I have looked at the data and think this is important. I hope the study that this talks about is widely reported. I will post later on what I think the data shows.
Americans Think We Have the World’s Best Colleges. We Don’t. – NYTimes.com.
Since I think this is so important, I commented further. (And there were some replies, etc….) So, here it is.
A Reply to Concerned Citizen
“It’s the professors, too. (I am one, I know.) It is terrible to scam students and parents but colleges do it all the time. They think they are in “business”. They think students are “consumers”. They market their “brand” and their brand is something they maintain by both research and “solving for the winning solution” for the US News Ranking. That solution usually means catering to student “wants” in order to both attract wealthy high SAT scoring students and to keep them from transferring.
Bill Gates noted, as you do, that there are perverse rewards for universities – that input (SAT scores) count more than output (education).
I feel terrible for you and your son or daughter. These corrupt schools (and professors) do more than take your money. They fool many students into believing that they are getting the education that they need. Taking away the ability to get a good education is a terrible thing.
I hope people will listen to you.”
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Even some “elite” universities scandalously dumb down higher education. They do it because they can, and it pays. Here is what Clark Kerr and David Riesman warned in 1980.
Kerr: “…This shift from academic merit to student consumerism is one of the two greatest reversals of direction in all the history of American higher education…”
Riesman: “…the “wants” of students to which competing institutions, departments, and individual faculty members cater are quite different from the “needs” of students…advantage can still be taken of [students] by unscrupulous instructors and institutions..Like any other interest group, the student estate often does not grasp its own interests, and those who speak in its name are not always its friends…” (From his book, “On Higher Education: The Academic Enterprise in an Era of Rising Student Consumerism”)
Anyone who reads “A Tale Out of School – A Case Study” (on my blog), along with the supporting documents, will see how this works in practice. I think they will be shocked at how easy it is for a university to take Riesman’s observations about the “student estate” as “advice”. (The story took place at Wash. U. in St. Louis.)
If, one also reads the wonderfully iinformative book “Academically Adrift”, they will be armed with the knowledge of just how bad higher education has become.
It will be hard to change. As Kerr noted, no preisthood ever reformed itself, and, many of today’s professors are part of the “me” generation.”
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