Post by jeffolie on Dec 17, 2009 15:47:09 GMT -6
Higher Education Analyzed
Higher education is idolized in America as the way to personally and nationally succeed. American higher education is very good especially compared with mass higher education in other large population countries but it has substantial flaws that are not often explored by society.
Higher education, college was and remains a big part of my life. I got a BA and a JD plus took many college classes during and after my working career. I have 4 adult children of which one is a college graduate and 3 are currently going to college.
This 4 page article comments on the successes and failures of higher education in a way that rings true to my experience and knowledge.
American higher education has a great reputation which upon closer examination should be deminished and taken off its pedistal. Higher education has changed during my life and has become much more pervasive and common as manufacturing has been replaced with services.
This article barely touches on the issue of what constitudes good learning which is subjective and judged through one's values.
I have selected portions of this article that I found interesting:
====================================================
Are our colleges teaching students well? No. But here's how to make them.
As any parent can tell you, colleges are increasingly unaffordable.... Why? Because prices have increased nearly 500 percent since 1980.
...too many of the students who do enroll aren’t learning very much and aren’t earning degrees.
...Less than 40 percent of low-income students who start college get a degree of any kind within six years.
...only 31 percent of adults with bachelor’s degrees are proficient in "prose literacy"–being able to compare and contrast two newspaper editorials, for example. More than a quarter have math skills so feeble that they can’t calculate the cost of ordering supplies from a catalogue.
...Nobody knows which colleges really do the best job of taking the students they enroll and helping them learn over the course of four years.
...colleges are far less focused on student learning than they should be, and consumers haven’t a clue what to do and have come to believe, mistakenly, that the most expensive colleges are also the best.
...First, they taught that status in higher education is derived from wealth and selectivity–the most renowned institutions have gigantic piles of money and allow only the "best" students to attend. Second, they insisted that questions of quality, particularly as they relate to what students are taught and how much they learn, are nobody’s business but the institution’s own.
...reputations are largely based on wealth, admissions selectivity, price, and a generalized sense of fame that is highly influenced by who’s been around the longest and who produces the most research. Not coincidentally, these are the factors that drive the influential U.S. News & World Report rankings that always rate old, wealthy, renowned institutions like Harvard and Princeton as America’s best colleges.
...Colleges all want to become more important, and they all know how to get there–spend and charge more.
...give colleges many reasons to raise prices and very few to lower them.
...long-term trend is unmistakable. Average inflation-adjusted college prices have more than doubled in the last two decades. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education recently found that the total increase in college tuition from 1983 to 2007 (439 percent) far outpaced the rise in median family income (147 percent) and even the medical care costs (251 percent) that are threatening to bankrupt the nation.
...Price increases without end are bad enough. They’re made worse by the fact that the information deficit also has a pernicious impact on the quality of classroom teaching. In part, this manifests itself in spending priorities. For the reputation-maximizing university administrator on the make, the best things to buy are visible: new buildings, elaborate student fitness centers, renowned scholars who don’t actually teach undergraduates, Division I basketball teams. But there are no ribbon-cutting ceremonies for hiring better teachers, and office workers across the country don’t fill out photocopied tournament brackets for college learning every March.
...This reform-resistant environment exists only because institutional reputations are so disconnected from learning. If bad teaching created negative publicity or materially affected the ability of college presidents to recruit students and raise money from alumni, presidents would have much stronger incentives to tackle reform head-on. Right now those incentives don’t exist, which is one reason why less than a third of college graduates are literate in the best sense of the word.
Keepers of the Secret
There’s only one thing standing in the way: One of the most powerful special interests lobbies that nobody’s ever heard of. The most reactionary education lobby in Washington, D.C., isn’t located at the 16th Street headquarters of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union. It’s less than a mile away, at 1 Dupont Circle. That’s where the American Council on Education (ACE), the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), and a host of other alphabet-soup organizations conspire to maintain higher education secrecy at all costs. Long-established colleges that enjoy the benefits of the existing, information-starved reputation market dominate 1 Dupont
...Predictably, prices have continued to rise unabated. More students are borrowing more money to attend college than ever before, increasingly in the risky, unregulated private market. Loan default rates have risen sharply in just the last two years...In addition to the toll on individual students, the higher education price explosion is also a serious barrier to national prosperity.
Progressives should start by acknowledging that higher education is not a perfect land of opportunity best left to its own devices, unobserved. If progressives really care about higher education, if they’re truly committed to getting the most vulnerable students not just in the door to college but out the other side in one piece, they’ll be the first to insist that higher education reveal far more information about its successes and failures.
There’s no time to waste in pushing for more and better higher education information. Without it, the coming decades will be much like the last: higher prices, diminished opportunities, the slow marginalization of higher education as a whole.
www.democracyjournal.org/article2.php?ID=6722&limit=0&limit2=1500&page=1
Higher education is idolized in America as the way to personally and nationally succeed. American higher education is very good especially compared with mass higher education in other large population countries but it has substantial flaws that are not often explored by society.
Higher education, college was and remains a big part of my life. I got a BA and a JD plus took many college classes during and after my working career. I have 4 adult children of which one is a college graduate and 3 are currently going to college.
This 4 page article comments on the successes and failures of higher education in a way that rings true to my experience and knowledge.
American higher education has a great reputation which upon closer examination should be deminished and taken off its pedistal. Higher education has changed during my life and has become much more pervasive and common as manufacturing has been replaced with services.
This article barely touches on the issue of what constitudes good learning which is subjective and judged through one's values.
I have selected portions of this article that I found interesting:
====================================================
Are our colleges teaching students well? No. But here's how to make them.
As any parent can tell you, colleges are increasingly unaffordable.... Why? Because prices have increased nearly 500 percent since 1980.
...too many of the students who do enroll aren’t learning very much and aren’t earning degrees.
...Less than 40 percent of low-income students who start college get a degree of any kind within six years.
...only 31 percent of adults with bachelor’s degrees are proficient in "prose literacy"–being able to compare and contrast two newspaper editorials, for example. More than a quarter have math skills so feeble that they can’t calculate the cost of ordering supplies from a catalogue.
...Nobody knows which colleges really do the best job of taking the students they enroll and helping them learn over the course of four years.
...colleges are far less focused on student learning than they should be, and consumers haven’t a clue what to do and have come to believe, mistakenly, that the most expensive colleges are also the best.
...First, they taught that status in higher education is derived from wealth and selectivity–the most renowned institutions have gigantic piles of money and allow only the "best" students to attend. Second, they insisted that questions of quality, particularly as they relate to what students are taught and how much they learn, are nobody’s business but the institution’s own.
...reputations are largely based on wealth, admissions selectivity, price, and a generalized sense of fame that is highly influenced by who’s been around the longest and who produces the most research. Not coincidentally, these are the factors that drive the influential U.S. News & World Report rankings that always rate old, wealthy, renowned institutions like Harvard and Princeton as America’s best colleges.
...Colleges all want to become more important, and they all know how to get there–spend and charge more.
...give colleges many reasons to raise prices and very few to lower them.
...long-term trend is unmistakable. Average inflation-adjusted college prices have more than doubled in the last two decades. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education recently found that the total increase in college tuition from 1983 to 2007 (439 percent) far outpaced the rise in median family income (147 percent) and even the medical care costs (251 percent) that are threatening to bankrupt the nation.
...Price increases without end are bad enough. They’re made worse by the fact that the information deficit also has a pernicious impact on the quality of classroom teaching. In part, this manifests itself in spending priorities. For the reputation-maximizing university administrator on the make, the best things to buy are visible: new buildings, elaborate student fitness centers, renowned scholars who don’t actually teach undergraduates, Division I basketball teams. But there are no ribbon-cutting ceremonies for hiring better teachers, and office workers across the country don’t fill out photocopied tournament brackets for college learning every March.
...This reform-resistant environment exists only because institutional reputations are so disconnected from learning. If bad teaching created negative publicity or materially affected the ability of college presidents to recruit students and raise money from alumni, presidents would have much stronger incentives to tackle reform head-on. Right now those incentives don’t exist, which is one reason why less than a third of college graduates are literate in the best sense of the word.
Keepers of the Secret
There’s only one thing standing in the way: One of the most powerful special interests lobbies that nobody’s ever heard of. The most reactionary education lobby in Washington, D.C., isn’t located at the 16th Street headquarters of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union. It’s less than a mile away, at 1 Dupont Circle. That’s where the American Council on Education (ACE), the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), and a host of other alphabet-soup organizations conspire to maintain higher education secrecy at all costs. Long-established colleges that enjoy the benefits of the existing, information-starved reputation market dominate 1 Dupont
...Predictably, prices have continued to rise unabated. More students are borrowing more money to attend college than ever before, increasingly in the risky, unregulated private market. Loan default rates have risen sharply in just the last two years...In addition to the toll on individual students, the higher education price explosion is also a serious barrier to national prosperity.
Progressives should start by acknowledging that higher education is not a perfect land of opportunity best left to its own devices, unobserved. If progressives really care about higher education, if they’re truly committed to getting the most vulnerable students not just in the door to college but out the other side in one piece, they’ll be the first to insist that higher education reveal far more information about its successes and failures.
There’s no time to waste in pushing for more and better higher education information. Without it, the coming decades will be much like the last: higher prices, diminished opportunities, the slow marginalization of higher education as a whole.
www.democracyjournal.org/article2.php?ID=6722&limit=0&limit2=1500&page=1