In the current issue of
The New Yorker, Louis Menand
has a review essay on two recent critiques of American higher education: Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's
Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses and Professor X's
In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic.
In the course of the essay, Menand puts forth three different theories on the meaning of college.
Theory 1: College is a means of sorting out the more intelligent members of society from the less intelligent members of society.
Theory 2: College "exposes future citizens to material that enlightens and empowers them, whatever careers they end up choosing.
Menand writes:
If you are a Theory 1 person, you worry that, with so many Americans going to college, the bachelor’s degree is losing its meaning, and soon it will no longer operate as a reliable marker of productive potential. Increasing public investment in higher education with the goal of college for everyone—in effect, taxpayer-subsidized social promotion—is thwarting the operation of the sorting mechanism. Education is about selection, not inclusion.
If you are friendly toward Theory 2, on the other hand, you worry that the competition for slots in top-tier colleges is warping educational priorities. You see academic tulip mania: students and their parents are overvaluing a commodity for which there are cheap and plentiful substitutes. The sticker price at Princeton or Stanford, including room and board, is upward of fifty thousand dollars a year. Public colleges are much less expensive—the average tuition is $7,605—and there are also many less selective private colleges where you can get a good education, and a lot more faculty face time, without having to spend every minute of high school sucking up to your teachers and reformatting your résumé. Education is about personal and intellectual growth, not about winning some race to the top.
And then there is theory 3, a theory embraced by many non-liberal arts students:
Neither Theory 1 nor Theory 2 really explains how the educational system works for these non-liberal-arts students. For them, college is basically a supplier of vocational preparation and a credentialling service. The theory that fits their situation—Theory 3—is that advanced economies demand specialized knowledge and skills, and, since high school is aimed at the general learner, college is where people can be taught what they need in order to enter a vocation. A college degree in a non-liberal field signifies competence in a specific line of work.
Theory 3 explains the growth of the non-liberal education sector. As work becomes more high-tech, employers demand more people with specialized training. It also explains the explosion in professional master’s programs. There are now well over a hundred master’s degrees available, in fields from Avian Medicine to Web Design and Homeland Security. Close to fourteen times as many master’s degrees are given out every year as doctorates. When Barack Obama and Arne Duncan talk about how higher education is the key to the future of the American economy, this is the sector they have in mind. They are not talking about the liberal arts.
Read the entire essay
here.
Which theory do you embrace? Why do we have college?
2 comments:
See, I always assumed that the point of college was to make someone a more interesting person, a variation of theory 2, if you will. After graduating, though,I now get to be a person who, however interesting, is very unemployed. A little theory 3 in my thinking might not have been misplaced.
Indeed. I think the challenge for those of us in the humanities is to think how theory 2 and theory 3 do not have to be mutually exclusive.
Thanks for reading and posting!
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