Reinventing Higher Education

Usually when I review a book, it is because I have learned something valuable from it. Even when I disagree with part of its thesis, my understanding has been enlarged. Indeed, in the process of quibbling with what I have read, I am usually working out what I have come to believe.

This is not exactly the case with Reinventing Higher Education: The Promise of Innovation. I have repaired to my computer not to honor an impressive intellectual endeavor, but out of anger and despair. This book was essentially a hit job on higher education. If its recommendations are taken seriously, the outcome will be the demise of college education, as we know it.

The authors of this edited tome might even agree with this last assessment. For the most part, they believe that traditional forms of university education must be dismantled. Although presented as a paean to innovation and reform, their proposals would dumb down what is taught to such a degree that it would be unrecognizable.

Mind you, the authors are not marginal figures. Many are associated with important universities and think tanks. Moreover, the Harvard Education Press published their compendium. This is, amazing to say, a mainstream document. As such, it suggests that many influential educators are intent on committing professional suicide.

Let me start with a small example. One of the authors is an expert in on-line courses. Naturally, he wants to see many more of these classes. Often employed as a consultant to assist in the implementation of electronic programs, he describes them as the culmination of a long tradition. Indeed, he provides a short account that begins with the creation of correspondence schools.

Historically, the correspondence schools were a means whereby adult learners who lived too far away to attend brick and mortar schools could continue their education. Conducted through the mail, they depended upon the motivation of their students to accomplish their mission. Unless these auditors applied themselves to their lessons, little education was likely to occur.

As a consequence, correspondence schools acquired an abysmal reputation. Few confused them with the quality education available in actual colleges. This, however, is never mentioned in Reinventing Higher Education. One is left with the impression that schooling by mail was a rousing success. The implication is, therefore, that on-line learning, which is also distance learning, is bound to be equally valuable. That it too might rise and fall on the motivation of students, who are liable to be less than enthusiastic, is largely left unsaid.

With technology having become a national icon, large numbers of reformers perceive it as a guaranteed source of salvation. They customarily regard it as cheaper and more effective than the traditional classroom. The proof of this is largely lacking, but they are not shy about propagating hyperbolic screeds that imply it the superior way to go.

Nevertheless, the most egregious chapter in the book boasts about the so-called for-profit colleges. These are the schools that are regularly advertised on television. You know, they are the ones that promise their students high paying jobs in law-enforcement and health care. They are the schools that brag of their personalized education and high-quality faculties.

Even so, there are some problems. The author admits that the students they attract are not the usual candidates for a college degree. Most are poor, a large proportion are high school drop-outs, and many have families to raise. Not generally motivated to perform well academically, they are looking for a fast and easy way to get a degree that can be converted into lucrative employment.

Not surprisingly, quick and easy is what they get. In fact, many graduate in short order. This is consequently lauded as a superior method of engaging persons who would not otherwise go to college. As such, it is argued that this is the best route for making a college education available to everyone.

But is this a college education? Shouldn’t these for profit institutions be labeled technical schools? On this level, they may have a place, but presenting them as the successor of contemporary colleges is worse than a joke. It is a prescription for destroying what higher education has been able to accomplish.

Not only do these for-profits eliminate the elements of a liberal education, but they make no pretense of inculcating critical thinking. Of course, many colleges do not achieve this goal either. Nonetheless, if this does not remain an objective of higher education, it is less likely to occur.

So what would be the result of substituting for-profits for traditional colleges? More people would probably get degrees, but they would surely learn far less. Moreover, the jobs for which they would be prepared would be low level. As it is, most students who major in criminal justice at the for-profit wind up as security guards, not police officers.

This will not do. With more jobs requiring professionalized attitudes, a universal education that is dumbed down is the high road to third world status. As more people learn less and less, splendidly equalized destitution beckons as the standard American way of life.

Excuse me, if I do not applaud this as innovation or reform.

Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University