By way of introduction, I am a professor of humanities at a medium/small (10,000) university in the Midwest. I teach sociology, social psychology, and cultural studies to undergraduates at a 4 year liberal arts institution. I'm tenured; I'm 57 years old; I've been teaching for about 15 years. I've taught at the undergraduate, graduate and post-grad levels.
Lately, by which I mean during the last three or four years, I've grown increasingly disillusioned with the state of higher education in the United States and with my institution in particular. I thought that I would start to blog about my concerns. I plan to approach the subject from a number of angles; however, I think I'll begin with an important, central question.
The question is this: Why am I attempting to make people engage in learning who, in general, aren't interested in learning?
Maybe that's not the best way to phrase it. I could, after all, do what many professors do, which is teach (or not) without requiring the students to demonstrate that they are learning anything. I could go through a little song and dance in front of the class, give tests that an average chimpanzee could ace, mark all papers - no matter how poorly written or conceived - up to an "A" and then imagine that the students are learning. In other words, the problem could be addressed by simply following the path of least resistance. I could just forget about whether or not they're learning, engage in the ubiquitous practice of grade inflation, collect my paycheck - problem solved.
I don't do this. I could, but I seem to have an integrity gene that prohibits my going down such a delusional path. Instead, I insist that the students actually master the material and also demonstrate such mastery in well-formed English sentences and paragraphs.This makes me something of an anachronism I suppose. But the point is: I end up trying to make them learn, even when, as is definitely the case, many have no interest in learning.
Perhaps a better version of the initial question is this: Why are there so many people coming to the university who aren't interested in learning? Perhaps I should add, ". . . who aren't interested in putting any effort into learning?", or possibly, " . . . who expect that the process of learning will not inconvenience them in any way?" Just for the record, let me add that I estimate the percentage of people who fit this description who are currently enrolled at my school to be more than 50%. Actually, I suspect that its more like 80 or 90%, truth be told.
This is odd, very odd. There are now lots of people coming to the university who have no interest in learning. I say odd because, well, you know, presumably the primary mission of the university is teaching and the closely related correlate learning (note, I am at a "teaching" institution). Presumably, the goal is to produce "educated" people, right? You'd think people would be coming to the institution to learn. Not so fast.
Things have been changing at the university. I'm speaking here of my school, but I strongly suspect that most others have been going through similar transformations. Firstly, the students in question do not come to the university to learn; this is not their motivation. Ivan Illich outlined the current trend already back in the early seventies (See De-schooling Society). Rather, the students in question are mostly there to get a degree, the required credential for obtaining some job paying more than minimum wage. This goal need not coincide with learning or the motivation to learn. In fact, I would say that in many cases, learning, together with various related requirements like writing a coherent term paper, appear as a mysterious inconvenience to the students in question. Apparently, the two agendas can be totally disconnected; getting a degree need not involve learning in the minds of these people. So, then, why not just allow such "students" to pay the money and obtain the credential without requiring anything of them? I think it's a legitimate question to ask at this point.
It is true after all, that many of the jobs such students are seeking could be performed by that same illiterate chimpanzee mentioned above, the one who could pass the typical undergraduate classroom test. So, maybe there's something to the student's attitude. Maybe knowledge and skills really aren't important to their goals and they know it. Maybe. (Note that I'm not even engaging the question of intellectual development as a good and desirable thing in it's own right; a later post perhaps).
In any case, the whole problem of students being inconvenienced by having to learn could be solved with the following formula: Students pay tuition and in return receive a grade on a transcript. Maybe, as an example they could pay $400.00 per credit hour for a "C"; $500.00 for a "B"; and $600.00 for an "A" - something like that. You get the idea.
Students - excuse me if this term is starting to feel a little Orwellian - wouldn't have to actually attend class or do any course work, not even online. This formula is actually a win-win situation. The students would get their degree/credentials; the administrators would continue to collect tuition for the ever important expansion plans (Can't have too many buildings and fountains), and the professors would be relieved of the burden of dealing with students who don't want to learn. Yeah, win-win-win.
The professors could then focus on their research. The two or three students who actually want to learn would then have the option to engage the profs or the instructors without all the distraction of snoring classmates, people arriving late, sundry malcontents, comments on "what Oprah thinks", and so forth. I suspect that there would be so few of this sort of student who actually wants to learn that the university could save the money now used to heat and maintain classrooms; The number of these students would probably fit into the professor's office.
There would be no need for tests either. These real students would then have to take full responsibility for their learning, for whether or not they actually master the material and so forth. This seems like a good idea, doesn't it? I think this is a key point that I should develop more fully later: Why shouldn't the "student" take responsibly for whether or not he/she learns? Why is that my responsibility? If you want to remain illiterate and ignorant, it's up to you - your choice, your responsibility.
I can already hear some readers thinking, " . . but then a college degree won't mean anything". Well, I've got a big news flash for you: It doesn't mean anything right now - except perhaps that it's required to obtain some jobs. We regularly graduate lots of people who cannot write an English sentence, let alone compose a paragraph, and who know very little more than before they came through the front door. That's a fact. The degree is now almost as meaningless as a high school degree, so far have things deteriorated. And, while I'm at it, don't imagine that grade point average means anything either.I can assure you it doesn't.
To finish the argument, the formula of students simply paying for the grade/degree with no other requirement seems better than the current charade of pretending that people are learning; Certainly it's better than trying to cajole people into learning who don't have any interest in it. Let me assure you from the perspective of one deeply inside the beast: We're already more than half way down the path I'm prescribing. Indeed. So why not just take the logical next step?
The answer, of course, is that implementing the formula outlined above would require a conscious acknowledgment that much of higher education is now indeed a farce. Look, the emperor has no clothes as the saying goes.
But I've implied something else in this
Although the ostensible mission of the university is "teaching" and "learning", that's no longer the real mission. Nope. The real mission is to perpetuate the institution and the circumstances of key players, faculty, administrators and others. Just as the goal of most students is not to learn, but to obtain a degree, the administrators and faculty are, in general, more concerned with career, pensions, maintaining health care, etc, than producing educated graduates. In fact the two agendas of maintaining one's career, job and pension, and producing educated students may be in direct, irreconcilable conflict. This is especially true in tough economic times. More on this later.
