ACTA's Must-Reads

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A shaky K-12 foundation is not enough to support the weight of a solid college education

According to a recent post by The Washington Post's Daniel de Vise, 40 percent of high school graduates are unprepared for either a traditional college environment or career training. The study from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Arizona reveals alarming deficiencies among college bound students.

Sadly, the picture is just as bleak for college students. According to Academically Adrift, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, in the first two years of college, 45 percent "did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning." After all four years, 36 percent still didn't demonstrate any significant improvement, as measured by performance on the Collegiate Learning Assessment.

Students simply are not getting the basic foundational knowledge they need in order to succeed, and employers know it. According to a report by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, fully 63 percent of executives agree that too many recent college grads simply do not have the skills to be successful in today's economy.

Our latest edition of What Will They Learn? shows why. Ninety-five percent of colleges do not require students to take even a single course in economics. Eighty percent do not require a single survey course in U.S. history or government. And only 15 percent of schools require students to take intermediate-level foreign language.

We need to break the cycle of underpreparation that pervades too much of K-12 and higher education. The need for college graduates who are prepared for career and community must be reflected in sound curricular standards in higher education, which, in turn, must be reflected in serious requirements for entering college and rigorous preparation at the K-12 level for college or vocation.

Posted by dburnett on December 15, 2011 at 11:24 AM | TrackBack

Are our colleges just clowning around?

"Public faith in higher education cannot be sustained if college sports are permitted to become a circus, with the institution itself little more than a supporting sideshow."

Paraphrasing from former Yale president A. Bartlett Giamatti, that's what Creed C. Black wrote in a Knight Commission report two decades ago - long before the scandals that rocked Penn State and other institutions around the country. If the situation was that bad then, just imagine what he would say today.

The quote surfaced in a commentary by William Friday, president emeritus of the University of North Carolina system, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Friday calls for a reexamination of the collegiate sports world. The exponential growth of certain sports programs, he said, have caused an arrangement which "can lead to entertainment imperatives taking precedence over those of education."

Friday summed up the thrust of his argument with a message that mirrors that of ACTA.

"There is a sound and important place for intercollegiate sports in academic institutions. It is time for those directly responsible to exert strong leadership and bring an immediate end to the shameful exploitation and abuse now so destructive of these worthy and essential institutions. Thoughtful Americans expect no less from trustees and university leaders."

Friday also called for increased transparency, including requiring intercollegiate sports programs to outline where funding comes from and how it is spent.

ACTA supports Friday's reminder to colleges that their prime focus must be education.

Posted by dburnett on December 14, 2011 at 05:53 PM | TrackBack

Time for a Change in Higher Education

Someone once said that if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. I think there's a great deal of merit to that.

But take one look at the state of higher education today. Tuition costs have risen at twice the rate of inflation. Student debt topped $1 trillion this year, surpassing credit card debt. Yet despite all this, the New York Times reported that the median base salary of presidents at private institutions actually increased by 2.8 percent to $294,489. At public universities, presidential pay rose 11.5 percent over the last four years, settling comfortably at $259,238.

That doesn't count the perks: vehicles, housing allowances and travel expenses. All in all, some university presidents make millions.

Take, for example, Constantine Papadakis. He's the president of Drexel University and he raked in a total of $4.9 million in 2009. William R. Brody? $3.8 million. The list goes on and on.

That's why it was so unnerving when David Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, told the New York Times that there's "just a small pool of candidates who possess the skill set that is required and are willing to take on the stressful 24/7 nature of the position."

I'm afraid that we can no longer do what we've always done, because this culture of rising institutional costs - at the expense of the taxpayer and the debt-riddled students - must stop. We need fresh and innovative presidents who are willing to face the challenges of tomorrow, not just pass the buck until tomorrow. We need to rethink the current models and cut costs before we bury our young graduates under piles of debt from which they cannot emerge.

It's time to drain the "small pool of candidates" and open presidential searches up to real innovators. It's sink or swim - and the heavy loans we're saddling our young graduates with may just pull them under.

Posted by dburnett on December 09, 2011 at 02:50 PM | TrackBack

An education for all seasons

In an excellent piece in Dartmouth College's student newspaper, The Dartmouth, guest columnist James Murphy describes the merits of having professors teach "permanent knowledge" rather than teaching their own specialized fields of research. As Murphy points out, although cutting-edge information can be exciting, "students want their expensive college educations to have a shelf life of more than 10 years."

ACTA believes that a strong core provides a foundation for life-long learning, or as Murphy eloquently phrases it, "develop[s] that broad and deep reservoir of relatively permanent knowledge that will underwrite whatever expertise they choose to later acquire." Colleges must be careful to avoid becoming instruments for funneling students into overly-specialized professions without giving them such a knowledge base. In the first 25 years of employment a young person is likely to experience nearly 11 career changes, make hyper-specialization a risky and irresponsible proposition.

There is certainly a place for highly specialized or niche courses, but Murphy correctly cautions professors not to assume that undergraduate students have accumulated the underpinning of "factual knowledge and tacit intuition" that they themselves possess. The passing of time sees the value of knowing fundamental collegiate skills and knowledge undiminished. It is precisely for this reason that ACTA emphasizes a strong core as the lynchpin of a complete undergraduate education.

Posted by Tom Bako on December 05, 2011 at 02:08 PM | TrackBack