Academic Standards
August 28, 2004
“Educational idealism and economic wealth permit in this country the maintenance of an extraordinarily large number of universities. Scholars of outstanding quality, however, are rare, and cannot be multiplied by wealth. Considering the number of universities and colleges, on the one hand; and the number of outstanding scholars that will be thrown up by [the nation] on the other hand; the result must be inevitably a rather thin spread of scholarship over the academic surface.
“This seems to be a hard fact about which nothing can be done.”
–Eric Voegelin, “The Flourishing of Positivist Mediocrities,” Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin: A Friendship in Letters, 1944-1984
Some readers have asked if I was joking about the purple pen phenomenon. Certainly not! It is “for real,” and as for my response, it was, as always, serio ludens. However, I do not know whether to laugh or cry at the concatenation of emails printed out and forwarded to me by carrier pigeon from American readers concerning other aspects of the decline of education in the United States.
Newsweek ran its 2005 college guide issue last week, which included an article, “In Praise of Rankings.” The idea is that the rankings “create” more elite schools.
According to the author, Robert J. Samuelson, an editor for Newsweek, there are more “elite” colleges now, thanks to the “rankings.” This happens because the “Schools that rise in the rankings”–supposedly due to an overflow of talented applicants–end up getting “more prestige than falling schools lose.” Samuelson also mentions that a lot of money is invested into getting higher rankings now, and it pays off: “schools that once had regional–or simply mediocre–reputations [Duke is cited] are slowly acquiring star quality.” Additionally, the mere fact of being included in a list with a name-brand elite school makes people think Podunk U. “must be good if they rank with Berkeley.”
Case in point: one of my academic associates notified me of a nominally Jesuit university tooting its horn over being “ranked in the top 100 in the 2005 edition of America’s Best Colleges” this past Friday by U.S. News & World Report. Said institution was placed at #90–out of 248. Immediately I wondered if the people so pleased at making “the top” were oblivious to the fact that 90 out of 248 is not such hot stuff. A smart PR man would have omitted the total, since the “top 100” in this case is not much better than the upper half: the #90 spot beats out only 64% of the competition if we round up a little bit. That’s an F in my view, maybe a D+ by some lights–or perhaps even a gentleman’s C? I suppose it is all a matter of “perception.”
Take, for instance, John Merrow’s “Grade Inflation: It’s Not Just an Issue for the Ivy League,” #9 in the monthly series of Carnegie Foundation Perspectives:
“These days it seems as if nearly everyone in college is receiving A’s, making the Dean’s List, or graduating with honors. What’s more interesting is that college students in general are spending fewer hours studying, while taking more remedial courses and fewer courses in mathematics, history, English, and foreign languages. Students everywhere report that they average only 10-15 hours of academic work outside of class per week and are able to attain “B” or better grade-point averages.”
Merrow cites the prevalence of a vulgar utilitarian, job-oriented attitude among students–and the fact that they are increasingly taught by “instructors” by the hundred–as structural problems behind much grade inflation. However, he doesn’t get beyond saying “Someone ought to tell students how unimportant good grades are once they leave the campus,” and he doesn’t address the teacher-student ratio in its proper context of entrenched and deepening labor problems and injustices in universities. It is an undercover irony of the academic world that the bastions of “tenured radicals” are secured by backward, regressive labor practices. The full picture is that everyone’s to blame: the worst vices of the academic left and the bean-counting, pro-business right have conspired together to undermine traditional standards and values in higher education.
And then there is plagiarism and cheating–a rash on the rise that has gotten a lot of press in the past year or two, yet inexplicably–amid concurrent handwringing about preserving the souls of “Christian” universities, these threats just don’t come up on the radar screen. I invite readers to explain or refute this impression.
This is Academic Standards in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: The Purple Pen is Limper than a Noodle | Next: On the Spread of Victimism | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
Trackback Pings:
TrackBack URL for this entry: