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MEET THE EXPERTS
KAY M.
MCCLENNEY
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FRANK
DEFORD
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GEORGE
KUH
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LARA K.
COUTURIER
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LEE
SHULMAN
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PATRICK M.
CALLAN
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RICHARD H.
HERSH
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RICHARD H. HERSH
Former President, Trinity College (CT)
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A few more interesting comments from Richard Hersh, excerpted from his interview.
Q: What's the public perception of American higher education?
HERSH: I think the public is still pretty positive about higher education. First, they've been more focused on kindergarten through 12th grade and that's where all the publicity has been. Second, there's still a romance about higher education. It's still a way up for many people, and valued by all social and economic classes. It's also perceived as a place of status. It's a way of making sure that you've been stamped by society for future success. So, there's still a pretty positive sense of higher education as part of the American dream.
Q: Is higher education the crown jewel?
HERSH: In one sense it's the crown jewel. I mean it certainly is the most highly regarded part of the educational process. But in the sense that what is meant by crown jewel is that American undergraduate higher education is the best in the world, that is not true.
Our graduate schools are still considered among the best in the world and it's presumed that that also means that it's equally true for the undergraduate schools but there really is quite a difference and that is why we wrote the book and did the documentary. The quality of undergraduate education is simply not what it can and should be.
Q: What is the quality of the education being offered in American colleges today?
HERSH: You can go to virtually any campus and find exceptionally good education taking place; teachers who care and are passionate; students who are serious and taking advantage of the opportunity. The question isn't so much whether quality exists any place. The question's is what is happening for most students and in response to that question the answer is not very much compared to what is required for a 21st century education.
Q: Answer that question. What's the probability of getting a great education, no matter where you go?
HERSH: The probability is much lower than people think. Getting a mediocre education is pretty high. And that's also true, by the way, K- through 12. But attaining what we have romantically thought of as a really first�rate, deep, and abiding education is just not very common. Faculty expectations and standards have been lowered, more students come to college underprepared, and grades have been inflated. Retention and graduation rates are considered more important than what is or is not being learned. Essayists in our book elaborate on this across the board.
Q: What's the importance of higher education to the United States of America?
HERSH: You have to have people with appropriate skill levels whether it's math and science, or whether it's being able to write well or be able to think about things across diverse topics. To be literate now requires more than simple reading and writing and arithmetic. It means to actually understand and be able to analyze and critique what you're reading in those newspapers, what you're seeing on those television programs, what you're really getting in the advertising, what you're hearing from people different from yourself. �Higher� education today requires far more skills than in decades past and we simply are not meeting that standard. Becoming educated means much more than attaining high grades or an accumulation of credit or course hours. So, the importance of higher education is greater now than ever but we are at the same time not getting the job done.
Q: Isn't the college degree, the diploma, evidence of learning?
HERSH: Well, it's evidence of having passed courses, and surely there is some learning going on but it's very uneven and mostly underwhelming. We know there's a huge amount of grade inflation. What does an A mean, what does a B mean? Are the students that much brighter now? There's evidence that they actually are not as well prepared in high school as they were before, and you get many more students going to college.
The standards have changed in higher education. There's evidence that we've lowered our standards, that what we expect from students is much lower than it ought to be. For example, college students are spending on average between 10 and 15 hours a week doing homework from the best known to the least known schools in the country with most receiving grades of Bs or better. Last year, five percent of seniors and five percent of freshmen in a survey claimed they were spending less than five hours per week doing homework and getting B grades or better in this country.
One has to ask, what kind of education do you think students are getting when they can spend so little time at it? Are they being educated or are they getting degrees? By the way, on student evaluations of professors, students invariably rate teachers as best who are the most demanding, who have the highest standards, who bring the most passion and excitement, and who really care about your learning. Contrary to popular myth, the most popular and often least demanding teachers are not necessarily the people who get the highest ratings. Students value serious learning even while they do not complain loudly when their simply getting by is tolerated and rewared with high grades.
Q: You're saying students would like to work hard but they're just not being asked to?
HERSH: No, I didn't say the students like to work hard. None of us like to work hard if we don't have to. I'm suggesting to you that students understand or certainly can understand that being a student in a college means there's got to be a certain amount of effort to require higher learning. They may not like it, they may try to figure out a way of doing less of it, but if everywhere they turn they had no choice but to work up to what was required to really learn--to write well, to read broadly and deeply, to be able to create new kinds of thinking, to be able to argue cogently, to really demonstrate deep learning,--they are more than willing and able to do so. The crime is we are asking so little of them and in this sense they and the larger society are being cheated. |
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