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BOOK EXCERPT
"Declining by Degrees"
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From "THE MEDIA: DEGREES OF COVERAGE"
by Gene I. Maeroff
... The implementation of the federal government's No Child Left Behind Act, however flawed it may be, forced journalists who cover elementary and secondary schools to delve into achievement as never before. Higher education has no analog to that law, though the renewal of the Higher Education Act could contain language that may compel colleges and universities to divulge a great deal more information than they do now about various performance indicators.
Journalists have shied away from using their power to examine how well institutions of higher education discharge the responsibility of educating their students, particularly undergraduates. Instead, similar stories, repeated over and over, dominate the coverage. Not counting college athletics, which is in a class by itself, the big two are tuition and admissions.
The news media convey the impression that nearly every college costs a potentate's fortune and that most institutions are so selective that only super-students need apply. "Reporters stalking and reporting on a handful of highly selective colleges have created serious anxiety that has incrementally escalated at the family dinner table and in high school corridors," according to two people who have served as admissions officers at elite colleges. They go on to say that students and parents quite naturally (and mistakenly) infer that getting into any college, and paying for it, will be cause for frenzy.
Coverage of this sort helps feed the public's misconceptions. In a 2003 poll by the U.S. Department of Education, 65 percent of students and 58 percent of their parents could not estimate yearly tuition costs or overestimated tuition by at least 25 percent. Those from the poorest families were least likely to know the cost of going to college. The facts, according to College Board, are these: Average tuition and fees in the 2003-2004 academic year were $4,694 at four-year public institutions and $1,905 at community colleges. In the sector of the country with the lowest tuitions and fees, the West, the comparable figures were $3,737 at four-year institutions and $1,007 at two-year institutions. These amounts are not the formidable obstacles that the media lead the public to believe. Of course, it costs a lot to go to Harvard, Stanford, Sarah Lawrence, and Duke. But these institutions are private and not typical ...
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MEET ADRIANA, JASON, MATT & BRITNEY
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