|
« AAUP Homepage
|
A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education
DOA: The Spellings Commission
Reviewed by William G. Tierney
The Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006.
Reviewed by William G. Tierney
Every few decades, a national report arrives that paints the problems faced by academe in apocalyptic terms. Terms such as “failure of nerve,” “idling,” “dawdling,” and “confusion” populate the reports generated over the last twenty years. Curiously, the reports generally begin by saying that American higher education has been great but if changes are not made, then various doomsday scenarios will occur. Every report also states that administrators and faculty are nonresponsive, lethargic, and unwilling to deal with change.
Enter the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education. U.S. secretary of education Margaret Spellings put together a panel, largely of business people and administrators, to diagnose the current state of academe. The reader of the commission’s final report, issued in September, discovers—surprise!—that although American higher education was once great, the commission has reached the “uneasy” conclusion that an “unwarranted complacency” exists on college campuses, which dooms higher education to “unfulfilled promise” unless it listens up. The doomsday language actually was softened; in earlier versions, the complacency was not simply “unwarranted” but “unseemly.” “Unfulfilled promise” had been “glaring deficiencies,” so perhaps academic readers should be thankful for the commission’s kinder, gentler wordsmiths.
James Hunt, a commission member and former governor of North Carolina, made the overheated comment that the report is “one of the most important reports in the educational and economic history of our country, if we act on it.” Even if one agrees with the report—and there is much to agree with—such hyperbole surely is unwarranted. In the waning years of an administration consumed by foreign adventures and a Congress eyeing the next election cycle, there will be little appetite to take on much, if any, of what the report recommends.
The report is falsely titled, for it does not chart “the future of higher education.” The commissioners focus their energies almost entirely on undergraduate students. Although some might disagree, I concur with the report’s assumption that a high school degree is no longer sufficient and that to remain competitive the country needs individuals to have some form of postsecondary education. The commission rightly states that financial aid is insufficient and that the cost of a college degree is of major concern to families, especially the poor. It is dead on target when it suggests that federal aid needs to be streamlined, improved, and consolidated, but it waffles about how to make those changes. The report correctly points out that too many schools do not adequately prepare high school graduates for college-level work and admirably urges postsecondary institutions to become more involved in K–16 connections. It also correctly criticizes postsecondary institutions for not doing enough to ensure that students graduate and improve their math and language skills. Not surprisingly, the report is big on “accountability,” “performance measures,” “nimbleness,” and “testing.”
What is most interesting about the report, however, is what it leaves out. Many careful observers of American higher education believe that the greatest problem is not with undergraduate education, but with graduate study. How we break a disciplinary structure and become more interdisciplinary is of significant concern. If the country is to remain economically competitive, then the research infrastructure of America’s research universities needs to be addressed; such an observation seems particularly commonsensical for a commission that functions at the federal level. If one were to look at decision making and governance of the enterprise, few analysts would argue against the idea that the greatest challenges exist with the poor performance of public college and university boards, but these garner no mention. The commissioners are happy to make analogies to corporate performance and how academe does not measure up, but they overlook the fact that public boards of trustees are generally acknowledged to be the weakest link in the system.
Similarly, learning is discussed a good deal in the report, and the import of technology is mentioned. But those who do the teaching are overlooked. I suppose one should be thankful to be ignored; in an earlier commission white paper, the tenure system was seen as a problem, and faculty were painted as out of touch and unwilling to change. However, it seems strange to say that the twentieth century was a golden age for higher education but not to mention that, during that golden age, tenure was the academic coin of the realm, and faculty had a much greater say in the life of the institution. At a minimum, I had expected the commission to deal with the issue of contingent faculty and say something about optimal levels of fulland part-time faculty, but the report does not even consider such issues.
Finally, and most problematically, academic freedom and democracy do not even warrant discussion. Infringements that have taken place on campuses because of laws such as the Patriot Act are not discussed. The postsecondary institution is seen as having a single function—to transmit skills that equip people for the workforce. I am all for that function; I want students to graduate from the academy with the necessary skills to succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace. However, to reduce academic life to nothing more than that function misses what American higher education has been about for over a century.
Yes, colleges and universities need to change. Yes, we can do a better job in several arenas, especially in working with K–12 schools. However, at our best, those of us who work in postsecondary institutions have wrestled with difficult ideas and enabled individuals to search for truth. How is it possible that a federal commission could overlook the fundamental point, made in the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, that “institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good. . . . The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition. Academic freedom is essential to these purposes.” The commission’s assignment was to write an essay on the future of higher education. They flunked the exam.
William G. Tierney is Academe’s book review editor and director of the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis at the University of Southern California.
|