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The Difficult Quest for Balance in American Higher Education
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18828 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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12 / 1991 |
6,298 Words |
| Author
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Stephen Joel Trachtenberg
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg is president and professor of public
administration of the George Washington University,
Washington, D.C. He has written for The World & I many times. |
"Universities have lost their immunity from public criticism," Robert Rosenzweig, president of the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU) recently declared. "There's no longer a presumption in favor of their virtue."
What made his remark so significant was the fact that the AAU represents precisely the major research universities--the "biggies"--that for several decades have ruled the roots of American higher education, setting the standards not only for less renowned universities but, increasingly, for four-year colleges as well, including those long praised for their devotion to teaching and the liberal arts.
As all university and college presidents have long been aware, nationally and internationally recognized research--rather than successful teaching of undergraduates--has been and is the key to obtaining truly major funding from the federal government, the big foundations, and the kinds of individual donors whose gifts run into the seven and eight figures. Indeed, it has also long been the key to attracting applications for the research universities' undergraduate colleges, even after years of complaint about the fact that the Great Researchers themselves seldom appear in an undergraduate classroom, while teaching is conducted--to great extent--by teaching assistants, often very harassed ones whose primary concerns are their own studies as well as their often precarious economic status. To which can be added, if they were educated abroad, their limited command of English and the resulting complaints from students and families drawn to their universities by the credentials of senior professors that can turn out to mean so little where the teaching of undergraduates is concerned!
The Volcano Erupts (1988-1991)
The biggies having had their way for such a long time, and having acquired a certain reputation for indifference to complaint, nevertheless focused their collective attention when Rosenzweign confirmed that they have now been brought sharply down to earth--into the rank and file of those whom the U.S. Congress and the individual state legislatures now regard as legitimate targets of investigation, with the majority of Americans leading support, whether enthusiastic or reluctant, to their inquisitive representatives. Escalating tuition casts for their children's higher education have swept away the last vestiges of the awed acquiescence "average Americans" may once have felt they owed to all those caps, gowns, maces, and higher degrees.
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