Reforming Colleges (Part 2)

I've read another couple chapters in Derek Bok's The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges, so here's a quick summary. These are just my takeaways -- I make no claim to be accurately representing Bok's views.

The overarching theme of the book is that both attainment and quality need to be part of the discussion. In Chapter Five, Bok discusses the view of employers. Although both employers and HR representatives want graduates with technical skills, they rate things such as critical thinking, ethical behavior, and the ability to communicate effectively in speaking and writing as high or higher. Bok also notes that the shift in emphasis from liberal arts to STEM was not necessarily the influence of employers (who he claims hold very little sway over what colleges teach), but rather a reaction of the students themselves to economic realities.

College presidents tend to overestimate the job preparedness of their recent graduates (as do students themselves) compared to employer perceptions. At the same time, company provided training for new hires has been greatly reduced over the last several decades. Bok suggests that having some kind of empirical measure of students' knowledge may be beneficial for both colleges and employers, though he recognizes that such a measure, even if reliable, will be unable to quantify many of the more abstract benefits of the college experience.

In Chapter Six, Bok looks at competition to traditional higher education, such as for-profit colleges and online MOOCs. Despite predictions (such as those by Clay Christensen) that these will be "disruptive" to higher education, this has not yet proved to be the case, and Bok suggests that even with their industry ties, for-profit college success rates are not superior to traditional routes. One reason is that instructors in traditional colleges have also adopted (and even created) these technologies in their own institutions. (Anyone who believes that the undergraduate experience at a state university is primarily "chalk and talk" lectures has not been to a university campus recently.)

Bok does end the chapter with a general caution that just because higher education has not necessarily been disrupted by competition yet does not rule out that possibility in the future.

Chapter Seven talks about the influence of charitable foundations on education. In general, Bok notes that early players such as Carnegie and Ford had a much more pronounced impact as educational attainment in general was much lower than it is today, making it easier to "move the needle" for metrics like college attendance. Modern efforts such as those by the Gates Foundation have the more difficult task of improving outcomes. Bok also notes that, both historically and currently, foundations may have overt political agendas that influence what constitutes "improvement."