Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk
Edited by Richard H. Hersh and John Merrow
Palgrave MacMillan, 2005
244 pages, hardcover, $24.95
Reviewed by Bruce J. Jones
Assistant Director of Admission
Whitman College (WA)
Although published in 2005, Declining by Degrees remains relevant as cultural and Congressional skeptics extend their critique beyond K-12 classrooms. With a new president and Secretary of Education courting change is higher education in line for data-driven initiatives similar to No Child Left Behind (NCLB)?
Richard Hersh, former president of both Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Trinity College (CT), and veteran educational journalist John Merrow have assembled a collection of articles less than sanguine about the current state of American higher education. The litany of complaints is daunting:
- Colleges are “Teflon-coated”, enjoying unexamined respect without measure of educational quality or outcome.
- A coherent course of study has been replaced by the narrow interests of professors loath to teach undergraduates.
- Brand name research universities pursue selfish “free agent” academic superstars while on the bottom of the ladder are the part-timers, the underpaid, benefit-lacking “adjuncts” who now teach a majority of our undergraduates.
- An aggressive “arms race” to build palatial recreational facilities and apartment–style dorms with cafes and flat screen televisions trump the need for upgraded academic buildings.
The Experts Weigh In
Berkeley’s David L. Kirp, author of the provocative Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education, suggests colleges have become bankrupt smorgasbords of academic consumerism. Long-time Bard College (NY) President Leon Botstein mentions the huge growth of “student life professionals”. Julie Johnson Kidd, a former trustee at Hamilton (NY) and Middlebury (VT) colleges decries a culture of pampered resume-building high school students for whom admission to an exclusive college is “the be-all and end-all of life.” College admission officials, frequently under the purview of a “vice president of enrollment management,” employ sophisticated marketing efforts and financial aid logarithms to craft ever more competitive classes.
Responding to the Critique
In the spring of 2009, Indiana, Minnesota and Utah began pilot projects to address these concerns by studying what specific knowledge and skills should be taught to our nation’s undergraduates. Will the future of higher education include mandated exit exams mirroring those stipulated for high school graduates by NCLB?
The Concept of Liberal Arts
There is an underlying current in Declining by Degrees, eloquently articulated by Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Ms Schneider argues for what others in higher education seem to pine for, a return to the classical liberal arts curriculum, a course of study that values analysis, problem-solving, collaboration, ethical understanding, academic competence and preparation for engagement and success in a dynamic world.
This is the course of study our good liberal arts colleges have long offered. However, only five percent of American undergraduates attend this educational model. The recent movement toward establishing small, liberal arts courses of study in a growing number of flagship research universities is a response to the critique expressed here.
Although these may be moves in the right direction the scope of the issues delineated in Declining by Degrees is disturbing. Higher education has arrived as a topic of consideration and complaint.