"The Crisis in Higher Education"

"Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education" by William Deresiewicz

The Nation

May 4, 2011

accessed May 7, 2011

Summary/Key Points: I will let this succinct paragraph from this long-ish article speak for the whole thing, eloquently:

What we have in academia, in other words, is a microcosm of the American economy as a whole: a self-enriching aristocracy, a swelling and increasingly immiserated proletariat, and a shrinking middle class. The same devil’s bargain stabilizes the system: the middle, or at least the upper middle, the tenured professoriate, is allowed to retain its prerogatives—its comfortable compensation packages, its workplace autonomy and its job security—in return for acquiescing to the exploitation of the bottom by the top, and indirectly, the betrayal of the future of the entire enterprise.

Intended Audience: everyone

Relevance: We understandably concentrate on a lot of issues in K12 education. I am always shocked when I hear that higher ed, which seems to be so expensive and so pervasive in our culture that it couldn't possibly be doing poorly, is in fact doing poorly. The environment of the college or university and their administrative and hiring decisions, as compared with a public school district, may provide an interesting, more rapid-acting laboratory for educational reform that could trickle down to K12 later.

On a personal note, I have volunteer mentored with ASPIRE, Oregon's post-high-school counseling initiative, for a few years now, and am privileged to be coordinating the program at my current school. Articles like this always give me things to think about, things that will hopefully turn into good advice for my students, eventually.