ACTA's Must-Reads

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Academic Freedom

ACTA President Anne Neal has posted the following in response to another article about donor intent:

Believers in academic excellence and academic freedom can count on Cary Nelson to underscore why donors have lost faith in higher education and why the AAUP has ceased to carry the banner for academic integrity. Rather than seriously analyzing whether the Kochs have unduly trampled professors' ability to follow truth wherever it may lead, Nelson has taken the opportunity instead to show his own ideological predilections on health care and welfare.

Nelson is, of course, entitled to his own beliefs about big government, the free market, Friedrich Hayek, and everything else, but they are an irrelevant distraction from a point he clearly doesn't want to acknowledge. The Kochs have tried to expand academic opportunity and have brought access to an important academic viewpoint. And no one has argued effectively that their generosity at Florida State has tampered with university or departmental prerogatives.

Any institution worth its salt should give students a broad exposure to key areas of knowledge as well as the range of perspectives in the field. But ACTA's research has found that schools across the country have abandoned their educational obligations. Our curricular study, www.whatwilltheylearn.com, documents that less than five percent of schools insist their students even study economics, let alone free markets. Failure to educate is not protected by academic freedom. And casting engaged donors' attempt to address that failure as an attack on academic freedom should be recognized for the bait-and-switch that it is.

Nelson's blind spot points to a systemic failure within academe: failure, in the words of the late Yale provost Frank Turner, to see that restricted funds "are in truth the lifelines that link colleges and universities to the marketplace of ideas within a democratic society."

Nelson and the AAUP are right to defend academic freedom--an essential principle of quality higher education. But it's time they acknowledged that the lack of intellectual diversity on campus, along with the repeated use of "academic freedom" to shield professors from accountability, forces donors to fill in the gaps.

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on June 28, 2011 at 06:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

English Composition Nonsense

Murray Sperber over at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy offers some suggestions to reform the college writing process. His thesis: Because America's middle and high schools have failed to teach students the fundamentals of sound composition, the task falls to colleges and universities. Unfortunately, Sperber argues, english composition classes now embrace a "holistic writing" pedagogy that does not adequately instruct students in grammar. Composition classes are really about other things. In coursework, "[c]ontent alone matters, not how well the student has expressed it." This is, "Nonsense. If a student doesn't clearly express ideas so the reader can easily comprehend them, then it's impossible to judge whether the student really understand the ideas or not." ACTA's What Will They Learn? reviews the curricula of over 750 schools for a required course in english composition focusing on grammar, style, clarity, and argument. Subject instruction masquerading as "composition" usually doesn't teach students to write . A requirement for effective participation in the workplace and civic society is clear and grammatically accurate writing. All college graduates should learn to write.

Posted by Max Brindle on June 24, 2011 at 02:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Education Charitable Contributions grow 5.2% in 2010, Outpace Total Growth of Giving

Giving to higher education is in the news. $100 million and $200 million gifts to UCLA. $200 million to USC. A majority of Bose stock to MIT. A recent study entitled "Giving USA," sponsored by the Giving Institute, reports that donations to education increased 5.2% in 2010 (3.5% when adjusted for inflation), compared to 3.8% growth for all charitable giving (2.1% when adjusted for inflation). And so on: Nearly half of all philanthropic gifts over $5 million go to higher education.
That's why the American Council of Trustees and Alumni has published a tool for donors and trustees, the 2nd edition of the Intelligent Donors' Guide.
As the guide explains, universities don't always steward the money as philanthropists intend. And donors should proceed cautiously. As a recent piece in Smart Money noted, there are lots of things colleges don't say to donors. Colleges are likely to put money into a general operating fund, or even sit on it for years in the endowment: Another recent study and article showed how gifts are funneled into scholarships and buildings--while the traditional undergraduate curriculum is nearly ignored.
Stephen Friess recently wrote in Investors' Business Daily about the "hard lesson" he and his family learned: "Wise giving to higher education requires as much care as any other purchase or investment. It's essential that donors clarify their intentions and communicate clearly--before their gifts are made." That's why, he wrote, "Intelligent donors have a valuable ally in a group called the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. ACTA recently published a 'how-to' called 'The Intelligent Donors Guide to College Giving,' which is just that."
With tax revenues low and endowments still suffering, both public and private colleges and universities will turn to donors to make up the lost revenue.
Never has savvy philanthropy to higher education been so important. The story of donor intent in higher education is hot and getting hotter

Posted by Max Brindle on June 20, 2011 at 05:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Declining Worth of a College Degree

What is a college education really worth? Syndicated columnist Naomi Shaefer Riley asks just that question in a widely circulated op-ed that appeared in the Washington Post. Her answer: "not enough." Riley laments that universities and colleges are, on the whole, failing to provide even the basics of higher education necessary for meaningful civic engagement among today's graduates. As evidence, she cites ACTA’s 2010 report, "What Will They Learn," and echoes the report's alarming findings that:

"[a]bout 4 percent require students to take a basic economics class. A little more than a quarter of the public institutions and only 5 percent of the private colleges and universities require a single broad survey course in American history or government. And only 61 percent of colleges and universities require students to take a college-level mathematics class."

Our institutions have neglected to empower students with the knowledge to participate responsibly in our polity, let alone thrive.

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on June 10, 2011 at 04:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The College Administration Pathology

A post by Todd Zywicki, about whom ACTA has written in the past, writes about similar cost concerns to those of David Rubenstein. "Inside Higher Ed" reports that Dartmouth College is redirecting funds from faculty fellowships and endowed programs to help pay administrative costs and close a $100 million budget shortfall, making a mockery of the ideas of donor intent and shared governance. Zywicki writes, "[M]ore and more we are seeing the bureaucracies siphoning off funds from academic enterprises, including faculties. At almost every school, bureaucratic spending has grown much faster over the past decade than spending on faculty salaries and the like." As Jay Greene has pointed out, the exploding cost of college has not equated to a proportional increase in the quality of education provided to students. That's why donors need to give intelligently--otherwise they support administrators rather than educators. [The Intelligent Donor's Guide to College Giving]

Posted by Max Brindle on June 10, 2011 at 04:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Day in the Life of a Retired Illinois Professor

David Rubenstein, via the Weekly Standard, thanks the Illinois taxpayer for his retirement package from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Rubenstein estimates that "given a normal life span, these benefits nearly doubled my salary. And in Illinois these benefits are constitutionally guaranteed, up there with freedom of religion and speech." It is a startling illustration of the runaway cost of a higher education that increasingly bypasses the needs of students to maintain bloated administrative bureaucracies. This kind of system also provides faculties with malincentives detrimental to student learning. "To be sure," Rubenstein stresses, "some of my colleagues were prodigious researchers, devoted teachers, and outstanding departmental, university, and professional citizens. But sociologists like to talk about what they call the 'structural' constraints on behavior. While character and professional ethics can withstand the incentives to coast, the privileged position of a tenured professor guarantees that there will be slackers." The old wisdom holds true: you can't pay a good teacher enough and you can't pay a bad teacher little enough, but, as Rubenstein points out, higher education is creating structures that corrupt. The responsibility lies with the trustees to end such structures, because if they will not stand up for students, who will? Not the same deans, provosts, chancellors/presidents who keep their own bloated salaries by going along to get along. Rubenstein also offers insightful comments on the political bias of college academia.

Posted by Max Brindle on June 10, 2011 at 04:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Those Who Do Not Know History...

Pulitzer Prize winning commentator Leonard Pitts Jr. warns of the pervasive ignorance of American history in our society, from average citizens to the political elite. Pitts cites the 2000 ACTA study, "Losing America's Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century," which found that a majority of college seniors could not identify the significance of many defining American moments. For instance, most could not identify the words of the Gettysburg Address. ACTA's 2010 report What Will They Learn? concludes that of the 766 colleges and universities evaluated fewer than 20 percent required a survey course in American history or government. "[O]ur history is the master narrative of who we are," Pitts writes, "And we allow all that to be forgotten at our own peril."

Posted by Max Brindle on June 10, 2011 at 02:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mansfield and Meaning in College

Philip Merrill Award winner (and Harvard Professor) Harvey Mansfield recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal about "Sociology and Other Meathead Majors" He writes about the problematic "fact-value distinction": "Now the belief that there can be no knowledge of values means that all values are equally unsupported, which means that in the university all departments are equal. All courses are also equal; no requirements can be justified as fundamental or more important."

ACTA, of course, begs to differ with the status quo. We've proudly claimed that all college graduates worthy of the name should have taken a survey of literature and U.S. History, college level science, math, and foreign language, and a course dedicated to English composition.

Mansfield continues:

"Choice is king, except that there can be no king.

It's no wonder, then, that students make poor choices, avoiding difficult courses, stumbling into easy ones, embracing counterfeit majors. One might hope that with common sense they could learn from experience, but according to the fact-value distinction, experience cannot be shown to give one better judgment. There is no 'better' judgment. That's what colleges teach their students these days."

We here at ACTA are glad to fight to turn around higher ed towards better judgment. But we're not alone. 18 colleges have grade A core curricula: is yours one?

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on June 03, 2011 at 04:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack