There is a scathing elegiac on modern higher ed written by a departing mid-career professor that appears in Inside HigherEd.
After too many years at this job (I am in my mid-40s), I have grown to question higher education in ways that cannot be rectified by a new syllabus, or a sabbatical, or, heaven forbid, a conference roundtable. No, my troubles with this treasured profession are both broad and deep, and they begin with a fervent belief that most of today’s college students, especially those that come to college straight from high school, are unnecessarily coddled. Professors and administrators seek to “nurture†and “engage†and they are doing so at the expense of teaching. The result: a discernable [sic] and precipitous decline in the quality of college students. More of them come to campus with dreadful study habits. Too few of them read for pleasure. Too many drink and smoke excessively. They are terribly ill-prepared for four years of hard work, and most dangerously, they do not think that college should be arduous. Instead they perceive college as an overnight recreation center in which they exercise, eat, and in between playing extracurricular sports, they carry books around. If a professor is lucky, the books are being skimmed hours before class.
I’m of two minds on the piece. Most of his critique is right on. And naturally, I think he is right that professors need to take responsibility for a good deal of this. But there is enough blame to go around.
As demonstrated over on NYU salary sucks, apparently
3 Comments
I think you missed a crucial point in an otherwise thoughtful post: if you want students to learn, you need professors who know how to teach. Not requiring professors to go through any teacher training program is the biggest joke of higher education. The professor who, by nature of having earned a PHD or such degree, is inherently adept at teaching students in interesting and meaningful ways is the needle in the hay stack. Hiring professors for their publications gives you professors who are good at research and publication, not at teaching. Until teaching is taken seriously as a profession there will be little to no improvement in the quality of education at any level.
Alex, very insightful analysis of some of the things that are wrong with academia… and your 4 ideas to fix things are right-on.
I have to disagree though that the main problem with academia is the students. Students are the product of a broken educational system. They haven’t failed us, we have failed them – and maybe not we college professors, but their school and high-school teachers. By the time they reach college, they often don’t have the fundamental skills (such as correct grammar) we can build on.
That being said, I’ve been lucky to work with very good students at Clemson University. They have the basics right. They’re even quite motivated to learn. But many of us college professors have a special talent for killing the fun and with it, their engagement and motivation. I’ve begun to see my job as not that of transmitting information, but that of motivating. Once students are motivated, they learn on their own, and they’re having fun.
Yes, the academic system is broken in many fundamental ways, but there are micro-strategies we can use to navigate around the flaws of the system. Blaming it all on students, though, doesn’t seem fair at all to me.
I agree with much of what the embittered professor writes. As long as it’s clear that it’s not about all students (and certainly not their fault, most of the time, even when it is true) nor does nurturing and engaging students (scare quotes not needed) have to come at the expense of teaching. There’s a discernible lack of educational quality and understanding of the modern environment on the part of educators too…