Jaclyn Gehring
Colleges and universities may be increasingly failing in their mission to provide students with a challenging academic experience – one of the most crucial core missions of higher education.
Andrew Delblanco discusses this in “What is College For?” He states how colleges were supposed to “strive to be: an aid to reflection, a place and process whereby young people take stock of their talents and passions and begin to sort out their lives in a way that is true to themselves and responsible to others.”
In this instance, higher education would be a rigorous institution backed by the premise and possibility of academic and self-discovery.
Additionally, students would be able to explore new ideas and challenges while preparing for future careers.
Instead, Kwame Appiah states how what we find is that “as higher education expands its reach, it’s increasingly hard to say what college is like and what college is for” in “What Is the Point of College?”
Research suggests that today’s college students lack not only critical thinking skills promised by the veil of prestige, but they also lack the rigor of college students in the past.
Grade inflation points to the changing values of higher education instead of reflecting what the students have actually learned, providing only credentials to students who must face the world’s challenges.
As colleges and universities transition from scholastic intentions to profit-seeking motives, the core mission of these institutions appears to be corrupted.
All of these connections stem from the issue of higher education shifting into a business model, in which the focus is the satisfaction of investment and of its customers.
At its heart, colleges and universities are supposed to be institutions where students are able to learn, retain and hone knowledge necessary for their respective professions.
Research suggests this is not the reality we are facing, as results of The Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) has found. The CLA is “designed to measure gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning and other ‘higher level’ skills taught at college”, according to Scott Jaschik in “Academically Adrift.”
This performance-based test does not indicate students learn or retain information taught in classes at college, as 45% of students showed no gains in writing, reasoning or critical thinking skills at the start of the study. Also, 36% failed to show improvement after graduating.
Without improvement or understanding, the system has no meaning; students are “drifting through college without a clear sense of purpose,” Jaschik writes. The lack of rigor in today’s college students is evident in the average time students spend studying, which is about 12 to 14 hours per week.
According to Jeffrey Selingo in “College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students,” this is a relatively low level of commitment for what is supposed to be higher-level thinking and analysis. Perhaps one of the most dramatic changes in academics is technology, and only proves how lazy the average college student can be, reflecting the overall change in attitude in today’s college students.
Analysis on the lack of rigor in these students in correlation to the rise of grade inflation indicates a problem in the structure of higher education.
75-80% of Harvard University’s Classes graduate with honors. Perhaps this not only provides a prime example of grade inflation (as students become increasingly more concerned with grades than the material), but also sets the standard for students who apply to such respected universities.
Some faculty argue that the grades do reflect the intelligence and diligence of the students at Harvard today (especially compared to the weaker student body evident in the past). This theory may reflect the difficulty of getting accepted to the prestigious university, but perhaps indicates that the hardest part, in fact, is getting in. (Alarmingly, even at Union, the modal grade, or the grade most given, is an A; the average grade is a B+).
This is an example of students being treated as customers to be pleased and placated. “It’s a problem when higher education is driven by a student client model and institutions are chasing after bodies,” Jaschik writes.
As institutions are now held accountable for students dropping out, there is pressure on the university for students not to fail. Thus, colleges are most concerned about enrollment and retention, as there is lost revenue in students that fail or drop out of the institution.
Improving these figures has become the main focus of colleges, as they reap the benefits of a populated student body in both revenue and rewards from their respective states.
Incentives such as these demonstrate the new business model higher education seems to display. In this way, the ambitions of colleges are selfish.
Selingo says, “Higher education also suffers from mission creep. Every college has a mission about the students it aims to enroll and the public it wants to serve. But too many colleges, unhappy with their mission, aspire to move higher in the pecking order. Prestige in higher education is like profit is to corporations.”
Self-benefit and profit appears to be the main goal of institutions. This focus “on the student as a consumer is leading to a systematic dumbing down of college campuses,” with “damning” evidence that shows students are simply “skating through college,” Selingo said.
Other issues, such as the questionable market of athletics in these institutions, highlight the corruption and changing values of colleges as they continue to satisfy the promotion of what is essentially the minor leagues. Student- athletes at competitive athletic universities do not demonstrate what were supposed to be the core motives of higher education.
An overall lack of academic progress in students shows that “the culture of college needs to evolve, particularly with regard to ‘perverse institutional incentives’ that reward colleges for enrolling and retaining students rather than for educating them,” Jaschik said.
Instances such as the decline in performance, changing attitude of students and grade inflation all reflect the change in values of colleges and universities.
Ultimately, the educational mission of colleges has shifted to a consumer model, and the effects of this transition have not only impacted the structure of universities, but, most importantly, the preparedness of students for the real world.