Declining by Degrees : Higher Education at Risk

by Hersh; Merrow; Wolfe

• ISBN13: 9781403969217
• ISBN10: 1403969213
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-06
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

What is actually happening on college campuses in the years between admission and graduation? Not enough to keep America competitive, and not enough to provide our citizens with fulfilling lives. When A Nation at Risk called attention to the problems of our public schools in 1983, that landmark report provided a convenient "cover" for higher education, inadvertently implying that all was well on America's campuses. Declining by Degrees blows higher education's cover. It asks tough--and long overdue--questions about our colleges and universities. In candid, coherent, and ultimately provocative ways, Declining by Degrees reveals: - how students are being short-changed by lowered academic expectations and standards; -why many universities focus on research instead of teaching and spend more on recruiting and athletics than on salaries for professors; -why students are disillusioned; -how administrations are obsessed with rankings in news magazines rather than the quality of learning; -why the media ignore the often catastrophic results; and -how many professors and students have an unspoken "non-aggression pact" when it comes to academic effort. Declining by Degrees argues persuasively that the multi-billion dollar enterprise of higher education has gone astray. At the same time, these essays offer specific prescriptions for change, warning that our nation is in fact at greater risk if we do nothing.

Author Biography

Richard H. Hersh is a Senior Fellow at the Council for Aid to Education (RAND). He is the former president of Trinity College and Hobart and William Smith Colleges. John Merrow is the Peabody Award winning president of Learning Matters, Inc. He is Host and Executive Producer of The Merrow Report on PBS and NPR. He is the former education correspondent for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour on PBS.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Foreword	ix
Introduction	1	(144)
Richard H. Hersh and John Merrow
1. The Media: Degrees of Coverage	11	(12)
Gene I. Maeroff
2. Ready or Not? Where the Public Stands on Higher Education Reform	23	(16)
Deborah Wadsworth
3. College Admissions: A Substitute for Quality?	39	(8)
James Fallows
4. Caveat Lector: Unexamined Assumptions about Quality in Higher Education	47	(14)
Jay Mathews
5. Liberal Education: Slip-Sliding Away?	61	(16)
Carol G. Schneider
6. Six Challenges to the American University	77	(20)
Vartan Gregorian
7. Beyond Markets and Individuals: A Focus on Educational Goals	97	(16)
Howard Gardner
8. This Little Student Went to Market	113	(18)
David L. Kirp
9. How Undergraduate Education Became College Lite-and a Personal Apology	131	(14)
Murray Sperber
10. America's Modern Peculiar Institution	145	(10)
Frank Deford
11. Worlds Apart: Disconnects Between Students and Their Colleges	155	(14)
Arthur Levine
12. Leaving the Newcomers Behind	169	(16)
Roberto Suro and Richard Fry
13. Talking the Talk: Rhetoric and Reality for Students of Color	185	(10)
Heather D. Wathington
14. It is Only a Port of Call: Reflections on the State of Higher Education	195	(14)
Julie Johnson Kidd
15. The Curriculum and College Life: Confronting Unfulfilled Promises	209	(20)
Leon Botstein
Afterword: What Difference Does a College Make?	229	(4)
Richard H. Hersh
Afterword	233	(4)
John Merrow
About the Contributors	237	(4)
Index	241