ACTA's Must-Reads
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The A+ core
We at ACTA know a thing or two about gen ed requirements. We have after all ploughed through dozens upon dozens of course catalogues to evaluate some 170 colleges and universities for our WhatWillTheyLearn.com initiative. We know, for example, a good core when we see one.
Yet, we also know that the seven core subjects on which we grade universities constitute a minimum benchmark of competency, but that they do not exhaust the possibilities for greatness. As we explain:
Of course, arguments can be made for including any number of additional topics, such as art, music, psychology, sociology, philosophy, or world history. But a core curriculum that fails to require most of the seven key subjects outlined on this website will not satisfy the basic demands of general education.
Once in a while, we come across a truly excellent core -- one that goes beyond meeting basic demands and offers students a comprehensive, reasoned and thorough liberal education. The University of Arkansas offers such an example. In order to graduate, students must take English comp, philosophy, math, world literature, Western Civ, American history, 6 fine arts credits , 6 social sciences credits, 12 science credits and demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language.
Let's just say that if we gave out A+'s, UA would get one.
Sadly, as our readers know, the university administration is determined to eviscerate UA's stellar core curriculum. Even sadder, is the university's defense of its project which essentially boils down to a grown-up version of "but ma, everyone else is doing it." As Chancellor David Gearhart explains, the core should be halved to bring it in line with that of "peer institutions." Such logic makes no sense when you're at the head of the pack.
Thankfully, others are catching on.
Paul Greenberg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, remarks: "The lowest common denominator becomes the standard we strive for, and any hope for excellence shrivels."
Our friend Anthony Paletta at Minding the Campus wryly notes that "Arkansas is indeed behind the times -- it has been comparatively slow to eviscerate core curricula that most colleges destroyed long ago."
Our friends at the National Association of Scholars drive home the same point: "As for Arkansas, its flagship university used to stand apart. Having more demanding general education requirements than is typical of American higher education today was a genuine distinction."
How sad that future generations of students in Arkansas may be denied the privilege of graduating from a university with such a distinction.
Posted by David Azerrad on May 26, 2010 at 10:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Getting a "lock" on tuition
One does not need to be an expert on higher education policy or economics to know that the rise in college costs far outpaces the general cost of living. But there are promising signs on the horizon that a few institutions have begun to realize the need to rein in tuition.
According to US News and World Report, a number of schools are offering to "lock" tuition for freshmen, guaranteeing a fixed rate for all four years of attendance. Some colleges and universities, such as Baylor University and Niagara University, charge above-average tuition rates or other fees up front in return for shielding students and their families from subsequent hikes. Others guarantee a fixed tuition rate for free; these include the George Washington University and public universities in Illinois. Still others, like Middlebury and Vanderbilt, allow parents to scrape together enough money to prepay for all four years at their son or daughter's freshman year tuition rate.
Such efforts are surely steps in the right direction. More however remains to be done. Locking in tuition for one group of freshmen does not address the issue of rising tuition rates for subsequent classes, nor does it address the question of how college costs became so high in the first place. Colleges and universities must also examine whether their spending on administration, athletics, and country club-style campus amenities truly advance the academic mission of their institutions.
Likewise, they must ask whether their course offerings and curricula advance the goal of creating broadly-educated, knowledgeable graduates capable of succeeding in the workplace and in the public square. Is the curriculum bloated with hundreds of niche, trivial courses that serve the idiosyncratic interests of a handful of tenured faculty, or does it promote a common, coherent body of knowledge for undergraduates?
Now is the time for trustees and higher education leaders to seriously address these questions.
Posted by Sandra Diaz on May 24, 2010 at 05:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Kudos to SIU
In a welcome piece of news, the Southern Illinois University Board of Trustees recently voted to freeze tuition for the upcoming academic year. SIU-Carbondale's tuition and fees are already more than $10,000 per year and tuition alone has more than doubled in the past nine years. As SIU president Glenn Poshard said, the university "can't continue to put the burden on the backs" of low- and middle-income families." The Board of Trustees deserves praise for this decision.
Kathy Tucker is a summer intern at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and is a rising senior at the University of Florida.
Posted by David Azerrad on May 24, 2010 at 03:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Strange but true
Working at ACTA, one learns many surprising (sometimes even strange) things about higher education. Here's one: Hugh Hefner's sordid magazine has college rankings. Who knew?
On the website of the New York Daily News, ACTA senior researcher David Azerrad uses this fact to illuminate some much more important truths about higher education today:
"Where would someone who wants to live the Playboy lifestyle want to go to school?"That's the question Playboy asked in compiling its recently released rankings of the 2010 Top Party Schools. Yes, Playboy is now offering college advice.
The men's magazine narrowed the list down to 10 (sorry, New York, none of your institutions of higher education are among them). It is however hard to see how such a short list does justice to just how widespread the Playboy lifestyle -- booze-soaked parties, three-day weekends and easy hook-ups -- has become.
That American college students party -- that is, get hammered -- is of course well-known. What people don't realize is that rampant binge drinking is not a self-contained problem. Only because our colleges and universities are increasingly abandoning their educational mission is the party culture thriving.
Read the whole thing.
Posted by Charles Mitchell on May 24, 2010 at 12:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Would you jump off a bridge just because your peer schools did?
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story today whose headline almost says it all: "In Hunt for Prestige, Colleges May Undermine Their Public Mission." Here's how it begins:
The Internal Revenue Service's 79-page report on colleges' tax compliance was a thorough reminder of just how big and complex higher education has become.That complexity affirms the concerns of some higher-education experts that many large research universities are placing too much priority on activities that raise the profile and prestige of their institutions but do little to improve undergraduate education. Such activities include contracts for private research and public-private partnerships to market new patents.
"In some of these places, undergraduate education has never been a top priority," says Jane V. Wellman, executive director of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability. The issue is whether the increasing amount of support coming from sources outside state tax dollars "is causing these institutions ... to move away from their public mission. The answer in too many cases is, unfortunately, yes."
Ms. Wellman is exactly right that undergraduate education too often gets short shrift. But there's one important factor that has nothing to do with money. It's the term my parents used on me with regard to cigarettes and acting out in school: peer pressure. (Can't you hear your mother asking the timeless question, "Would you jump off a bridge just because your friends did?")
To see why this is, take a look at the letter ACTA just received from John Ed Anthony, the chairman of the University of Arkansas System Board of Trustees. It comes after we sent two letters to him and his fellow trustees, in which we object to reported plans to dumb down the excellent core curriculum at the University of Arkansas' Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences.
In the letter, the board essentially punts on its obligation to ensure Arkansas students receive a quality education, deferring entirely to "faculty, in consultation with their department heads and deans" and the university's chancellor. Attached to the letter is a response by the chancellor, which claims the criteria used on ACTA's college-guide website, WhatWillTheyLearn.com, "lie outside generally accepted academic norms" and notes with alarm that the Fulbright College core is much larger than those of peer institutions.
We're not sure what's so earth shattering about seeing whether universities require broad courses in composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics, and science, which is what we do on WhatWillTheyLearn.com -- with the endorsement of a former dean of Harvard College and to the delight of several other institutions. But it's certainly understandable that the chancellor is interested in what his peers are doing. Here's the rub, though. The University of Arkansas is a land-grant institution, and there is consequently something infinitely more important than what its peers are doing: what these institutions were created to do in the first place. And according to the Morrill Act, land-grant universities are supposed "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life."
The University of Arkansas should be pursuing this public purpose whether its peers are doing so or not. This is one of many reasons why it is such a shame that the university's senior administrators seem to be dead set on gutting a core curriculum that aims to ensure that all graduates have a solid grounding, most notably, in mathematics, sciences, fine arts, Western civilization, and a foreign language -- and that the trustees have, for now at least, refused to do anything about it. So much for "liberal and practical education."
Posted by Charles Mitchell on May 21, 2010 at 05:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Focusing on teacher quality
Bipartisan demands for well-trained, effective teachers are changing laws. Legislators in Colorado just passed a bill addressing K-12 teacher quality and student learning gains, and similar legislation is pending in New York.
Higher education take note: the same spotlight is on education schools. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is keenly aware of the nexus of low standards in education schools and ineffective teachers in the nation's classrooms. Last October, at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education and at Columbia University's Teacher College, Duncan directed education schools to look toward student learning outcomes -- and bluntly identified most of the nation's education program as mediocre and in need of revolutionary change.
ACTA's Trustees for Better Teachers initiative has worked with governing boards over the past several years to promote teacher quality. The nation -- and America's school children -- desperately need active, insightful trustees engaged on this issue.
Posted by Michael Poliakoff on May 13, 2010 at 06:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A non-response from Arkansas
Several press accounts have indicated that plans are underway at the University of Arkansas to gut its stellar core curriculum. Under a plan endorsed by senior administrators, the current 66 hours of general education requirements at the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences would be brought down -- or, more precisely, dumbed down -- to 35. If the curricular overhaul goes through, the foreign language requirement would be altogether eliminated. The math requirements would be halved. The science requirement -- a must in the 21st century if there ever were one -- would remain, but in a thinned-out version. And one of the few "A" schools on ACTA's college-guide website, WhatWillTheyLearn.com, would be no more.
The university has defended the proposed changes as a way to ease the transition for students transferring from two-year colleges and to boost sagging graduation rates. In a letter to the University of Arkansas System Board of Trustees, we explained why the plan would be bad for students, bad for the university, and bad for the state. Should it go through, it would shortchange students by permitting them to graduate with troubling gaps in their education; harm UA's growing reputation for excellence by eviscerating a curriculum that has made national headlines for its breadth and comprehensiveness; and do a disservice to the state, which needs more quality college grads -- not just more grads.
Numerous ACTA supporters have since written to UA chancellor G. David Gearhart to urge him to reconsider the plan and uphold the university's outstanding core curriculum. Many received the following response from the university and passed it along to us:
Thank you for writing to express your concerns and to voice your support for a strong core curriculum at the University of Arkansas.I absolutely agree with you about the need for a very strong curriculum. While some media reports have indicated that we are eliminating certain requirements, we are actually beginning a process of allowing our faculty to review the core curriculum and move some of the requirements into majors. We have not had a review of the curriculum in over 50 years, and most faculty and the administration believe that the time has come for such a collegiate review.
We are confident that students will still have a broad liberal arts education as determined by our faculty.
Please know we sincerely appreciate your interest and feedback and are working diligently to maintain the high quality of our degrees.
The university denies that requirements are being eliminated and speaks instead of a review process. Someone should tell the Dean of the College, who called the curriculum "bloated" and treated its reduction as a fait accompli in the state's largest newspaper.
The emphasis on the role of faculty is also beside the point. What is at issue here is not who is making the changes to the curriculum but rather the fact that these changes would weaken the curriculum.
Lastly, to say that requirements are being moved from the general education curriculum to individual majors is disingenuous. In practice, this will likely mean that STEM disciplines will incorporate math and science requirements that used to be in the core; that humanities disciplines will incorporate language requirements that used to be in the core; and that, most likely, never the twain shall meet. Are we to imagine that STEM majors will suddenly introduce language and literature requirements?
In the interests of excellence and high standards, it is imperative that UA abandon this well-intentioned, yet profoundly misguided effort. While improving graduation rates and ensuring seamless transfers are important objectives, dumbing down the entire curriculum is no way to achieve them. Especially if the administration -- as in the above message -- continues to skirt the real issue, it is vital that the Board of Trustees step in and ensure Arkansas students continue to get the kind of well-rounded education they deserve.
Posted by David Azerrad on May 13, 2010 at 05:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The worst-paying college degrees
The Huffington Post has an amusing slide show that takes the reader through 11 of "The Worst Paying College Degrees." The premise is reasonable. College should prepare students for gainful employment. But the question "what is my degree worth?" cannot only be answered in terms of dollars and cents. A degree, if it's worth the paper that's it printed on, testifies that the students have received a well-rounded and excellent education -- the type of education that prepares graduates to become effective workers yes, but also informed citizens, and imparts a love of learning that will enrich their lives. To reduce a degree to earning power sends the wrong message to students and potentially cheats them of the higher dimensions of higher education.
Boards must keep this in mind when looking at their general education requirements. As we have repeatedly noted, a well-rounded education prepares students to become "informed citizens, effective workers, and life-long learners."
Posted by David Azerrad on May 12, 2010 at 04:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sensitivity vs. humility
Our friend Peter Berkowitz on "the virtues of toleration and intellectual humility":
our students and faculty need to learn to be less sensitive. Instead, they need to develop the virtues of toleration and intellectual humility. The cultivation of sensitivity sharpens antennae for hurtful words and ideas, and encourages complaining whenever they sting. In contrast, toleration, particularly at universities, means suffering with equanimity the expression of disagreeable, even odious, opinions, provided that they are subject to reasoned analysis. The cultivation of humility fosters respect for others and their opinions and a willingness to follow logic, evidence, and experience -- to consider that one might be wrong and to find in others' errors the occasion for improving one's own understanding.
The whole article is well-worth reading.
Posted by David Azerrad on May 11, 2010 at 03:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A relevant renaissance
Last week, the New Orleans Times Picayune reported as follows:
Fifty-one years after admitting its first freshmen, Southern University at New Orleans is changing the rules for first-time students who'll be enrolling this fall.Instead of admitting anyone who shows up with a high-school diploma, the university will require incoming students to meet certain standards -- a combination of grades, admission-test scores and high-school courses -- designed to improve the caliber of SUNO's student body and raise its dismal graduation rate, which is at 8 percent, Chancellor Victor Ukpolo said.
SUNO, which enrolled 3,163 students last fall, is the last state-run four-year college to impose admission standards, as decreed by the state Board of Regents in 2005.
How appropriate, then, that this month ACTA mailed the latest in our series of Essays in Perspective to trustees across the country -- In Pursuit of Academic Excellence: The Story of the City University of New York and Its Lessons for American Higher Education. Among the first steps CUNY took in the late 1990s, led by a reform-minded Board of Trustees, was to end open admissions. At the time, this was met by cries that the sky would soon fall, but as our essay points out, CUNY has instead enjoyed over the last decade a nationally recognized renaissance.
We wish similar success to Southern University at New Orleans and encourage readers there and elsewhere to read about and learn from CUNY's experience.
Posted by Charles Mitchell on May 10, 2010 at 06:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ACTA will soon release The Trustees Guide to Tough Economic Times with a number of strategies for boards. Some types of cost-control will, by nature, be difficult and painful, albeit unavoidable. Others, however, are self-evident, and their neglect will stink in the nostrils of students, parents and taxpayers. A case in point: the North Dakota state auditor found that two public universities violated capital project requirements in their remodeling of the president's house, citing among other violations, splitting the project into smaller units to avoid having to obtain Board approval. And this is hardly the first scandal of its type: they come in a wearying succession, and the ultimate victims are always students, when funds that might otherwise be used for libraries,labs,scholarships and faculty appointments are squandered. Trustees, regents, and higher education board members must never feel that their questions about expenditures are intrusive or inappropriate.
And so also regarding executive compensation. Earlier this year, the Chronicle of Higher Education noted that the median salary for a president at a public university is $436,000 and the number of presidents earning over $500,000 has increased in the past nine years almost ten-fold. Former AAUP president Jane Buck called this "unconscionably astronomical" and "unseemly." Indeed it is.
Posted by Michael Poliakoff on May 10, 2010 at 05:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Viva Veritas!
Given ACTA's interest in higher education governance, particularly when alumni have direct participation, we are closely following the election this year of new members of the Harvard Board of Overseers. The Overseers are one of two governance bodies at Harvard -- the other being the Harvard Corporation -- and President Drew Faust has acknowledged that the role of the Corporation and how it interfaces with the Board of Overseers are both under review. As not only the president of ACTA but also the holder of two Harvard degrees, I must admit I have more than a bit of interest in the outcome.
In matters of governance, ACTA tends to agree with former Harvard president Charles Eliot on the Overseers' role. As Eliot outlined in his 1869 inaugural address, "The real function of the Board of Overseers is to stimulate and watch the President and Fellows. The Overseers should always hold toward the Corporation an attitude of suspicious vigilance. They ought always to be pushing and prying."
Last year, ACTA praised petition candidates Robert Freedman and Harvey Silverglate for raising important questions regarding undergraduate education, cost, and accountability. We are therefore encouraged this year to see in the election materials a number of candidates whose personal statements at least touch upon these topics.
Of course, there is much more to these issues than can be outlined in a few paragraphs. That is why ACTA has sent a letter with a range of questions to each of the candidates inviting them to explicate their views. The first response comes from candidate Walter Isaacson, head of the Aspen Institute. Walter offers a number of heartening perspectives on matters important to ACTA, and I am pleased to quote them verbatim below:
I am a deep believer in having a core curriculum or general education requirement (we seem to alternate between these two labels!) that aims at two purposes: 1. helps Harvard students share in a common base of knowledge that is useful for membership in an educated citizenry; 2. assures that students are familiar with a variety of disciplines such as scientific reasoning, math, economics, moral thought, literature, and the arts. I happen to believe that survey courses are a useful part of this mix, though not the only part (of course).The most recent revision, moving from the Core to Gen Ed, was a useful but not perfect transition, in my opinion. I personally would have preferred a bit more rigor in the requirements. That said, I felt the discussion within the FAS was serious and the outcome worthy, on the whole. One danger, of course, is that the Gen Ed curriculum might slip, over the years, into becoming more of a buffet of random offerings. We should offer encouragement to those seeking to keep the program focused.
I think the university has three academic missions: to create, conserve, and impart knowledge. And it should pursue these in a way that leads to greater wisdom as well as practical skills. Both what Harvard teaches and how Harvard teaches will be affected by the two major trends of our time. The first is the advent of interactive digital networks, which transform the ways that information can be shared. The second is a related phenomenon: the increasingly global nature of culture, business, politics, and economics.
As a result, we will want to make sure that Harvard students are comfortable at the intersection of technology and creativity. In addition, the creation of knowledge and the refinement of ideas will increasingly be a collaborative process, and our classroom teaching methods should reflect this. The ability to understand other cultures will also be crucial. However, all of this has to be done, I think, with a respect for the traditional core knowledge that must be part of a Harvard education.
The financial crisis, as bad as it was, had a silver lining: it forced all of us -- and I think the Overseers should be part of this process -- to focus on what costs are central to Harvard's missions and which are layers of flab that accumulated in the feast years. There is a tendency at all institutions, academies foremost among them, to get self-indulgent when there is no cost discipline. Overseers should encourage efficiency rather than coming up with peripheral ideas to be funded.
I welcome the governance review that is happening at Harvard. Having served on the board of Tulane, which became very effective and engaged after Hurricane Katrina, I think there is a way for university trustees to promote accountability while not being improperly intrusive. The current division between the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers does not lend itself to this balance, in my opinion.
On your specific question about ROTC: Yes, it would be good to have it back on campus; now that the policy regarding gays in the military is changing, I believe that opens the way for Harvard's relationship with ROTC to change.
As you know, I spend a lot of time at Harvard these days. There are so many things going on worth encouraging, such as the new Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard and the growth of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the profusion of student arts organizations. I love Harvard's history, I love its current vitality, and I love its prospects for the future!
Posted by Anne D. Neal on May 07, 2010 at 03:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack