focused on what globalism might really mean for higher education, on what technology has not accomplished, and how to make learning important to the higher education market. Bob currently serves as professor and chair of The Learning Alliance at the University of Pennsylvania.
About Brainstorm
Mark Bauerlein
Marc Bousquet
Laurie Fendrich
Dan Greenberg
John L. Jackson Jr.
Stan Katz
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg
Brainstorm Alumni
Marty Nemko, guest bloggerBob Zemsky
Recent Posts
Lessons From the Cost-Quality Curve | Comment [2]
Quality -- Reform's Fourth Horseman | Comment [4]
Access to Success | Comment [2]
Is Access Still the Question? | Comment [3]
Affordability: Devil in the Details | Comment [2]
Featured Articles By the Author
Quality -- Reform's Fourth Horseman
The country bumpkin among the four horsemen of reform is quality — a term so bereft of practical meaning today that it is now commonplace to talk about high quality, higher quality, and highest quality as a means of distinguishing among nearly equal claims to excellence.
No one is against quality. Almost everyone is ready to concede that American higher education, whatever its faults and shortcomings, is the envy of the rest of the world and in that sense truly world class, perhaps even in a class by itself. Not so fast, says Jonathan Grayer, the former Newsweek marketing executive Washington Post picked to run its Kaplan subsidiary and who was in many ways the most interesting as well as the most unusual member of the Spellings Commission. Grayer’s role was principally to explain and where necessary defend the interests of the growing for-proftit educational sector. But periodically the Harvard graduate (Harvard College then Harvard Business School) would let loose, challenging the rest of us to think differently. At one point he suggested an alternative way to think about quality. Having been reminded by a recent declaration in The Economist that American universities were the best in the world, Jonathan said he thought such statements did not apply to the bulk of American higher education but only to its most selective institutions.
Instead, Grayer suggested that American colleges and universities are like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When they are good, they are very, very good — and when they are not, well, they are just sort of mediocre. It is an observation that, among other things, helps explain why the U.S. ranks in the middle rather than at the top of so many international comparisons focusing on the quality of national systems of higher education.
The comparative scale on which American higher education clearly ranks at the top is expenditures. In American higher education, those institutions with the highest expenditures per student are the same institutions with the most selective admissions and hence the most competitive students. Whether these students rise to the top because they are among the “best and brightest” to begin with or because the institutions in which they enroll have more resources to invest in their educations is a question worth pondering, particularly if the question before the house is whether or not money buys quality. Most observers of American higher education would argue that the quality of student inputs remains more important than the quality of the educational process — in part, at least, because the educational processes employed vary so little across the range of baccalaureate institutions.
To be continued …
Posted at 06:24:04 AM on June 6, 2008 | All postings by Bob ZemskyComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Previous: Access to Success
Next: Lessons From the Cost-Quality Curve
It would seem best not to compare apples and oranges.
Inasmuch as the “general education” component of the American baccalaureate experience (the first two years of college) is incorporated in most nations’ high school experience, it is the work of, shall we call it, higher higher education in America which is the best in the world.
The American Ph.D., while doubtless varying in “quality” from institution to institution, likely varies much less than does the American BA/BS – which is the “cash cow” of the doctoral program in the first place.
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Jun 6, 09:19 AM · #
To Anti-Hyp—wrongo. It is factually wrong to say that the first two years of an American bach degree program contains the general education component. It is not confined to two years. Secondly, the statement regarding high schools in other countries—they do not contain the general education component, either. I know, been there, done that.
The American bachelor degree as an idea is far superior to what passes for university training (I won’t use the word ‘bachelor degree’ here, although they do, but it’s not) in Europe. That is the size of it, that is the problem, and the reforms in Europe won’t change this. Indeed, they lost sight of it. It will remain another American advantage. (European universities are indeed creating bach programs, but on the English model—three years of specialized studies, no minors, no humanitarian/scientific core curriculum).
In short, an average, mediocre, U.S. bach degree is far superior to a bach degree from most anywhere else on the globe. Now that does not say much for the rest of the globe, but that’s precisely the point.
— Lawman · Jun 9, 05:52 AM · #
I think some of your factual claims are wrong, Lawman (I’ve been there with Germany, Italy, and France, if comparative personal experience is any measure). But let those go…. One thing that assessments often miss is that the American system, like much else in the U.S., offers endless second chances. To crash and burn in the systems of other countries is typically to forfeit any future chance at the university level. In the U.S., you can always try again, and with experience you learn what is important and with several tries at different schools you learn how to pick a place where you are more likely to thrive.
There is, in any case, a presumption in much of the rest of the world that, when you reach the university, you are mature enough to handle it. With our four-year B.A. system, college, we actually work harder to cultivate maturity. And maybe it works better than Grayer (and Anti-Hypocrisy advocate) think, though not as well as Lawman declares.
— dionysos · Jun 9, 06:24 AM · #
I’m not clear from this writing just what this “new” notion of quality, touted by Grayer, is. I am deeply suspicious of the idea of “for profit” higher ed institutions and the continued exploitation of both faculty (part-time numbers are growing, and maybe that’s cool for “profits”?) and of students who must go into deep debt (so lending institutions can “profit”). The question, as always is: who really profits and who pays?
— george K · Jun 9, 01:16 PM · #