Reforming Colleges (Part 1)

I've finally started reading Derek Bok's book The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges, and thought that it would be a good idea to document some of his main arguments from the first few chapters. I'm doing this primarily as a reminder to myself as I work my way through the book. Here are some brief notes on the first four chapters.

The first chapter presents a description of the problem, as Bok sees it, which is to graduate more students who have received a quality education. He notes that there has been an emphasis on after-graduation earning as the goal for higher education, rather than the creation of a more informed citizenry (as Jefferson would have desired). He talks a bit of the oft-cited "skills gap," and suggests that although students do desire gainful employment, they attend college for myriad reasons.

In the second chapter, Bok argues that although there are many reasons for desiring an increase in the number of college graduates, any increase in graduation rates will be meaningless with out a concomitant increase in the quality of college education. He argues that current students, as a group, come to college less prepared than previous generations, study less, and leave without making empirically measurable gains in knowledge.

Chapter three delves into some of the influences on the current state of instruction in college. University incentives for tenure are usually divorced from teaching quality, and those in adjunct positions do not feel empowered to make any drastic changes for fear of losing whatever meager income they have. College presidents tend to be conservative in their actions, and are adverse to investing in potentially risky experiments in alternative instructional methods or in release time for faculty to investigate such methods. There has also been a general decline in funding for education at the state and federal level.

Whereas chapter three looked at the institutional pressures, chapter four discusses the role of the student in the current situation. Because students vote with their feet in terms of choosing to remain at an institution (or even to attend in the first place), pleasing them tends to be the first impulse of the institution. And, paradoxically, although many students do want to be successful, they do not necessarily want to spend more time studying, preferring to spend time at their part-time job, surfing the web, or participating in any number of other campus activities. As Bok notes: "Few undergraduates today are clamoring for longer readings, harder questions, innovative methods of instruction, or tougher grading standards".