by Garrison Walters
Introduction: A Story, Not an
Analysis
It was a chilly
spring day when I turned on my iPad and started to read The End of College.
Actually, I'm not
sure why that's relevant since I was on a Boeing 777 surfing the North Atlantic
jet stream. But Carey likes to open sections in his ostensibly serious analysis
of higher education with mood-setting weather and place observations, so I can
too.
Another reason to begin
a review in this fashion is to draw attention to the nature of Carey’s book.
The End of College includes lots of
statistics and comments about data, and even has pages of footnotes. Given all
this scholarly skin, you might conclude that it is a serious, objective analysis. If so, you would be wrong.
In fact, The End of College isn’t in any way
objective, nor is it true analysis. Instead, this book is a story. Indeed, it’s
a story told exclusively from one point of view. Typically, writing that presents
a single perspective is called a polemic.
Carey approaches
higher education the same way as anti-vaccination activist Jenny McCarthy does
medical science: find information you
like and ignore everything else. Kevin and Jenny can both present things
prettily, and when they do, the impact can be huge.
But are the results
positive? Let’s discuss.
First, I should
emphasize that there is absolutely nothing new about higher education in The End of College—neither facts, nor
insights. Instead, Carey uses a quasi-Hegelian dialectic that begins with a
thesis, the oft-discussed concern that “hybrid universities” shortchange
teaching because they include research and service. The antithesis of this is
the several decades-old idea that computers will replace professors and in the
process yield more learning for less money.
Continuing to follow
the dialectic with a Marxian slant, Carey tells us that the revolutionary
struggle between the HU and the computer will produce a wonderful synthesis, the
“University of Everywhere,” a muscular new institution that will throw off the
chains of research and charge tuition that is “almost nothing” while also being
pretty much totally effective. And, I’m sure it will also save us 17% or more
on car insurance.
Having employed a
façade of logic for the basic vision, Carey moves on to argue his case with a single-minded,
damn-the-evidence evangelical fervor that owes more to religious fundamentalism
than it does to Marx.
Is Carey Really an Expert?
But before we
deconstruct the Reverend Carey’s dogma, it’s worth asking how he earned his
time in the pulpit. Did he put in years working with the parish poor? Nope.
Carey's personal
history is all about lively opinion writing and not at all about actual
experience-based analysis.
His published bio is
vague, but it seems Carey earned a couple of degrees and then got a job as a
state higher education budget analyst. After a few years at that, he went to a Washington
think tank and—shazaam!—the lowly bureaucrat became an expert.
Carey didn’t spend
years building expertise as an instructor to better understand how students
learn. Nor did he serve on a curriculum or a promotion and tenure committee, or
put in time dealing with the resource-driven tradeoffs that are made in
department, college, and university administration.
Why waste thousands
of hours learning that stuff about higher education when you already know all
the answers?
When the movie of TEC is finally released, I presume it
will begin with Carey, sitting at a cubicle in his dreary state analyst job, head
subtly backlit. Suddenly he looks up from a spreadsheet and shouts, "I see
all!"
(Microsoft should launch
Excel with a disclaimer screen. My suggestion: “Beware! Numbers alone aren’t knowledge!”)
Actually, this
dramatic event would represent a false revelation, since Carey’s initial
insight was that we could solve pretty much all of the problems in higher
education if we just ranked universities according to some incredibly complex formula.[1] That idea never went
anywhere, for very good reasons, and it's telling that he doesn't even mention
it in TEC.
The summary here is
simple: Carey isn’t an “expert” in the
usual meaning -- someone with deep knowledge of a subject. As we’ll see,
there’s ample evidence that his shallow acquaintance with what happens in
universities has led him to an array of misunderstandings, some of them quite
basic.
The Hybrid University as the Root of All Evil
Carey’s original
insight about ranking as the solution to all of higher education’s problems has
been abandoned, but there has been a Revelation
2.0: the Reverend Mr. Carey has seen the
devil and it's the "hybrid university" (HU). He argues that when we
combined teaching, research, and service in the same institution we destroyed
any ability to do teaching well and therefore condemned generations of
Americans to inadequate educations.
Carey’s bashing of
the HU is bipolar, attacking high tuition on one side and poor teaching on the
other.
Tuition Is Theft!
Carey presents his
indictment of the prices of study at HUs as revealed truth. Thus, he says that
HUs charge high tuition and are therefore expensive "..because they can be, because they want to be and because they
were built to be that way."[2]
This is one of the
many cases where Carey, like many higher education critics, casually conflates
the practices of a small set of elite private institutions with all other
institutions, public and private. In fact, the financial situations and
practices within academe vary greatly, but you’d never know that from TEC.
Attacking
universities for tuition increases has been de
rigeur for higher education critics for at least a quarter century. In this
long history of challenges, TEC
stands out only in its complete lack of balance.
Here’s Carey,
talking on NPR: "Every year, [tuition increases] 2 or 3 or 4 percent above the inflation
rate, to the point where college is now four times more expensive than it was,
say 20 or 30 years ago."[3]
He goes on to say, “Where does that money go? To all sorts of things, including
administrative and teaching costs, scholarships, sports teams and elaborate new
construction projects.”[4]
Others have made
this argument long before Carey, but he’s different in not acknowledging
alternative views. For example, there’s important evidence that tuition increases
are largely the function of a broader economic principle about relative costs,
evidenced in this case by the fact that inflation in the recent past hasn’t
driven prices across the economy at all equally. Instead, because of
outsourcing and automation, the costs of most goods and some services have gone
up at a rate much slower than those of services that don’t benefit from the
labor of people in China and/or the power of automated systems. It isn’t just
higher education that’s been affected this way, but also law, medicine, and
even less expert personal services like hair styling.[5]
Public institution
tuition, of course, has also been forced much higher by the decision of state
legislatures to cut funding. In other words, if public tuition looks more and
more like private tuition, it’s not the promotion and tenure committee that’s
at fault, it’s the House Finance Committee.[6]
There are, of
course, reasonable concerns about how tuition money is spent, particularly at
private institutions. There have been thoughtful exchanges on the issue,
including ones that point out that most of the administrative growth is related
to efficiency-enhancing information technology as well as greater operational
expenditures for activities that bring in revenue that in turn pays for the
added staff, like fund raising and research.[7]
It’s misleading to cite staffing expenditures without also citing sources of funds.
If you looked at university finances the way Carey and many higher education
critics do, you’d ignore Apple’s revenue from the iPhone and only count the
added engineering and marketing costs that the new product entails.
But thoughtful perspective
is what you won’t get in TEC. Carey is
on a crusade against the HU, so simply doesn’t mention arguments that might
contradict his.[8] Only a polemicist operates
this way.
The Teaching Sucks, Too!
The attack on
teaching is equally devoid of balance, not to mention logic.
Carey asserts that
faculty at HUs are poor teachers because they are distracted by research and
service: “Many great scholars are inept
in the classroom. Their intense, internal focus works against them when it
comes to forming connections with students.”[9]
In support of this,
he advances evidence of weak learning outcomes provided in a book called Academically Adrift (AA).[10]
Carey relies heavily
on AA for his core arguments, but
doesn’t use it accurately.
The authors of AA asked a large, representative sample
of beginning first year students at 24 colleges and universities to take the
CLA, a very well-regarded test of critical thinking, complex reasoning, and
writing (hereafter, CC&W). The same students then took the same test again
at the end of their second year. The results, in the aggregate, were dismal.
There’s been some fair
criticism of AA’s methodology.[11]
Even so, it’s also fair to note that none of the critics has suggested better
alternatives. That’s most likely because there aren’t any -- AA is as good as we’re going to get on
student learning in the current situation.
Arguments abut
methodology aside, even if you assume AA’s
data to be wildly off -- even by 50%--you’d still have to agree that the
authors point in a convincing way to a very serious problem.
First, a quick
summary.
AA’s logic goes like this: 1) on average, students are making only
marginal gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing in the
first two years, though some, for example those who come with strong
preparation, those at certain selective institutions, and those in some majors,
are doing quite well; 2) there are many reasons for this poor average
performance, one of which is likely that faculty aren’t assigning enough
demanding work (e.g. long research papers); 3) among the reasons for explaining
the poor performance is likely the fact that faculty are distracted by
responsibilities for research and service; and 4) one part of the overall
solution could be to lesson the distractions of research and service so that
faculty would assign more demanding work.
Kevin Carey’s
version of AA’s logic goes like
this: 1) students are learning almost
nothing in the first two years (“all available evidence suggests undergraduates
aren’t learning very much…”);[12] 2) the reason is that faculty are lousy
teachers; 3) faculty are lousy teachers because they’re distracted by
responsibilities for research and service and in any case don’t care about what
happens to students; and 4) the solution is to destroy HUs.
Carey’s
misrepresentation of AA’s conclusions
opens up many avenues for criticism, as do the pervasive flaws in his logic. It
would be fun to go there, but that’s too much to tackle for even this over-long
essay.
Still, because it’s
so central, one conclusion that must be challenged is Carey’s facile assumption
that distracted faculty are almost always poor teachers. If this were true, AA would show students at the most research-intensive
places doing the worst; but it doesn’t. Instead, it shows the opposite.
Similarly, students at the public, open-admission “Standard States,” which
place little emphasis on research, should be shown to be doing better; but they
aren’t.
In fact, neither
Carey nor the authors of AA draw a causal connection between faculty
distraction and poor teaching.[13]
My own view is that
they don’t because they can’t. Based on personal observation over many years,
I’d say there’s a strong but not necessary relationship between effective
teaching and faculty who are good researchers. I’d also say there’s no obvious
connection between undistracted-from-research instructors and effective
teaching.
My views are
speculative because they lack supporting data, but then so are Carey’s.
I would certainly
agree that, given that everyone has limited time, distractions stemming from research
and service could in some cases leave less time for very demanding student
assignments, such as the 20 page papers that AA reasonably uses as a reference standard.
There are practical
issues here, of course. My observation is that faculty at highly selective and
research-oriented places do make such assignments, mainly because they’ll have
only 40 or 50 students per term and often have grading help even with that few.
On the other hand,
faculty at our Standard States are likely to have 150 or more students in a
term. If you contemplate grading that many papers essentially all at the same
time, including providing extensive feedback to the high proportion of people
who mostly have never done this kind of analytical writing before (the whole
point), you’ll wonder if it’s possible to do it well.[14]
The plight of
faculty at the Standard States suggests what I think is a better explanation
than faculty “distraction” for the poor CC&W abilities of today’s students.
It’s a fact that our
universities, and especially the community colleges and Standard States, have
been taking a much higher proportion of weak students coming out of high school.
And it’s a fact that they aren’t doing very well with them. Why not?
Based on personal
experience[15] and many conversations on
campus, here’s an explanation. Back when these weak students were a small
proportion of a course enrollment, instructors could spend extra time with them
and, depending very much on the student, that effort would produce overall
positive results.
Spending extra time
to help students improve their CC&W abilities is no longer possible in most
cases, at least not at Standard States and community colleges.
The main reason for
this loss of time is budget cuts, which lead to increased class size. But it’s
also the case that the proportion of such students has been increasing at these
less selective institutions. This, in turn, is driven primarily by the larger
numbers of unprepared students attempting college. Another reason, growing in
importance, is that state level “performance funding” systems are causing the
more attractive universities to skim off the students most likely to graduate,
leaving their less selective peers with an ever tougher challenge.
Given that the
system is forcing faculty at the Standard States and community colleges to
accept a higher number of students lacking basic CC&W abilities, a number
that overwhelms the available time, I think they have responded by reducing
expectations. For example, by using multiple choice exams and by dropping
essays and papers.[16]
The alternative to
lower expectations is a very high failure rate. That’s personally hard on
faculty who are personally dealing with people -- something budget analysts who
see the world through a spreadsheet window don’t appreciate.
The failure rate is increasingly
an issue as organizations like Complete College America are telling colleges
and universities (via state government) to get graduation rates up or else get
your budget cut (even more).
Of course, Carey,
not to mention the Cossacks at Complete College America, would just say faculty
have to find a way to make those students learn -- it’s their job, after all.
If they have to forget research to do it, so much the better.[17]
It’s a nice thought,
but not a practical one, in my view. If students come in unable to do critical
analysis and writing, they’re not going to pass the first midterm. Indeed, if I
have rigorous standards as AA thinks
I should, they’re going to fail it badly. And they’ll also whiff on that 20
page paper. As a colleague’s writing student observed, it’s a “viscous circle.”[18]
Could we offset this
initial weakness of large numbers of students? Get them up to speed fast enough
that they can survive an even more challenging curriculum? Before they get
behind the eight ball of failing grades and drop out?
Possibly. But getting
students with very weak preparation up to speed quickly enough to pass
demanding courses that improve CC&W will require intensive early work that
includes lots of feedback. That means a lot of human time.[19]
Alternatively, can
computers provide the needed assistance? Can they get people with eighth grade
CC&W abilities to the level expected of a first year college student in
five weeks? I think they can help. But overall, probably not to a large extent,
at least in part because most experts agree that it’s hard to teach CC&W without
some reasonably deep base of knowledge in the target area.[20]
Although the best
solution to this tough problem is having students enter with better abilities,
there are things that can and should be done in colleges and universities to
improve the situation. But don’t think you’ll find any of these discussed in TEC.[21]
Part of the reason
is that neither Carey or the authors of AA
understand all the dimensions of the problem.[22]
In particular, I don’t they appreciate that the failure of students to progress
is in large part dependent on factors that are not strictly academic. More on
that in a bit. Next, the role of computers.
Computers Will Do It Better
Carey isn’t going to
put much effort into defending his analysis of teaching quality because he
thinks that, in the near future, the question of faculty effectiveness will be
moot. Computers will do the teaching instead.
The teaching bots of
the future will be much better than those of today. Instead of simply
presenting information, the bots will be highly adaptive, which is to say that
they’ll adjust to your learning style and your level of progress by modifying
the pace and varying the kinds of drills and examples they present; they’ll be
“an order of
magnitude better” according to Carey (though research to date suggests otherwise).[23]
The Reverend Mr.
Carey thinks the personal dimension will be provided by online peers -- you
know, names from around the world you’ll develop deep relationships with. Folks
in India could help you with American History.
To be fair, Carey would
throw in a few local and living people as mentors, likely just to make the
whole vision seem a little less like E.M. Forster’s deeply depressing story of
a computer-driven world, The Machine
Stops.
Even with an
occasional person on the payroll, it goes without saying that bot-based
teaching will be a whole lot cheaper than the clumsy, distracted-human model we
have now. Here’s Carey: “We are now headed into a time of abundance when it comes to educational resources.
All the books in the world are now available on your iPad or your phone or your
computer, or will be soon. The same is true for all of the lectures of all of
the smartest people in the world,[24]
and the course notes and the problem sets. ... Once they're built, the cost of
providing them to the 10,000th student or the millionth student is almost
nothing.”[25]
While Carey calls his
vision of higher education the “University of Everywhere,” I prefer Kevin Carey
University. That’s partly because KCU is easier to type, but also because, if
one prominent evangelist can have a university named after himself, why not
this one? We’re talking two men who’ve seen themselves as among the few brave
enough to wrestle with the devil and tell it like it is.
Will Kevin Carey University Really Improve Educational Achievement?
It’s fair to ask
whether the vision of KCU as presented in TEC
is valid. Is there evidence that
computers are or will be more effective at teaching than people?
To take a very
un-Carey like approach, I’d have to say that what is known to date is mixed.
There’s some
evidence that computers do well with drill and fact-based topics -- universities
have made extensive use of them for this purpose for more than 30 years.
Indeed, many who don’t share Carey’s all-encompassing enthusiasm for
computer-based education (CBE) do agree that an important part of introductory
courses in some fact-based disciplines can be effectively taught with CBE and
that even more could be done here.
But the consensus in
higher education has been that, in the case of more complex topics, CBE is
actually more expensive and generally less effective. The much-hyped MOOC
concept has settled back into a more realistic frame -- a valuable option for
some, but not a game changer for most.[26]
Admittedly, this thinking comes from HU-based fogies; Carey himself has been a
fan since way back.[27]
Carey bolsters his
arguments for CBE with lots of approving references to work done at Carnegie
Mellon University, which in a number of instances has shown computer-based
education to do as well or better than its classroom equivalent.
I’ve not seen anyone
challenge the validity of Carnegie Mellon’s (CMU’s) results, and don’t expect that I will, so
Carey has an important point here.
Ignoring the irony
of Carey’s praise for instructional improvements that come from a full-blown
HU, let’s consider another perspective of the CMU results.
Carnegie Mellon is
in fact a highly selective university. You don’t get admitted unless you’ve a
demonstrated track record of being a successful learner. CMU also has a
graduation rate well above the national average and I’ll bet its students would
score very well on the assessments used in Academically
Adrift.
But does CMU’s work
in CBE provide a good foundation on which to project the future of all of higher
education?
The Problem of Self-Efficacy, Grit, Resilience, Et Al
The evidence from
CMU shows, I believe, nothing more than that students who’ve demonstrated
strong learning skills in high school can do well in a form of instruction that
requires motivation, focus and self-discipline. Not surprising at all.
I’ll agree that the
CMU example advances the question of whether places with similarly qualified
students couldn’t dump most or all of general education out of the classroom
and put it on the computer. Why not if the students can handle it? You’d save a
lot of money!
I know how Carey, who
recently took an online general education biology course at MIT, would respond
to the question of putting everything online. He’d say just do it. (In case
you’re wondering about that MIT course, here’s the synopsis: He got a B! He got a B! He got a B!)[28]
Arizona State,
another HU, seems to have concluded that online general education is worth a
try.[29]
Others will likely
wait while they consider equivalence and whether saved time should be balanced
with greater depth in instruction, probably focusing on CC&W. This is a choice
you might think reasonable after reading Academically
Adrift.
And then there’s the
issue of student choice -- will the CBE-based general education be an option or
a requirement? That’s an issue because so far students don’t seem to like CBE
all that much.[30]
Business leaders
bemoan the fact that higher education is slow to move on things like this. Of
course, business leaders very often rush into huge, horrendous mistakes. Just
read the news.
Even though most of
Carey’s examples and arguments refer to selective private institutions, he
professes to care most about the economically disadvantaged who don’t now have
affordable access to good educations at public colleges and universities.
So what about students
at less selective places? Will they do as well as their peers at CMU et al? Will KCU succeed where Standard State has
failed? And cost less too?
Unfortunately, most of the evidence we have now says “no.”
First, there’s
something of a consensus that online learning isn’t effective with students who
need remediation. Some observations from work in California are relevant here.[31][32][33]
Carey will argue
that his adaptive computers will do better. But where’s the evidence? Do we junk
the current system and go to a radically different one on speculation?[34]
As it happens,
there’s quite a bit of emerging research to suggest that the weaker students
will actually do worse with CBE than they do with the current system.
Research in “Non
Cognitive Factors,” variously known as “grit,” “resilience,”
“mindset,” et al, suggests that a student’s attitude toward his or her ability
to learn is an important factor in successful learning. More important, in
fact, than standard cognitive ability.[35]
There’s a rich and
growing literature in Non Cognitive Factors, and this isn’t the place to review
it. But it’s possible to summarize the key point by citing the progenitor of
all this research -- Stanford’s Stephen Bandura, the father of the term “Self
Efficacy.” Effectively, Bandura says people won’t put sustained effort into an
area unless they think they’re capable of succeeding. In education, this
translates as, “If you don’t think you can learn something, you probably won’t.
Unless you get a lot of motivational help.”
Can computers
provide that motivational help?
Certainly, it’s true
that a good CBE system, by adjusting for pace and style, will add value. But
will that be enough?
The psychological research
to date strongly indicates that CBE won’t have a major impact on the vast and
building stream of weaker students. It seems that the influence of other people
matters most in changing perspectives, particularly with a deep-seated attitude
like low self-efficacy. For example, “people precedent,” the example of
educationally successful people from circumstances like yours, appears to
matter a lot.[36]
Could CBE plus even
more active mentoring do the job? Maybe. Based on what I’ve read, I would have
to be skeptical. Some things to wonder about include the personal interactions
that seem to matter a lot in teaching.[37]
And, there’s also some intriguing cognitive research that suggests the human
brain responds much better to direct human interaction than to video.[38]
Still, I’ll concede that we won’t know until we try.
Unlike Carey, and
his partner-in-logic Jenny McCarthy, I can’t simply assert my opinions as fact.
That’s the province of pretend experts. So I’ll acknowledge there’s no
definitive research on self-efficacy and computer-based education.
There is evidence that
small interventions, “nudges,” can make an important difference.[39]
But my guess is it would take a lot of well-trained nudgers to have a major effect
across the entire curriculum; something that would offset many of the cost
savings of doing away with faculty. Of course, since getting tuition to “almost
nothing” is central to the vision of KCU, we won’t contemplate an option that
includes hiring lots of people.
Timing is an issue
here as well. Carey’s own New America Foundation points out that computer access
in the lowest income quartile is very low.[40]
When these poor kids graduate high school and go up to their bedrooms to go to
college, there won’t be a computer, not to mention Internet access. What then?
Timing is also an
issue with the effectiveness of the bots. I’ll concede that it’s possible,
albeit highly doubtful, that the bots at KCU will at some point be so good
they’ll change self-efficacy and propel students forward with only the
occasional glancing contract with real people. But I wouldn’t bet on it
happening soon -- meaning in the next few decades.
Also, if we someday
have bots that can effectively change your mindset, the Singularity will be
very much at hand and we’ll have other things to worry about.
[An interesting
example of computer-based behavioral modification is here. You can follow the link here, but don’t tell anyone that the research
comes from Cornell, a notorious -- gasp! -- HU.] [41]
Is Research Peripheral?
One casualty of
dismantling the HU in favor of KCU will be research -- you know, the kinds of wasteful
distractions that got us things like…computers. Hmmm.
Just as the economy
is becoming deeply dependent on university research, and nations around the
world are frantically trying to replicate the American research university, Carey
wants us to push it off into the periphery.
As with pretty much
every other institution in history, the HU model isn’t working perfectly. There
are definitely problems with the rigor of doctoral education at some places in
the U.S. And, there’s no doubt that even good places aren’t truly comparable to
the very best. Certainly, people who follow scientific research will
acknowledge that the strong majority of breakthroughs consistently come from a
handful of leaders like MIT, Stanford, and a couple dozen others.
But that doesn’t
mean that the second-tier places aren’t contributing in important ways. When
you’re talking about innovation, diversity matters. Thus, Iowa State, not
comparable to MIT as a full-blown research institution, nevertheless had a
major role in the development of the electronic computer.[42]
The faculty member at Iowa State, John Atanasoff, had insights that hadn’t yet
penetrated to the leading edge universities.
Also, even when they
aren’t always creating breakthrough knowledge, people who know research
appreciate that the Iowa States of the nation consistently contribute an
enormous amount of knowledge that, even if not always at the state of the art,
is nevertheless highly valuable to the overall knowledge gestalt. Such
universities also provide the bulk of the research-capable graduates
increasingly needed in a knowledge economy. And, by the way, Iowa State is
still important at the leading edge, if not at the volume of MIT et al.[43]
There are problems in the research/scholarship
model at American HUs, and I hope the economic crisis will cause public
universities to take a hard look at their investments in doctoral and research
programs. This is an area where, if you don’t meet key threshold criteria such
as getting graduates employed, your role is actually a negative rather than
just less positive.
There’s much less of a concern about doctoral
programs at private universities, which have been far more market driven.
So change is needed,
but it would be much more intelligent to deal with the small percentage of
places that aren’t meeting doctoral research standards than to throw the whole
system out and replace it with -- well, we really don’t know with what. Carey
is kind of vague, suggesting that “If chemists still need to stand in front of
benches and manipulate expensive machines, then they’ll congregate in something
called a research institution.”[44]
If?
The Hybrid University: Reform or
Revolution?
So back to Carey’s
bipolar analysis: he misrepresents the
reasons for tuition growth and he completely fails to make the case that KCU
will be more effective at teaching than the existing HU model, particularly for
the low socio-economic status students who represent most of the challenge.
Does that mean we’re
mired in the current system and no changes are possible? Can we really improve
learning and increase affordability in the current structure? I think so.
As an historian,
I’ve had occasion to think a lot about the choice of reform or revolution, and
in this case I think we go for reform.
Colleges and
universities certainly need to improve, and I actually agree with Carey on a
lot.
For example, I think
senior administrative salaries are far too high. Cutting them by a third to a
half would be a good start.
I’ve also seen
strong arguments to suggest there may be too many administrators at the elite
private institutions; I’ve little experience there so I’m not sure.
But I don’t think
administrative bloat is a problem at public institutions. I’ve examined numbers
in depth and, as noted earlier, concluded that increases stem primarily from
IT, partly to support teaching and partly to replace clerical staff. Additional
major increases are in two areas that pay for themselves: research and fund-raising.[45]
In many other cases, administrative increases stem from reclassification of
clerical staff to professional; sometimes this happens because of higher
expectations, sometimes it’s to make it easier to fire people. Also, in many
cases, regulatory oversight has led to important increases in staff.[46]
Overall, the popular
idea that public universities are busily hiring Assistants to the Assistant VP
for Doing What We’ve Always Done is just plain false.
Back to agreement. Even
if you don’t accept all of the various criticisms of Academically Adrift , you would still have to concede that there’s
a very serious problem with the level of learning at many colleges and
universities. (At least in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing in
the first two years -- assertions, like the one made by Carey that hardly
anything is learned over four years lack any supporting evidence, not to
mention defying logic and experience.)[47]
Thus, I think we
have to come up with some visible and public way of measuring learning. The
measure, or almost certainly measures, should embed significant flexibility for
different academic areas and institutional missions, but should also have
enough cross-institution and discipline comparability that the resulting data have
the ability to keep the faculty on a path to continuous improvement. Even if we
suspect that large improvements will require money that isn’t going to be there,
it’s best to know the extent and depth of the problem in order to do whatever
is possible to advance learning.
On a closely related
topic, faculty in the arts ands sciences need to accept more responsibility for student success than what
happens in just a particular course or courses. Long-term responsibility to
graduation is common for colleagues in fields like Nursing, Medicine, and even
(kind of) in Law. There are differences in the disciplines, to be sure, but the
principle of responsibility to graduation and perhaps beyond should be
universal within a university.
Work on CBE continues
across the board, not just at Carnegie Mellon, and I’ll agree it’s going to
improve instruction in some areas and perhaps save money in others. It’s not
unreasonable to let these improvement be phased in as evidence of efficacy
appears. The alternative, just plunging ahead, could be a problem (Hey! Let’s
trade derivative bonds based on energy futures or something!)
Most important, I’m
confident we’re going to find ways to deal with the self-efficacy problem, though
much of what happens in this area will be in communities, families, and schools
rather than in higher education.
So, I think we’ll
improve learning, lower costs, and reduce attrition. Some of the many other
people’s ideas Carey advances will have a role in that.
But will tuition get
down to “almost nothing”? No. And I hope it doesn’t.
Learning is one of
the most important things we do in life and should be one of the most
enjoyable. Do we really want to junk the critically important dimension of
human interaction to save a small percentage of lifetime income? What will it
mean for life after college if people arrive in the employment market at
20-something, looking up from their computers, blinking in the natural light,
and wondering what’s next?
There are really
just two positions here.
First, we could agree
that paying to interact with people in college while you learn is worth it
because, at a minimum, that’s what the rest of your life will be like and it’s
good to be prepared.
Or, alternatively,
we could assume the rest of your life will be mostly working with computers
rather than people so KCU will be great preparation.
If option 2 is
what’s on offer, I don’t want it. Cue the ghost of E.M. Forster.
Actually, I’m an
optimist, and in a more educated world I think people will want, and be willing
to pay for, even more education than what’s required. More automation will mean
more leisure time and at some point there will be entertainment overload (not
in sight at the moment, unfortunately). At that point, learning, both from
people and with technology, will be much more of a leisure time preoccupation
than it is now. That’s my vision, one that’s by no means original. It’s also
just my opinion; I’m not pretending to be an expert.
In normal
circumstances, Kevin Carey and TEC
wouldn’t be a big deal. There are lots of visions by lots of people who don’t
really know what they’re talking about. As one observer noted, the issues in
higher education represent “the kind of problem…that lends itself to finger
pointing thinly disguised as analysis.” [48] Carey has company.
It’s also true that America
loves its fads.
Could it be that TEC is just the education equivalent of
the pet rock or the hula hoop? Substantively, yes. Unfortunately, the book’s
impact will be much greater and more profound.
The Impact of TEC on Public Higher Education
I’ve said that there are no new ideas in TEC. It’s a slick repackaging of
concerns and suggestions advanced by others, in many cases the ideas have been
around for a long time.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with an
articulate repackaging. Books in this vein often have great value in making new
ideas accessible to the public, and as such can be effective engines of change.
TEC is likely to be such a force.
I see two scenarios for TEC. The first is that it will be just another education fad,
albeit a destructive one.
To illustrate what can happen, consider the
1970s fad of “open education.” A distinguished scholar, Diane Ravitch, notes
that the “open education” movement appeared at a time when “radical critics of
the schools spun out their apocalyptic and utopian visions of the future…”[49] In this case, the leader was a journalist who, it turned out, had no idea
what he was talking about but whose book sold well and got a lot of public
attention. Sounds kind of familiar, no?
In short order, education schools embraced the
journalist’s exciting idea that there was too much structure in schools and
kids should sort of teach themselves somehow.
Of course, the result was disastrous. I remember
visiting a medium-sized school built during the fad -- it was essentially one
huge room. The constant din would have challenged the concentration of a Zen
master. The open education movement died after a few years, though its lifetime
victim count was doubtless substantial.
So, a fad like that could be the best outcome
from TEC’s popularity. I mean, things
would be bad for five or six years, but eventually people will realize they
were stupid and regain their senses.
If all we get is a fad, with even more charlatans
pumping up even more ideas about CBE, we should think ourselves fortunate.
The much worse outcome will be sharp cuts to
public higher education and, unfortunately, we may well get those and the fad at the same time.
It seems almost certain
that Carey’s arguments will be used to further rationalize cuts to public colleges
and universities (there will be little or no impact on private institutions,
and he kind of concedes that).
When state support
all but disappears, as is likely in at least some states, here’s what I think will
happen at public universities: 1) Poorly prepared, low self-efficacy students
will be shuttled off to sit in front of
computers to complete their higher education; 2) standards will be
lowered to keep graduation rates high (the authors of AA will be banned from campuses); 3) Highly paid research-active professors
will be forced to leave universities, maybe the country;[50]
and 4) tuition will in fact be “almost nothing.”
In other words, the low-income
students that Carey worries about are, thanks to TEC, going to be much less likely to get a good education than is
the case now.[51]
And America, shorn
of many of its research universities, will be much worse off than before.
Suggestions that the
American public research universities should be dismembered will occasion
shouts of joy in Asia, Europe, and Russia. Great students from these areas will
stay home, and local universities will be able to attract our star researchers
instead of the other way around.
Thanks to TEC, America will start to lose the economic
and quality of life benefits that it now gets from being the world’s engine of
innovation.
On the plus side, House
Finance Committee members will puff out their chests and proclaim they’ve produced
better higher education for a fraction of the cost, and in consequence the savings
can now be repurposed to tax cuts for the wealthy. And, they’ll argue a similar
overhaul of K-12 will generate even more savings (“And,” the Governor will say,
“sitting the kids in front of computers will break the teachers’ unions!”).
Tax cuts are very
hard to reverse. Thus, unlike with a simple fad, when the results of KCU on
state funding turn out to be catastrophic, it will be too late to go back.
Conclusion
Mr. Carey has the
right to an opinion on higher education, and I’ve no concern about his work
being cited and discussed if it’s characterized as such. But I strongly object
to the suggestion that he’s an expert.
Carey’s problem as a
writer about higher education isn’t solely the product of lack of experience,
it’s lack of understanding: there are
many cases where TEC demonstrates
that its author simply doesn’t know how the various components of college and
university teaching, research and administration work in the real world.
Having gotten
himself thoroughly confused with a superficial and one-sided attempt at
analysis, Carey then proceeds to use the rusted and malformed girders of his
ignorance to construct a shiny new edifice that America will have to live in.
Carey told someone
that he was afraid his young daughter wouldn’t be able to afford college and in consequence wrote TEC as a way to drive reform.[52]
Maybe. Personally, I
think he wrote it at least in part to make money. There’s a big market for higher
education bashing, as he well knows from a career in turning others’ ideas into
lovely word-soufflés. In fact, thanks to income from the book and dad’s
speaking engagements, Carey’s daughter will be able to afford whatever college she
wants. I’m totally confident she won’t be going upstairs to her bedroom to
attend KCU.
Carey isn’t unusual
in attacking higher education. (I believe Governor Wilder of Virginia was the first
to realize the popularity of university-bashing, back in the early 1990s.)[53]
And he’s entirely typical of the more severe critics in employing examples from
a small number of elite private institutions to direct fierce attacks on the
mostly very different public universities.
But Carey is much
less careful and balanced than others writing in this genre.
Like Marxists and
preachers, MOOCists know what’s best for other people. Even if Carey found some
students who like the fact that professors do research, or that in-class
interaction with other very accomplished students is stimulating, it wouldn’t
matter. Such students will come to realize they’ll be better off alone with a
computer. And if they don’t? Well to make an omelet you have to break some eggs.
In an extract
endlessly featured in the New York Times,
Carey opines that there is no difference between a Boston University or a
George Washington University and a Standard State other than the higher price.
It is, he says, like vodka where the premium brand tastes the same but costs
more to give the impression of being elite.
This little example
reveals an ignorance of both higher education and of vodka.
I can assure you
that the experience that students get at BU or GWU is quite different than they
would have at a less selective place. Anyone who has taught knows that, if you
can assume students have a certain level of experience and ability, you can
challenge them to do more and better. These students’ parents know that as
well. They are by no means the fools Carey takes them to be.[54]
As for vodka, well a
friend who was an expert on Russia observed that the country’s problem with
alcoholism would be a whole lot smaller if their people had to drink Old Rotgut
instead of Stolichnaya. Vodkas don’t all taste the same because they can be
made in many different ways.
If you think I’ve
been harsh on KC, remember that I’m much less harsh than he is on American higher
education. Consider those quotes cited above (they charge higher tuition
“because they can, ” etc.).
Carey’s characterizations
aren’t innocently abstract; they comprise a direct and personal attack on
faculty and administrators who Carey consistently portrays as greedy,
self-interested, dismissive of quality in teaching, and unconcerned about the
debt that tuition places on students.
Does Carey mean to
make these attacks personal? I’m certain he doesn’t. Rather, I suspect he
rationalizes them by saying that he needs to be brave enough to point out the
evil faculty and administrators do because they aren’t thinking about the
consequences of their actions.
Now for a sharp
turn.
Carey can
rationalize his attacks, as well as the lack of balance, as being necessary to
confront a system that isn’t serving many people well. In other words, he’s
outraged and frustrated and, honestly, I’ll surprise you and say I think he
means well (and also wants to get rich -- these aren’t mutually exclusive).
So, taking up the
theme that Carey is really a good person, what would I recommend for him?
Obviously, I’d hope
he’d take some time to provide balance and qualifications to his views of the
present and future of higher education. Perhaps acknowledge in a future column
or two that TEC overdraws its images
to make a point. Then he could use those high dollar speaking engagements to
make audiences think rather than react:
a lot more seminar-like, a lot less revival tent. A little balance of
this kind could go a long way in taming the actions of rapacious House Finance
Committees.
After that, I’d hope
Carey would leave the pulpit for a while and engage in some real-world
wrestling with the problems of the knowledge economy.
My recommendation. Forgo
for the time being the worldly pleasures of public appearances. Abandon the
media pulpit, adopt a humble attitude toward how much you know, and dedicate
yourself to teaching. At least for a year, and if necessary only part-time.
I’m confident Carey
would easily pass the preparatory program to teach college writing as an
adjunct at a community college or at a Standard State (yes, they have those).
Once on the job, I’m
sure he’d be flat out outstanding in the classroom.
Young people who
have Kevin Carey as their teacher will remember him well and fondly. In all
probability, many lives will be changed for the better. But that’s not all. To
teach is to learn, and I think Carey would develop a much deeper understanding
of what happens in education, a much better appreciation of the motives of his
colleagues and, most important, a much better understanding of the kinds of
challenges that we as a society face in preparing the economically and
educationally disadvantaged to survive and succeed in the knowledge economy. Then,
one sunny summer day, he could start to write another book.
[4] Ibid.
Much made of the cost of college as a barrier, and there’s no doubt it’s a
factor. But is it the major factor that
critics say it is? Evidence from Norway, where college is free, demonstrates
that the children of college graduates attend at a much higher rate than those
with degrees. This suggests that culture, not cost, is the most important
factor. http://hechingerreport.org/in-norway-where-college-is-free-children-of-uneducated-parents-still-dont-go/
[8]
To support his relentless attacks on the hybrid
university, Carey simply makes things up. For example, he argues that
universities got a monopoly on knowledge because only they had access to books,
going so far as to assert that the printed book made higher education less available because books were place
bound. In fact, by the end of the Nineteenth Century, a family with modest
income could purchase most of the books needed for general education. Even small town
public libraries typically held the rest.
[9]
Kevin Carey, The End of
College (New York: Riverhead Books, 2015), p. 2. Carey
also asserts that the idea that research benefits undergraduate students is
“95% bunk” (p. 250). Curiously, given
that he pretends his book is a serious analysis, he provides no sources for
either of these assertions about research faculty and teaching. Not surprising,
since they are clearly just personal biases. I can also offer a personal
observation. Over 22 years working for the Ohio Board of Regents we hired some
150 people who were selected principally because they were considered top researchers
in their fields. I had an opportunity to interact extensively with all of these
people and not a single one met Carey’s description of being inwardly focused
or inclined to “burrow into increasingly specialized fields while remaining
ignorant of other ways of thinking” (page 91. On the contrary, all were not
just enthusiastic about their research and their fields, they were also curious
and eager to know what was happening in other disciplines. Carey’s unfamiliarity
with what occurs in research is glaringly obvious here: he doesn’t seem to know that the leading edge
of research in the sciences, and also in many areas of social sciences and
humanities, is multidisciplinary and has been for 25 years or so. And, while I
can’t personally testify to their teaching prowess, I can testify that all of
the top researchers I met had the personal dynamism that I associate with
effective teachers (and a high proportion had won teaching awards). Wait
a minute. Let’s be fair. Carey does quote one source for his negative views of
college faculty: William James
(1842-1910).
[10] Richard Arum,
and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College
Campuses. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
[11]
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/20/studies-challenge-findings-academically-adrift . Here's a very thoughtful criticism of some of the premises employed in Academically Adrift - https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/02/08/a_critique_of_academically_adrift_and_the_test_behind_many_of_the_findings
[12] Ibid,
pp. 239-40. Earlier (page 9), Carey briefly acknowledges that AA shows only 45% aren’t learning much.
[13]
Carey is certainly right that teaching long ranked low in
evaluation of faculty. But that was 40 years ago. Universities have long since
made major efforts to improve, and effective teaching is now a critical factor
in promotion and tenure decisions, including at the most research-intensive
places. It’s likely that Carey doesn’t know this, though it also seems certain
he wouldn’t mention it if he did. As for
the oft-cited statement that research matters more than teaching in annual evaluations,
it’s reasonably certain that’s true – at least in research-intensive places.
But there’s an explanation for that. Research, by its nature, requires constant
rethinking and frequent new starts. Effective teaching, on the other hand, is a
competency that can be evaluated by continuing student success but not constant
major innovation. Faculty do continuously revise and restructure course content
and methodology. But, if we expected faculty to come up with some important new
approach to teaching every year or so, we’d have chaos and the students would
be the losers. That being said, as noted in the text, improved measures of
student success are much needed.
[14] Arizona State already has
teaching loads for English composition that include up to 125 students per
term. https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/asu-teaching-luxury
[15] Back in the 1970s, when Ohio State was an
open-admissions university, a dip in the baby boom caused the university to
temporarily fish even lower into the state’s pool of high school graduates. A
few years later, a thoughtful Associate Provost pointed out that, while grades
in entry level math classes had dropped in proportion to the lower abilities of
the recent freshman classes, the English composition grades had remained about
the same. We all agreed on the explanation:
math had specific standards reinforced by common exams, while English
had instructors who were mostly just five or six years older than their
students. They didn’t want to flunk the majority of their students, so simply –
and probably unconsciously -- adjusted expectations.
But mathematics programs have also responded.
The easy way has been to create new, lower-expectation tracks for students who
won’t use math later. The separate courses for engineers and scientists remain
the same. This has already happened a lot and is likely to become even more
pervasive as Complete College America and its ilk amp up the pressure on
graduation rates. Such changes aren’t necessarily a bad thing from my point of
view, but there’s substantial misrepresentation going on.
[16]
Professors, particularly those of the
statistical persuasion, argue that multiple choice exams are entirely valid.
I’m not persuaded. First, since in my view multiple choice was principally
devised for the purpose of making grading easier, I think all arguments in
support are various forms of rationalization. That includes arguments for
objectivity. The problem with this tack is that in the real world decisions are
hardly ever multiple choice. Your employer won’t give you a multiple choice
exam with the answers all neatly laid out. Why should she do all the work? Why
is she asking if she already knows the answer? And, are you, the employee,
going to insist that she construct a particular type of exam so that you can be
sure she’s objective in making a decision about your recommendation? A little
presumptuous, perhaps? In fact, in a fast changing world, the questions
themselves are often not clear. Employees who haven’t ever had to think
constructively will have a hard road to success.
[17] You can see the future of the university
response to the Scylla of access and the Charybdis of graduation rates by
looking at the recent history of the NCAA. A few years back, that worthy
organization announced that it would sanction programs that failed to graduate
a certain percentage of players. At about the same time, the NCAA effectively
dropped academic eligibility requirements for incoming scholarship athletes
(there’s a metric still on paper –grades in core courses -- but if you believe
the high school grades of star athletes are valid, you’re very naïve).
As it happens, major
university programs, principally in the South, are regularly admitting young
men for football whose standardized test scores peg their academic abilities at
around the 8th grade level.
What’s happened? Well, with
amazing consistency, these football players are eligible after their first year
of “study,” stay eligible after that, and graduate in four years.
Do you believe someone
entering college with 8th grade abilities has done any college-level math, science, or
writing after one year? After two? I don’t. And I expect all but a handful of
the graduates never have.
[18]
People who teach
writing or use essay exams are an endless source of amusing anecdotes. My
all-time favorite was a student who observed that he wasn’t good at
“suppository prose.”
[19]It’s
important, so let’s step through the problem.
First, the easy part: we stipulate enthusiastic agreement with the
authors of AA that all students
should meet a college-level standard of ability in CC&W, and we also agree
with CCA that all students should graduate.
Next, we’ll imagine
ourselves to be a professor in literature, History, Political Science,
Psychology, Communications, or another program in humanities and socials
sciences teaching a first semester freshman course. We have three sections
totaling about 150 students.
Some 80% of those students
have entered college from high school with no meaningful experience in
CC&W. When you describe what you expect from them in this area, you might
as well be speaking in Mongolian—more specifically, the dialect of Genghis
Khan.
So, you have fifteen weeks
to get about 120 students from zero to at least a first year standard in
CC&W. This means essay exams and a 20 page or so paper.
And by the way, the fact
that some students will be sufficiently terrified by your expectations as to
want to drop out doesn’t help—CCA counts every one of those, as well as the
ones who stay enrolled but don’t make any real effort, as your failures in the same sense as it does those who try to do the
work but fail. They’re not
responsible; you are.
It’s obvious you can’t wait
until the first midterm to address this problem. If you’re going to be
successful, all of these 120 young people will have to be doing extensive
writing and getting extensive feedback beginning at the latest in Week 2. And,
this level of effort will need to be repeated every week.
By the way, the 20-80 split
between students with reasonable CC&W abilities and those without is going
to be a real problem in class. Logically, you’ll slow down at first to
accommodate the less capable but larger group. But don’t expect that to be
painless—this slow walking will seriously annoy the faster group who will
reasonably feel that they’re being shortchanged. This is something people don’t
really understand until they’ve taught in this kind of situation.
The bottom line here is
that a professor will be reading and providing extensive feedback on some 120
analytical writing pieces a week (making sure, of course, that all represent
original work). That’s in addition to grading midterms and papers with the same
level of high effectiveness. Assuming it’s possible to do all this well, which
I would question, the work will be exceptionally hard, especially when a lot of
students get frustrated and start to think they can’t do it. No matter the
excuse, though, the success rate will still need to be in the vicinity of 100%.
Personally, I think it
would be great fun to see how higher education’s ersatz experts, the ones who
think effective teaching is so easy, would deal with this problem. Let’s see
them agree to risk their think tank or consultant incomes on meeting the
standards.
[20] To understand the relationship between CC&W
abilities and content knowledge, consider this:
can someone effectively employ complex reasoning on a subject about
which they know little? No. Case in point: The End of College.
[21]
The best in-college option I’ve seen is a summer program that
prepares students for critical analysis and writing (and in some cases for
math). A number of universities have these programs, but they are expensive. A
better option is a system that diagnoses problems early and has students work
to catch up while still in high school (California has this kind of program).
The best of all, of course, would be to have students complete the kind of work
envisioned in the Common Core.
[22]
I’ve noted that
faculty and administrators who’ve spent their entire careers at selective
institutions often seem to be baffled by the issue of student motivation.
[23] http://www.cato-unbound.org/2012/11/19/kevin-carey/radical-implications-online-education In fact, the first major study of adaptive learning shows that it isn't "orders of magnitude better" -- overall, it's not better at all. The study, funded by the Gates Foundation and evaluated by SRI, shows a few modestly positive impacts as well as many where there were no significant differences. Interestingly, there were no differences between low-income students and others. SRI notes that the software will improve and that these improvements could lead to stronger results and that seems reasonable. Still, nothing in the study suggests that "orders of magnitude better" results will come from adaptive learning software. https://www.sri.com/sites/default/files/brochures/almap_final_report.pdf
[24]
Textbooks that include the ideas and examples of the smartest
people in the world have long been available. Why are video versions of
textbooks better than the printed ones?
[25] http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/03/03/390167950/prepare-for-the-end-of-college-heres-what-free-higher-ed-looks-like
Carey believes that Silicon Valley will do the online
program building. He acknowledges that
the venture capitalists have failed in their first tries in education but is
adamant that it will eventually get it right. A little too sanguine in my view.
Venture Capital has been badly burned in the last few years (since he started
writing The End of College), and
funds are no longer easily available. The age of “it’s cool and we’ll figure
out how to make money later” is gone, at least for the next decade or so. To
illustrate, in 2010-2011, a startup called Color Labs got $41million in
venture and other funding to launch an app that allowed people to share photos
with others near them – “others” meaning mostly complete strangers. The app,
based on a moronic idea, bombed instantly and has become an object lesson for
folks in Silicon Valley. The lesson might be summarized as, “think before you
invest.”
It’s also the case that investors
are aware that universities already own the most lucrative market, which is for
programs like MBAs. When you can get a degree online from North Carolina-Chapel
Hill or Georgia Tech for a reasonable price, the degree from Silicon Startup
will have to be a whole lot cheaper to be competitive—and a whole lot cheaper
doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for profit. The University of Phoenix is now
struggling with this problem. As universities you’ve heard of become much more
competitive in programs for adults, the main option for outsiders is to compete
by offering easier admission. This very much limits the market, especially as
the Standard States start to move in.
[28] Southern wisdom proclaims that, “it ain’t
bragging if ya done it.” True. And I actually much admire Carey’s ability to do
so well in a course like this so many years after college. The math needed for
a course like this is easy to forget if you don’t use it all the time—I know
since back in high school I forgot the various formulas almost as fast as I
learned them.
[30] Despite being offered a 25% break on tuition as
well as saving most of the $17,000 per year cost of living on campus, only
about 8% of the students invited by the University of Florida to complete the
first 60 hours online before being able to come to campus chose to accept.
[31] Online CC students do less well than in
classroom, even though those who select online are academically stronger. http://hechingerreport.org/five-studies-find-online-courses-are-not-working-at-community-colleges/
[33] http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23688069/mooc-mashup-san-jose-state-university-udacity-experiment
Here’s a study that
supports Carey on the potential for quality, but is much less enthusiastic
about the idea that cost savings will be huge.
http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_615HJR.pdf
And here’s another one that
positive, at least on the issue of academic investment: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/539091/lessons-from-the-digital-classroom/
[34] There’s plenty of evidence that online education
works well for many graduate and professional students. But such students, by
definition, already have acquired confidence about their ability to succeed in
education. These are quite different from the low-income undergraduates who
present such a challenge to the educational system.
Also consider the conclusion of a recent study:
Also consider the conclusion of a recent study:
“MOOCs
are one of many online learning opportunities, and our findings cannot be
generalized to all open educational resources or education technologies.
Nevertheless, our research on MOOCs—along with previous decades’ research
examining the access and usage patterns of emerging learning
technologies—should provoke skepticism of lofty claims regarding
democratization, level playing fields, and closing gaps that might accompany
new genres of online learning, especially those targeted at younger learners.
Freely available learning technologies can offer broad social benefits, but
educators and policy-makers should not assume that the underserved or
disadvantaged will be the chief beneficiaries. Closing gaps with digital
learning resources requires targeting innovation toward the students most in
need of additional support and opportunity.” http://www.sciencemag.org/content/350/6265/1245.full
[37]
A very thoughtful
piece on the many dimensions of teaching and learning that are not captured in
simple metrics is here: https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/01/30/essay-continuing-importance-carnegie-unit-academic-credit
[40]https://www.newamerica.org/oti/families-and-the-pressures-of-digital-technologies/ Research also shows that people from less-privileged
backgrounds are less effective using computers- https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/03/20/essay-flaws-parcc-tests
[45] Here’s something to think about. If research
spending increases as a percent of total university spending, then
administrative costs will take a greater share of overall staffing by
comparison to teaching because none of the research expenditures are on
instruction.
Gift income also comes at a
higher administrative cost than state funding. Reporting and accounting
expenses are similar, but the staff time needed to secure each dollar is much
higher.
[46]Here’s
an example of a data-aggregating “let’s compare apples to watermelons” view of
“administrative bloat” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason-college-tuition-costs-so-much.html?_r=1 , together with a more thoughtful one: http://www.demos.org/publication/pulling-higher-ed-ladder-myth-and-reality-crisis-college-affordability .
[49] Diane Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 2001), p. 397.
[50]
British Prime Minister David Camron, in arguing for the
UK’s international economic competitiveness, cites having three of the world’s
four top-ranked universities as a key asset – mentioning them as a factor even
before citing low taxes, a real statement for a conservative. These
universities are all HUs, so of course Cameron must be relegated to Carey’s
vast pantheon of fools. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/27/eu-referendum-cameron-to-hold-new-round-of-talks-with-european-leaders
[51]
“Finally, in medicine it is malpractice to replace
standard practice with experimental remedies and procedures until they have
proven to be superior and have side effects that are no worse, and it is
unethical to experiment on humans without their informed consent. Yet
disruptive higher education innovators lobby constantly for the freedom to do
both, and like some of our nation’s worst ethical lapses in human
experimentation, the subjects are and will be low-income disadvantaged people
misled to believe they will be receiving treatment that is superior to standard
practice and will cause them no harm.” https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/08/31/essay-describes-retired-presidents-experience-nontraditional-course-provider
[54]
If there’s
anything consistent about Kevin Carey’s writing, not just in The End of College but in all his
various publications, it’s his belief that higher education’s problems are well
defined, and that the corresponding solutions are not merely obvious but also
easy to implement. In consequence, Carey is also consistent in suggesting that
anyone who doesn’t agree with his ideas is greedy, self-interested, or a fool.
Or some combination of those.
