A crisis of confidence vol. 1

I'm in a profession that is facing a real crisis of legitimacy.  Most reports involving student learning indicate that despite the millions of dollars poured into higher ed, outcomes have remained static or worse.  Meanwhile, one only has to look around to see a distressing level of silliness in many of the things going on (especially in the colleges of humanities & fine arts and of education) even while tuitions and fees continue to rise and colleagues complain that the state is paying a smaller & smaller percentage of the institution's expenses.

It's not just here, of course; in some ways, we are insulated from the worst features of academe simply because there's comparatively so little at stake at a small regional campus like this one.

 From one of many many articles on this topic:

The higher-education bubble has been inflating for decades, and it’s ready to burst, or at least deflate. That’s because many Americans are realizing that the huge cost of college is often a waste. Whereas college degrees used to be regarded as sure-fire investments, the labor market has become glutted with people who have been to college but can’t find “good” jobs.

Did you know that 22 percent of customer-sales representatives and 16 percent of bartenders have bachelor’s degrees?

Furthermore, at many schools, academic standards have fallen to the point where students can coast through without learning anything worthwhile. As University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds recently wrote, “The higher education bubble isn’t bursting because of a shortage of money. It is bursting because of a shortage of value.”

As a result, many students and parents are looking for less expensive, more effective alternatives to the traditional degree. They’re finding plenty of new options with online courses and independent certification of competencies, such as ACT’s National Career Readiness Certificates.
This educational revolution will transform higher education for the better as people shop for good value for their education dollars rather than robotically enrolling in a college, taking its courses and paying its bills.

During the bubble, colleges could get away with offering lots of courses that met a standard that former Indiana University English professor Murray Sperber characterizes as “the faculty/student nonaggression pact.” That is, the professor didn’t demand much of the students and gave high grades; in return, the students didn’t expect much from the professor, who wanted time for academic research projects.

The students were happy: Who complains about courses with high grades but little work? The professors were happy, and the administrators were happy because students getting good grades typically don’t gripe or, more important, drop out.

But courses in which students just go through the motions without learning anything are a waste of time and money.

The good news is that in the new higher-education world, courses like that will be jettisoned. Like dieters giving up doughnuts in favor of more nutritious, low-calorie foods, college consumers will look for affordable courses that lead to demonstrable educational gains.

The housecleaning in higher education also will sweep out lots of courses that exist only because professors like to teach them. Such courses typically focus on narrow, trendy or highly political subjects that interest the professor. For example, students at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, can take “The Psychology of Clothes: Motivations for Dressing Up and Dressing Down.” In the new era of value consciousness, such boutique courses will be culled out.

Not only will boutique courses go, but professors will be required to do more of something many dislike and avoid as much as possible: Work with students.

(link)

I will admit that I resent being tarred with the same brush as some of my more unscrupulous colleagues at much much larger institutions.  But then again, they have a greater responsibility given the prominence of their appointments . . . and they have in many ways failed the rest of us (my mentors, thankfully, do NOT fall into this category) by giving our profession such a wretched reputation. 

I have much more to say on this matter, so it will probably come back up--as it is I'm already well past my usual brevity.