Karl Marx, if you can believe it, told us that
“History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second as
farce.” I would like to share two
stories with you and ask you to judge whether these are tragedies or farces.
Back in the 1980’s, I worked at a
psychiatric hospital in Rochester, New York during the height of the
deinstitutionalization movement. People
had long concluded that the places originally known as “asylums” had mutated
into “snake pits.” Most observers were
therefore overjoyed when it seemed that psychotropic drugs could allow patients
to function normally outside their gates.
Hence a move began to discharge all but the
most severe cases into the community.
The difficulty was that there were few good places to send these
people. Many of their families were as
damaged as they, and because group homes were in short supply the only
available alternatives were often rooming houses run by mercenary tyrants.
As a consequence, the psychologists and
social workers assigned to facilitate these transitions acted slowly and
cautiously. But this was not good enough
for the politicians in Albany. They
demanded that the hospitals be emptied—and emptied immediately. If not, heads would roll.
And so the patients were discharged under
circumstances that those who put these plans together were confident would not
work. Indeed, within weeks the Rochester
papers reported an upsurge in indigents living under the bridges over the
Genesee River.
This, at least in upstate New York, was the
primary source of the “homelessness” crisis.
More than anything else this fiasco was caused by overeager politicians
determined to make naïve voters happy.
Fast forward to contemporary Georgia. Now people are complaining that our colleges
and universities are failing in their mission to educate that state’s young
people. Not only do these schools cost
too much, but too many of their students take more than the traditional four
years to graduate.
Enter the state legislature. Its sincerely concerned members came up with
an elegant solution. They decided to
change the formula whereby they funded state schools. Institutions of higher education would now be
allocated dollars on the basis their graduation rates as opposed to their
enrollment numbers.
In schools like Kennesaw State University,
where many students are low on funds and/or high in family obligations, they
must take one or more jobs to make ends meet.
This necessitates that they not carry full college loads and
consequently that they take longer to complete their studies.
Nevertheless KSU, like Rochester’s
psychiatric hospital, must find ways to hurry these folks along lest it be
underfunded. And so its faculty and
administrators are forced to devise plans that give the appearance of improving
quality while shrinking the time needed to obtain a degree.
The fact is there is only one way to achieve
this—and that is by lowering academic standards. Sadly, the credentials students ultimately
receive are thereby cheapened, with the consequence that they will have greater
difficulty getting good jobs. But hey,
the numbers will look first-rate.
Isn’t this ironic? In an effort to reform higher education,
alleged legislative correctives are guaranteed to harm the very students who
are most in need of a solid college education.
The fact is that KSU is not the University of Georgia. Many of its students simply require more time
than traditional college students.
But no, in the name of helping these
learners, their opportunity for social mobility is to be torn from their
grasp. A “one size fits all” mentality instead
dictates that they be pushed out into the cold cruel world before they are
ready. Where is the sense in this?
Isn’t it time that politicians who don’t
understand higher education meddle a bit less?
Do we really want an academic version of the deinstitutionalization
scandal? Perhaps those responsible for
this dilemma should take a second look at the absurdity they have wrought.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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