Not much of what was covered was all that shocking. Problems such as soaring enrolments, slashed budgets, declining standards, and excessive student partying are neither new nor confined to America. But I was quite amazed by the extent to which market forces have been allowed to define American universities. The increasing importance of athletic programmes, for instance, is something I’d only been vaguely aware of, but their current use in many universities as a major source of revenue is astonishing (and not a little infuriating, from a scholar’s point of view).
However, the programme’s biggest point was that a so-called ‘non-aggression pact’ has developed between teaching faculty and students:
It amounts to an unspoken compact: don’t ask too much of me, and I won’t expect much from you. This allows the faculty members to concentrate on what their institution values: publications, research and getting grants. And it means that students get good grades and can float though college with plenty of time for socializing, networking and other activities. Few complain, even though to an outsider it’s pretty clear that the emperor has no clothes.
Nothing new about this. I started university as an undergraduate fifteen years ago, and can’t tell you how many people I saw coast along with very little effort. But there’s a difference between intelligent people doing the bare minimum to get a mediocre grade (that’s their problem – third-level education is not compulsory, and you can only get out of it, intellectually, what you put in), and people whose intellectual capability is in doubt, yet whose tuition fees are nonetheless accepted and who are pushed through the system.
I could rant about this subject at great length, let me tell you. But it’s a beautiful sunny day, so I really ought to get out and do something frivolous.
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