Why College "Ain't What It Used to Be!
There was an illuminating review today in the New York Times of a new book entitled “Higher Education? How Colleges are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids-and What We Can Do About it.” Its authors are two longtime faculty members Andrew Hacker (tenured professor) and Claudia Dreifus (a freelance writer and adjunct instructor).
While I haven’t read the book, some of the problems with higher education asserted by the authors (and mentioned in the review) are consistent with my observations and experience. For example the review mentions that:
“Mr. Hacker and Ms. Dreifus list a host of crimes, or at least flaws in the system, some in the control of universities and others built into the external political, cultural or economic environment, or indeed into human nature. These include the narrow self-interestedness of academic departments; the greed of faculty members and administrators alike; the near-universal hypertrophy of “the athletics incubus”; unfunded government mandates; lifetime employment for pampered professors (thanks to the combination of tenure and Congressional abolition of mandatory retirement); and the demands of students and their parents for frivolous extras (driving what the authors call “the amenities arms race”).
The authors raise interesting questions about tenure and its alternatives. Like many critics of tenure, though, they have a keen eye for abuses of power but are remarkably sanguine about the capacity of the First Amendment to shield scholars from pressure exerted by those with the power to fire them.
The authors’ deepest scorn is reserved for the claim that good teaching depends on research, and their most extreme proposal is that universities drastically reduce the amount of research they support, by “spinning off” medical schools and research centers, discontinuing paid sabbaticals and abolishing the current system of promotion and tenure, a system that tends to reward research productivity more than effective teaching.”
While I tend agree that the emphasis on research, the pressure to publish and obtain extramural funding has had a negative impact on teaching, I disagree that teaching isn’t positively impacted by faculty members who are actively involved in scholarly research-what a conundrum!
Nevertheless, this book written by two long-time academicians provides compelling arguments for abolition of tenure and the need to improve teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (try teaching)!!!!!!!!!!
With this blog and others that I have read I have a desire now to read that book. It has me interested in seeing their point of view on tuition costs, and how that money is being spent. I am a student at a university myself and it affects me directly. Thanks for the blog, and thanks for helping me find research material.