Dire Dread-ucation

From this piece in today's Inside Higher Ed, it appears that American's view of higher education is fairly grim and has been declining recently.  The article points out a substantial difference in perspective on this point between Democrats and Republicans, no surprise there.  Much of this difference reflects a general decline in respect for institutions. For higher education, it seems the guilty parties are Wokeness in general and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in particular. There has been so much press available to the general public on these topics.  Yet there has not been much at all on learning in college, broadly considered.  I will take on some of that below.

I was surprised that the polling didn't report about differences across respondents based on their own highest degree attained, and/or whether they were in college at the time of responding to the poll.  One might expect that the greater the degree attainment, the more the respect for higher education.

But those who have read my blog regularly, focusing only on the posts about my college teaching experience in the past decade and reflections about higher education more broadly during that same time period would find that I too have lowered my expectations about higher education.  Let me give a brief overview of the criticisms.

Student Prior Preparation

• While a handful of students read intensively for their own edification, most students don't read much at all.  When asked to read a news article from the New York Times, many can't make good meaning of it.
  
• Too many students rely on rote as their tried and true way of getting through classes.  They don't make any effort to produce a narrative for themselves that would explain what they are learning.
• Regarding social skills, they spend too much of their lives in their phones so don't know how to have a face-to-face conversation with somebody else that is not mediated by technology.
  

 Student Motivation And How Classes Are Conducted

• Students are highly instrumental in their courses, caring a great deal about grades but only rarely showing intrinsic motivation for the subject matter.
• Even attending class needs an extrinsic motivation, e.g., clickers.
  
• There is now an expectation that instructors will teach to the test.  As much instruction is done by adjuncts, and their job security depends on student satisfaction in their classes, the instructors tend to conform with those expectations.
• While the science of learning says that this happens mainly by students practicing Transfer, which means applying the subject matter in a novel context, neither homework nor testing offers this sort of practice. 
•  Many students tend to be quiet in a discussion oriented classroom.  They don't raise their hands to participate in the discussion. They prefer to let others in the classroom do the talking.
  

High Tuition And Student Debt

• This one has gotten a lot of attention.  It surely serves as a driver in the students taking an instrumental approach.  But in the press it has not been as well connected to overall income inequality in the economy.  College education has been cast as a passport to high incomes.  That's why most of the students are enrolled.
  
• As there has been research which shows lifetime income correlates highly with income during the first 5 years after graduation, internships and job placement have taken on greater importance.  Colleges have become willing partners in student placement.
• Those students who have their parents pay for college are relieved of the pressure from the need to repay student loans.  With little prior financial experience, this pressure can feel much more severe than what someone who is just as leveraged but far more mature might feel.

Student Mental Health

• There is crisis in this area which predates the Pandemic.  In discussing the issue the emphasis has been the paucity of mental health professionals that students can access.  
• In case it isn't obvious, there are elements in each of the the prior three areas that can contribute to declining student mental health, because students are living an artificial life that doesn't nurture their real developmental needs and allow them to express those needs in a matter of fact way.  And they face additional pressure, a lot of it, because of the financial issues.
• The social life on campus, perhaps a refuge of sorts, may exert its own forms of stress that makes things even worse, especially if students connect with an inappropriate (for them) peer group.
  
• The issue was not out in the open the last time I taught (fall 2019).  It may have gotten more attention since, because of the Pandemic, clearly its own source of stress.
  

My experience is that the first two items are discussed in faculty development workshops that focus on how to improve their teaching.  (Can improved pedagogy overcome those obstacles?)  But they aren't discussed more broadly.  Campuses have a tendency to want to put a glossy look on their activities for public consumption.  Presumably that will aid in their fundraising efforts.  

I started college in 1972 and the bulk of these issues were with us then.  Have they gotten more severe over time?  My sense from my teaching in retirement is that there was a marked downward shift in things starting in 2015, and another that started either in 2018 (when I didn't teach) or in 2019.  There likely were many more downward shifts from when I graduated college in 1976, to when I retired, summer of 2010.  But how does one measure this?  Faculty who endure have their perceptions to rely on, of course, and interviewing them broadly might be useful for this.  Making comparisons across different cohorts of students would be harder.  Younger siblings might be able to make comparisons with their older brothers and sisters, but beyond that this appears to be a challenging measurement problem.  

 

Nevertheless, the faculty perception itself might be of interest to the general public.  Or would it be among those who are not themselves academics?  If not, then the public misgivings about higher education, based on all the political rants, serves to mask these academic issues.  

Let me note one other thing and then close.  Economists have models about higher education impacts future employment.  The first, and perhaps more obvious of them is via human capital, both general and then specific to a discipline. The second, is as a signal of intrinsic worth.  In that sense both the university attended and the GPA while a student serve as signals (and there may be more drill down components as well).  The issue is whether in both dimensions the value has depreciated because of the academic issues I've described.  What happens then?  And if it has been happening already, should we be surprised?

I'm disappointed that the academic issues don't seem to find their way more broadly in the public consciousness.  Reading, as its own issue, should be discussed much more, in my view.  I realize that it is unlikely to happen. So I have blog posts like this one to vent, as if it might.