Colleges Take Scolding From Carnegie Panel
Pulled apart by students’ preoccupation with getting jobs and the narrow interests of individual research departments, the American undergraduate college is a “troubled institution” that is nearly as much in need of reform as public schools, according to a study released today by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
“Driven by careerism and overshadowed by graduate and professional education, many of the nation’s colleges and universities are more successful in credentialing than in providing a quality education for their students,” the report says. “It is not that the failure of the undergraduate college is so large, but that the expectations are so small.”
The study, the first national project of such scope in recent decades, echoes those now being undertaken by many individual campuses, including a study critical of lower-division education at the University of California recently completed by UC faculty and administrators.
‘Significant Problems’
“Although the conclusions about how to resolve the problems may vary . . . there is general agreement that there are significant problems on most American college campuses,” said Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation, in an interview shortly before release of the report. “These are issues that must be addressed over the next few years.”
The report, three years in the making and intended as a companion to the foundation’s landmark 1983 study that has contributed to broad reforms in secondary schools, concludes that most American colleges are failing their undergraduate students on several fronts.
Faced with under-prepared students, particularly in basic reading and writing skills, many college faculty members have disastrously lowered their expectations, the report says. The faculty, frustrated by the problems, often resorts to making fun of students, rather than trying to help them, the report said. “Malapropisms and factual gaffes in students’ work, passed around from professor to professor and even campus to campus, are a sure source of hilarity. Sadly, they also feed frustration, even cynicism, on campus.”
In an effort to market themselves, the foundation said, many institutions have tried to be “all things to all people,” and thus have not have been straightforward either in stating their strengths and weaknesses or in defining their goals.
One result of this undue sensitivity to marketplace demand has been a dramatic increase in emphasis on “careerism,” the foundation found. An example of this was illustrated by one of the 29 colleges that foundation researchers visited, the study said. In 1965, that unidentified campus offered one major in business administration. Last year, it had 16 business-related majors, including “administrative office management, business and office education, domestic public administration, employee services and industrial recreation, fashion merchandising, finance, foods and nutrition in business.”
Although the key to a good college is a quality faculty, the study found that most colleges do little to encourage good teaching and, in fact, may do much to undermine it. As one psychology professor told the foundation: “Teaching is important, we are told, and yet faculty know that research and publication matter most.”
Resources Lag
Another measure of quality of a college is the resources it offers to students, but the foundation found that many colleges have failed to encourage students to use those resources properly or adequately. The study found, for example, that about one of every four undergraduates spends no time in the library during a normal week.
Little, if anything, is done today to enhance education outside the classroom--to nurture not just students’ minds but their bodies and spirits as well, the foundation concluded. “The undergraduate college should be held together by something more than plumbing, a common grievance over parking, or football rallies in the fall,” the study said.
To remedy these and other problems, the study offered a number of concrete proposals--many of which are now being discussed on campuses and a few of which have already been instituted, at least on a small scale, by some colleges.
Cooperation Urged
For example, the foundation called on colleges to work much more closely with secondary schools to help students prepare for college-level courses and inform them honestly about what individual institutions can and cannot offer.
Once students are in college, the foundation said, they should be presented with introductory courses that are far more interesting, informative and coherent than the potpourri of uninspiring, basic classes now offered--taught in many cases by instructors and graduate students who have no more interest in the subjects than do their students.
At the upper levels, the foundation said, majors should be enriched so that all students by their senior year are prepared--and required--to write a concluding paper or thesis, integrating the historical, ethical, social and technical dimensions of their discipline. Before graduating, all undergraduate students should also be required to participate in a senior seminar in which they present and defend their theses before their fellow students and professors.
New Priority
In fact, the foundation said, the bulk of the nation’s colleges and universities should give priority to first-rate teaching, not second-rate research, as is now the practice.
The foundation, granting that a small number of universities exist whose principal mission is advanced research, nonetheless insists that these universities also should place more emphasis on teaching. “At many research universities, the title ‘distinguished research professor’ is in place,” the foundation said. “We recommend that these institutions also establish the rank of ‘distinguished teaching professor,’ extending special status and salary incentives to those professors who are outstandingly effective in the classroom.”
Finally, the foundation said, students should be drawn into the governance of their own colleges and encouraged not just to become involved in serving the community but to question its standards and ethics as well.
As an example, the study says, “Perhaps the time has come for faculty and students at universities engaged in big-time athletics to organize a day of protest, setting aside a time to examine how the purpose of the universities are being subverted and how integrity is lost.”
