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Giving the emperor some real clothes
The Chronicle of Higher Education's new "Measuring Stick" series has started right on target in addressing a key quality weakness: "All faculty members need to share the responsibility for students' mastery of core skills." When the National Assessment of Adult Literacy shows that after years of expensive higher education most college graduates don't get past the intermediate level of prose, document, and quantitative literacy, higher education has a value eerily similar to that of a tulip bulb before the great collapse in 1637.
And why do we find this weakness in higher education? ACTA's survey of core curricula at 714 colleges and universities (www.whatwilltheylearn.com) revealed that nearly 40% of the institutions did not require a single college level class in mathematics of their students. Even as basic and indispensable a course as English composition was often shortchanged, with nearly 45% of the private institutions failing to require systematic study of grammar, syntax and style. The quality problems that the Chronicle's "Measuring Stick" entry identified find much of their cause right here, in the absence of core requirements. With graduates facing limited employment prospects and the near certainty of many job changes, the absence of a strong collegiate core is a terrible disservice to students and to the nation.
The remedies are not necessarily expensive, but they require a cultural change. Faculty AND administrators will have to cooperate and even make some sacrifices to ensure that students get the rigorous general education they need. Faculty need to view their obligations to general education as highly as their obligations to the department and the major, and the faculty reward system must be aligned with these priorities.
Posted by Michael Schilling on September 03, 2010 at September 3, 2010 12:22 PM
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