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Academia's Dirty Little Secrets
| Article
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20038 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1992 |
3,029 Words |
| Author
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Edward S. Shapiro
Edward S. Shapiro is professor of history at Seton Hall
University and author of The Letters of Sidney Hook:
Democracy, Communism, and the Cold War (1995). |
HOW PROFESSORS PLAY THE CAT GUARDING THE CREAM
Why We're Paying More and Getting Less in Higher Education
Richard M. Huber
Fairfax, Va.: George Mason University Press, 1992
201 pp., $19.95
It is, of course, no secret that the American University is in serious trouble. At my own institution, for example, at least half the freshmen are unprepared for elementary courses in English and mathematics and have to do remedial work in what is euphemistically described as "basic skills." A colleague of mine has on his office door the words "If you can read this you must be an Asian." The level of work of our college juniors and seniors is comparable to that of high-school students in Japan and Korea. The problems of our colleges have been exacerbated by the activities of self-anointed "activists" who prey on the academic insecurities of undergraduates and inculcate in them a sense of grievance and victimization.
During the four or more years of their undergraduate experience, college students receive some preprofessional training and take a smattering of courses in the humanities and social and physical sciences. Upon graduation they have little if any knowledge of history or philosophy, continue to have serious problems with the English language, have as much interest in the life of the mind as a typical lifeguard, and have little awareness of their culture or of the world about them. They, along with the colleges, have been part of a gigantic fraud.
The public would like to believe that students crave education and the colleges seek to provide it, even though both of these assumptions are patently false. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find a locale where truth-in-advertising is more consistently violated than on the campus.
Despite their horrendous performance, the universities remain for some the panacea for what ails the nation. According to the typical graduation oration, the same institutions that cannot impart the simplest rules of grammar to their students are required to solve the race problem, eliminate homophobia, and purify American politics. To make matters worse, the university is led by a cabal of administrators with their own distinctive cant. No college administrator can give a speech without using such words as "relevant," "meaningful," "community," and "commitment." Only the most masochistic can withstand the soporific
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