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Since I just attacked
undergraduate education at big-time sports universities in the United States, a
fair question is: what could be done to solve the problem? My answers are an
elaboration on those suggested by Murray Sperber in his Beer and Circus
and those outlined in a highly influential report on what works and doesn't work
in American colleges, known as the Boyer Commission report.
Modest proposal 1:
Big-time U's should slim down by thousands of undergraduates until the student
body is of a size that can be handled by the faculty. The only other alternative
is to increase the size of the faculty by an order of magnitude, which is much
more inconceivable.
Modest proposal 2:
Universities should separate undergraduate teaching from the graduate training
and research activities. Here I part company with Sperber in that I do not
propose having a few universities devoted exclusively to research and many more
to undergraduate education, though that is certainly a viable model. But it is
time to stop hiring faculty on the pretense that they be good teachers when
everyone knows that they are tenured and promoted because of their research and
in spite of their teaching. Let's hire good teachers to do the teaching and good
researchers to do the research. If a few individuals can do both, so much the
better.
Modest proposal 3: Hire at
least some faculty whose research is in pedagogy. It is astounding that a lot is
known about how the brain learns, and on what works and doesn't work in
teaching, but that most faculty and teaching assistants are wholly ignorant of
this field of work. Having at least a few colleagues who know what they are
doing might actually help.
Modest proposal 4: Abolish
passive teaching methods that turn undergraduates into zombies: no more lectures
(with or without PowerPointÅ) and increased emphasis on inquiry-based
learning, small class discussions, open-ended research projects and the like.
Modest proposal 5: Raise
the standards of acceptance into four-year colleges: require a minimum (high)
score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test or equivalent exam. Despite the fact that
standardized tests have their limitations, scores on college entrance exams
actually correlate much better than grades with students' abilities at critical
thinking because of rampant grade inflation. We need to acknowledge that while
equal opportunity to go college is a right, acceptance into university must be
based on readiness. Community colleges exist to bridge the gap for those whose
performance indicates that they would not be best served by the university
experience.
Modest proposal 6: End
athletic scholarships. They encourage the exploitation of athletes, cause
resentment among other undergraduates who had to work harder to get where they
are, and in general defeat the whole point of a "scholar"-ship. It is not by
chance that the Ivy League universities do not award athletic scholarships and
prohibit their teams from playing bowl games.
Modest proposal 7: Shut
down the NCAA. We don't need an organization whose only purpose is to exploit
youths through the encouragement of a beer and circus atmosphere (March
"madness" comes to mind as an example) and that does absolutely nothing to
further the only legitimate goal of a university: providing the best education
possible. Playing sports is a great thing and should be pursued at colleges, but
intramurally as a recreational activity and extramurally only as a relaxed
pastime to which no high stakes are attached. Let the professional teams pay to
raise their future stars, as in every other civilized country in the world (did
you realize that in 2000 the NCAA was looking at allowing athletes to seek loans
based on future professional earnings? Do these people have no shame?).
Modest proposal 8: Treat
coaches as regular faculty, with tenure track and salaries comparable to those
of any other faculty in any other discipline. And tell them they are lucky to
get that much, given that their job is far less important than the one done by
the rest of the faculty.
Modest proposal 9: Educate
university administrators that the university is not a for-profit business, it
is a community service. Ergo, it makes no sense at all to call in business
marketers to improve the school's image or to devise strategies to increase the
"customer" base, while the true needs of students (and, by extension, their
future employers) go unmet. Schools that provide a good education don't need to
present a spin-doctored faÁade.
Modest proposal 10: Vote
only for legislators who pledge to provide acceptable levels of State funding of
education at all levels, including college. Education, together with health
care, is among the most important rights that Americans still have to fight for,
which are taken for granted in other industrialized countries.
Is all of this going to
happen? Probably not, unless the current demographics and economics change
significantly, or a grass-roots movement takes hold to really take our schools
back. I give it a chance in a thousand, which is not much worse than the
likelihood of getting a good education at a big-time U anyway. Think about it.
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Massimo's
Tales
of the Rational:
Essays About Nature
and Science
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Further reading:
Teaching with the Brain in Mind, by Eric Jensen. See how people learn and
what to do to help them.
Web links: The
complete report of the
Boyer Commission on undergraduate teaching.
"My season in exile," the story of Murray Sperber's odyssey after he dared
criticizing beastly coach Bob Knight at Indiana University. |
