I think it is good that the agreement between Starbucks and ASU is getting attention, but Op-Ed’s like this one worry me considerably. I worry that there will be too many opinions written by people that don’t have a deep knowledge about higher education. I don’t know that this is true in this case, but it sounds like it.
Arizona State Matches Starbucks in Its Trailblazing Ways – NYTimes.com.
Here is my comment, where I point out the alarms in this case.
“As a former professor (I taught for years at one of those “elite” schools, Wash. U. in St. Louis.), this op-ed, along with a look at ASU’s website, sets off alarms. If Howard Schulz sees them, too, then this might be as good as it sounds. Otherwise, it is just more of the same – the aggrandizement of universities to the detriment of education.
Here are the alarms.
Pres. Crow says that ASU embraces “inclusion” not “exclusion”. But ASU has an “honors college” with its own 4 year residence hall and special courses for its students, etc..
“online courses..have the same rigor as classroom courses..” That may be, but that does not necessarily bode well. The studies in the book “Academically Adrift” show that the rigor of college classes has dropped so much in the past 40 years that students only need to study 13 hours a week to get a better grade than when (in the sixties) they had to study 25 hours a week. Critical thinking hardly changes over four years, when it used to change by one sigma.
“[Crowe] was the ex. V. Provost at [Columbia]” Columbia lets almost anyone into their engineering school after two years of going to schools of very low quality and just passing. (There is a link on my blog.)
Pres. Crowe’s whole career is as an administrator, worrisome for a college President.
ASU may be ok, but if it is today’s standard university, I really worry. I have a blog, www.inside-higher-ed.com, where I illustrate and explain how bad higher education has become, and why.”
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