2009/09/01
Rethinking an earlier post
A few weeks back I posted a couple of items about the ideal of higher education and the difficulties of 1) accepting more people into college, and 2) allowing for more technical ed for people outside the talented tenth (or even the talented half). Something’s been bugging me about those two articles ever since. I think it has to do with the relationship between earning a high school diploma and being qualified for an undergraduate program. In my mind, I’ve assumed that the two are coterminous–but that may be because for me and my peers, that was the case. But what if getting a high school diploma is not the same as being qualified for university education? How would that change the way we think about our higher education system, and how would it affect our efforts to make higher education more accessible to more people?
I wonder if my ideal of higher ed for everyone has made me assume that everyone can (and should) pursue their college degrees. And I wonder if this prejudice in favor of universal education has made me unfairly judge those who don’t go to college–either by choice or by lack of preparedness.
I guess the question is whether higher education is something that can and should be open to everyone or whether it should be restricted only to those who demonstrate the knowledge-base, the skills and the willingness to work that they need to succeed as junior academics. (And don’t even get me started on the problem of access to private college-prep schools! Maybe what we need is to redefine the public high school as a public college-prep system….)
2009/08/17
Why Diversity REALLY Matters….
U.S. News & World Report has an interesting piece on diversity by Aaron Thompson from E Kentucky U:
Why Does Diversity Matter at College Anyway?
It’s a nice list, but it’s not challenging enough. It’s all very friendly and beneficial in the way that businesses would find useful.
But that’s also a problem. For a focus on diversity that doesn’t also demonstrate the continued presence of discrimination–deliberate or systemic–is simply being co-opted by the status quo. If diversity is to be valuable, it needs to challenge us to confront and improve the systems of the world in order to make our ideals of equal opportunity and equitable treatment two steps closer to reality.
Businesses want their workers to get along, and they promote diversity for this purpose. But what the workers need is not simply a harmonius environment, but a just workplace with fair business practices. For instance, it doesn’t do any good for banks to have a workplace where diversity is valued if the banks continue to charge minority clients higher interest rates on loans.
May we learn to teach diversity in ways that lead to positive change in the world.
2009/08/06
Britain finds universal higher ed difficult to provide
Interesting article by William Underhill over at Newsweek:
Britain promised university for the masses. Turns out that’s a pledge no country could afford.
Here’s the passage that sounds most like things I hear in the States:
What worries academics is the dilution of standards that has followed from rising numbers and lower entry requirements. Too much time is now needed for remedial training essential to bring students up to the basic level needed for a degree, says Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent. Serious education now only begins at the postgraduate stage. “It has just not been possible to reconcile traditional standards with the social-engineering imperative,” he argues. As a result, a whole approach to higher education is now under threat. After all, as Furedi puts it, a degree is not necessarily the benchmark of a good education.
This article has raised a whole host of questions for me about our own issues with providing almost-universal higher ed here in the States. I don’t know if Furedi would count as a conservative in U.S. terms, and I don’t know how the UK system structure compares to our own. His comments sound like things I hear a lot, especially from conservatives who worry about admitting “underqualified” minority students in the name of diversity, so I hesitate to agree with his sentiments too quickly. But they make me think about the common presumptions that 1) college is more and more necessary for a good career in the States, and 2) students are graduating from high school less and less prepared for the kinds of work we ask of them in college. (I have no idea how true either of those statements is–who has the statistics?)
I like the ideal of everyone earning a bachelor’s–but then my ideal of the degree is very liberal arts oriented: a degree in which young adults have had to think seriously about the foundations of the culture we live in, including political thought, religious and philosophical thought, scientific thought, artistic thought, etc. I think everyone would profit from this kind of education, even if they then move into technical, industrial or menial labor. And every student deserves the best education possible, whether it’s at Ivy U or at Small State School.
But the article makes me wonder about the equivalence of the B.A. degree from those two schools. And that problem leads me into a slew of questions that I am not able to address coherently right now, so I’ll leave it there….
2009/08/05
Technical education for blacks: Booker T gets a new listen
I just saw this interesting article over at HuffPo:
David Jones re-opens the Washington-DuBois debate about education for blacks.
Jones notes that the Obama presidency testifies to the success of DuBois’s focus on giving black youths intellectual educations and getting them into the more-elite career fields. But he notes that the current recession is revealing how many black youths (those who were not part of the “talented 10th” that were groomed for higher education) are being left behind by not having the technical education that could provide stable careers.
No, being a plumber is not as prestigious as become a Harvard professor or Supreme Court Justice, but it would be a great career for the large numbers of blacks, whites, latinos, native americans, etc. who are not part of the “talented 10th.”
“In this highly globalized economy, having just generalized knowledge may no longer be enough to make it. I don’t think this is only true for Black high school students in the inner city. The time may have come when we have to be serious about both “tracks” to a middle class life: four-year colleges and the liberal arts and the career and technical high schools and post high school training that also leads to economic and social advancement. We certainly can’t continue the way we’re going now with the vast majority of Black young people dropping out or graduating with no useful skills to participate in this new economy.”
If it is still true that only 1/3 of Americans will earn college degrees, the question becomes: What kind of eduction does the other 2/3 of the country need in order to gain stable, livable employment?
2009/07/18
Interesting Higher Ed News Items
One piece of good news–the U Cal system is following in the steps of U Washington, U Oregon, Oregon State and U Puget Sound in awarding long-overdue degrees to students who were prevented by the Japanese American internment from graduating.
A Degree, At Long Last
Some historical perspective:
Of the 700 students enrolled at the Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Davis campuses in the spring of 1942, about 400 were unable to graduate due to internment. Some faculty members and administrators fought to allow their students to continue their education, arranging for some to complete coursework while in the camps and enroll in universities outside the exclusion area.
Glad to hear that colleges are refusing to forget injustices done generations ago.
Another piece of good news that is somewhat controversial has to do with the rising gradution rates of male students at historically black Philander Smith College. Read the rest of this entry »
2009/07/13
Higher Education and Wealth (ugh)
MSNBC.com has an article called The Dangerous Wealth of the Ivy League that opens with an illustration of how much disposable wealth the Ivy League schools have compared to what the rest of us get:
It’s only fitting that Whitman College, Princeton’s new student residence, is named for eBay CEO Meg Whitman, because it’s a billionaire’s mansion in the form of a dorm. After Whitman (Class of ’77) pledged $30 million, administrators tore up their budget and gave architect Demetri Porphyrios virtual carte blanche. Each student room has triple-glazed mahogany casement windows made of leaded glass. The dining hall boasts a 35-foot ceiling gabled in oak and a “state of the art servery.” By the time the 10-building complex in the Collegiate Gothic style opened in August, it had cost Princeton $136 million, or $272,000 for each of the 500 undergraduates who will live there.
[...] The gilding of the Ivies offers a striking manifestation of the contemporary American tendency of the rich to get much richer.
My Christian sense of simplicity has real troubles when I read about this kind of extravagance in private residences. But it’s even more frustrating when I read about in terms of colleges. Is this really what the 18-20 crowd needs when they leave home? I saw something similar happening in Athens, with new “luxury townhomes” being designed for college students (the billboards featured kids at the swimming pool–never at their desks studying). And I know from friends of mine who work in undergrad housing that parents want to redecorate the dorm rooms for their kids. I have to wonder, Why do undergraduates need to live in luxury?
More worrisome is the thought of what this kind of lifestyle teaches undergraduates about what kind of lifestyle they deserve to have in their lives. Does it teach them anything about being able to survive in “common” circumstances? Does it teach them anything about spending money wisely? What kinds of educational services could that same amount of money have purchased? How many scholarships for underprivileged students?
We have so much wealth in our culture. Why do we spend so much of it on things that don’t help our minds or our souls?
