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    The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges
    The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges
    The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges
    Ebook325 pages5 hours

    The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges

    By Derek Bok

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    Why efforts to improve American higher educational attainment haven't worked, and where to go from here

    During the first decade of this century, many commentators predicted that American higher education was about to undergo major changes that would be brought about under the stimulus of online learning and other technological advances. Toward the end of the decade, the president of the United States declared that America would regain its historic lead in the education of its workforce within the next ten years through a huge increase in the number of students earning “quality” college degrees.

    Several years have elapsed since these pronouncements were made, yet the rate of progress has increased very little, if at all, in the number of college graduates or the nature and quality of the education they receive. In The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges, Derek Bok seeks to explain why so little change has occurred by analyzing the response of America’s colleges; the influence of students, employers, foundations, accrediting organizations, and government officials; and the impact of market forces and technological innovation. In the last part of the book, Bok identifies a number of initiatives that could improve the performance of colleges and universities. The final chapter examines the process of change itself and describes the strategy best calculated to quicken the pace of reform and enable colleges to meet the challenges that confront them.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateAug 28, 2017
    ISBN9781400888344
    The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges

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      Book preview

      The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges - Derek Bok

      THE STRUGGLE TO REFORM OUR COLLEGES

      THE STRUGGLE TO REFORM OUR COLLEGES

      DEREK BOK

      PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

      PRINCETON AND OXFORD

      Copyright © 2017 by Princeton University Press

      Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

      In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

      press.princeton.edu

      Jacket images courtesy of Shutterstock

      All Rights Reserved

      ISBN 978-0-691-17747-2

      British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

      This book has been composed in Minion Pro and Trajan Pro

      Printed on acid-free paper. ∞

      Printed in the United States of America

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      For

      BILL BOWEN

      Exemplary colleague,

      excellent scholar,

      exceptional leader

      CONTENTS

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      ONE OF THE LASTING BENEFITS OF PRESIDING over a university for twenty years is the chance to acquire a number of unusually accomplished friends. Several of these read versions of this book and kindly offered valuable comments.

      I would pay special tribute in this regard to my longtime colleague and comrade in arms, the late Bill Bowen. For this book, as for others I have written over the past twenty years, Bill gave me far more help than I had any right to expect and supplied me with reams of good advice that caused me to see the entire project in a clearer light and to improve the final product immeasurably. Over four decades, we worked together on a variety of other efforts to defend or improve universities. I count these experiences among the happiest and most rewarding of my professional life. I was fortunate enough just before he passed away to tell him that I wanted to dedicate this book to him in recognition of the friendship and support he has given me over the many years we have known one another.

      Another good friend, Howard Gardner, also read a draft of this book from beginning to end and made many helpful suggestions, which I have tried to incorporate into the final version. Jonathan Fanton volunteered to read the entire manuscript and even gave me a splendid breakfast at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a prelude to his thoughtful comments. Other valued friends who read individual chapters include Richard Light, who critiqued an early draft of the chapter on the quality of education, Barbara Brittingham, who gave me the benefit of her vast experience in the practice of accreditation, and Eric von Hippel, who read the final chapter and supplied me with many useful insights concerning the process of innovation and the diffusion of new ideas.

      In addition to the help of these friends, the Princeton Press arranged to have the book critiqued by two anonymous outside readers who clearly knew a great deal about the subject matter and made many valuable suggestions.

      As always, my wife, Sissela, dearest and most faithful of my critics, read the entire manuscript at least twice at different stages of its development and gave me all kinds of advice and encouragement to spur me onward.

      Two other individuals deserve special thanks for their invaluable help. My research assistant, Meredith Krause, displayed an uncanny ability to locate all sorts of published and unpublished materials from which I learned an immense amount. Her work was truly outstanding, and much of the evidence for the statements in this book is the product of her labors.

      Once again, my assistant for the past quarter of a century, Connie Higgins, lent her skills to the task of producing a readable manuscript for my publisher. Either because of the complexity of the subject or as a result of my advancing years, I made an exceptional number of revisions, reorganizations, and reorderings of sentences, paragraphs, and entire chapters. Through it all, Connie persevered with great patience and good humor until I was satisfied at last with the final version.

      Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to the Princeton University Press and to Peter Dougherty, its director and my editor for all the books I have written during the past twenty years. It has always been a pleasure to work with such a publisher, and I am forever grateful to have had the opportunity.

      THE STRUGGLE TO REFORM OUR COLLEGES

      Introduction

      AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION HAS REACHED one of the rare moments in its history when major reforms may be close at hand. Although the quality of research in our universities is still without equal, and our leading professional schools continue to enjoy an enviable reputation, concerns have been mounting over the condition of the forty-five hundred two- and four-year colleges that are currently responsible for educating some nineteen million students.

      After boasting the world’s most highly educated population for more than a century, America has fallen behind one country after another in the percentage of young adults earning college degrees. Economists talk of looming skill shortages that could hamper our ability to compete in the global economy. Far from promoting opportunities for all Americans to achieve a better life, higher education is now being accused of becoming a system that maintains existing differences in income and preserves racial inequality.

      Evidence has also come to light casting doubt on how much our undergraduates are learning during college. International tests of basic skills find Americans with college degrees lagging behind their counterparts in many other advanced countries, while surveys suggest that undergraduates are spending much less time at their studies than they did half a century ago. Employers complain about the competence of many of the recent graduates they hire. Families throughout the United States have grown increasingly upset over constantly rising tuitions, and a majority of Americans now believe that colleges care more about the bottom line than they do about their students. A significant fraction of recent graduates wonder whether their college degree was worth the cost. These concerns seem all the more worrisome now that a college education is generally considered to be a necessary step toward finding good jobs, living fulfilling lives, and becoming active, enlightened citizens.

      Even as doubts about undergraduate education have continued to grow, however, advances in psychology and educational research have created a wealth of useful insights to enhance teaching and learning. Technology is producing a variety of intriguing methods for improving college teaching and student services. Online education has brought courses taught by leading scientists and scholars within easy reach of audiences throughout America and around the world.

      The combination of mounting dissatisfaction with the status quo and the emergence of innovative ideas for improving education has persuaded many observers that reform is not only needed but all but certain to occur. Commentators are predicting fundamental changes in the way students are taught rather than modest incremental improvements. Politicians are asking for massive increases in undergraduate enrollments and graduation rates. To sense the current mood, one has only to read the titles of recent books on higher education, such as The End of College, Remaking College, College Disrupted, or The Online Education Revolution.

      Twice before, American higher education has experienced mounting pressure for change in the face of new opportunities and needs. On both occasions, major transformations took place. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, colleges became universities, and new institutions were established to meet the emerging demands of a rapidly industrializing society. Graduate programs were created to prepare scholars and scientists for careers of research and teaching. Professional schools were strengthened and new ones founded. College enrollments grew, and the traditional, heavily prescribed classical curriculum gave way to undergraduate programs with more practical courses and greater choice for students to pursue their own program of study.

      Following World War II, higher education faced new challenges to enroll more students, strengthen basic research, and help America to play a more prominent role in world affairs. Once again, higher education responded. New colleges and community colleges opened their doors at a rate of one per week, as the number of undergraduates doubled, redoubled, and doubled yet again. American research expanded rapidly and increased in quality to become preeminent in the world. Graduate programs appeared in scores of universities to examine international problems and learn more about other regions of the world.

      In 2009, shortly after taking office, the president of the United States called for another great effort by the nation’s colleges and universities. In a speech to Congress, he set a goal of regaining America’s historic lead in the education of its workforce by raising the share of twenty-five- to thirty-four-year-old Americans possessing quality college degrees by a whopping 40 percent in only eleven years. Corporate executives applauded this initiative. Several of our largest foundations made the effort a major priority. College officials expressed their support.

      Now that almost a decade has elapsed, what can we make of the president’s challenge and higher education’s response? How reliable were his assertions that the current level of educational attainment is unsatisfactory, and how concerned should we be by such findings? Is attainment the only major problem, or are changes needed to ensure that college graduates will receive quality degrees? Finally, what have colleges and universities accomplished in the last few years to achieve these goals, and how can they be helped to do better?

      These are the questions discussed in the chapters that follow.

      PART ONE

      The Challenge

      CHAPTER ONE

      Graduation Rates and Educational Attainment

      UNTIL RECENTLY, GRADUATION RATES WERE NOT widely regarded as a national problem. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, fewer than 5 percent of young people entered college, and less than half of those enrolling graduated. Yet few people cared. Finishing college was rarely a matter of great consequence, since students did not need a degree to enter the vast majority of occupations and professions.

      As the economy grew in size and complexity, college education became more important to the economy. Throughout most of the twentieth century, however, the percentages of young Americans who finished high school and graduated from college were above the levels of other countries and large enough in relation to the needs of the society that increasing the number who earned a degree did not seem a matter of much urgency. Until late in the century, dropout rates were seldom even considered a responsibility of the college. If students failed to stay the course, their departure was widely attributed to their lack of ability or perseverance, not to any failing on the part of the institution.

      During the 1980s, however, Americans grew increasingly concerned about the nation’s ability to compete successfully in global markets. By this time, rates of increase in the gross domestic product had become the principal measure of the nation’s progress. Since economists identified the skills and knowledge of the labor force as important contributors to economic growth, policy-makers began to look more carefully at the performance of our educational institutions. Many state legislatures started to examine the benefits achieved by their appropriations to higher education and tried to make their colleges and universities more accountable by requiring them to submit detailed reports on their performance. Graduation rates were one of the outcomes included in almost all of these reporting requirements.

      The problem of graduation rates attracted even more attention following the publication in 2008 of a book entitled The Race between Education and Technology by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz.¹ The authors emphasized the importance of education not only for economic growth but also for equality of income and opportunity. In America, they claimed, the failings of our educational institutions over the past several decades, including a prolonged stagnation in college graduation rates, were a major reason for our sluggish economic growth and increasing inequality of income. These concerns were amplified by surging college enrollments in other industrialized countries that allowed many of them to overtake and even surpass the United States in the educational levels of their younger workers.

      Research on college completion also revealed the large and growing income and racial gaps in the rates at which students were graduating from college. Among high school graduates academically qualified for college study, far more students from high-income families completed a bachelor’s degree within eight years than did those from low-income families. This vast and growing difference was accompanied by rising income inequality, a problem that came to attract increasing attention in the twenty-first century.

      Responding to these trends, President Obama declared to Congress in 2009 that the United States must regain its historic leadership in the educational attainment of its people.² To achieve this goal, he declared that America needed to raise the share of twenty-five- to thirty-four-year-olds earning a quality college credential to 60 percent by 2020. Since the existing percentage of college-educated Americans barely exceeded 40 percent, achieving the president’s goal within little more than a decade would require a mammoth effort by all concerned, especially colleges and universities.³ The percentage of Americans with college degrees had been increasing for several decades at a rate of roughly 0.5 percent per year, aided by growth in the college-age population.⁴ Now, the percentage would have to rise at least four times as fast.

      DO WE REALLY NEED SO MANY MORE COLLEGE GRADUATES?

      The call for a massive increase in college degrees echoed a widely shared view among business executives and policy-makers that America faces a shortage of highly educated workers, and that the problem will likely get worse if something is not done to increase the number of college graduates. The most authoritative estimates available, those of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, project that more than 60 percent of all new jobs created by 2018 will require at least some college education.⁵ Anthony Carnevale, the widely cited director of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, has foreseen an even more serious problem, declaring that America will experience a skill deficit of roughly three million jobs by 2018 if the number of college graduates does not grow faster.⁶ Already, the shortage of educated workers has helped to lift the earnings premium for college graduates to levels not seen for the last one hundred years.⁷

      Reports of a serious shortage of highly skilled employees have continued to appear since the recession that followed the financial crisis of 2008. Most of these claims have been based on surveys of employers. For example, in 2014, the Business Roundtable projected shortages of college-educated workers even greater than those anticipated by Professor Carnevale. According to the Roundtable’s action plan,

      By some estimates, the economy will create 54.8 million new and replacement jobs between 2010 and 2020 with 65 percent of all jobs requiring some level of postsecondary education and training. Unfortunately, we may fall short by as many as 5 million workers who do not have the post-secondary qualifications needed to meet this goal.⁸

      Employers expressed particular concern over shortages of workers with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the so-called STEM subjects. In 2013, a poll, sponsored by the Bayer Corporation, of 150 talent recruiters from Fortune 1000 companies found that 89 percent of respondents reported fierce competition for STEM graduates and alleged that only half of the participating companies were able to fill job vacancies for STEM majors in a timely manner.⁹

      Is There Really a Skills Gap? Despite the concerns of employers and the projections of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a number of analysts dispute the very existence of a skills gap in the economy and question the forecasts of a growing shortfall of college graduates over the next several years.¹⁰ Some economists claim that such projections overlook the fact that large numbers of jobs currently occupied by BAs could be performed by employees with lesser credentials.¹¹ Other analysts point out that the demand for college-educated workers diminished during the first decade of this century, and that the average earnings of BAs (not counting those with advanced degrees) actually declined slightly, which they would hardly do if a genuine shortage existed.¹²

      The most detailed attack on claims of a skills gap has been mounted by Peter Capelli, chair of the Wharton School’s program in human resources at the University of Pennsylvania. In a paper published in 2014, Capelli pointed out that only 5 percent of employers indicated that they planned to raise their pay to cope with shortages of skilled employees.¹³ With respect to STEM graduates, he cited figures showing that half of the engineering BAs take jobs in other fields, and that 30 percent of those who do mention the lack of employment opportunities in engineering as the reason. Although recent engineering graduates are less likely than most BAs to be underemployed, 22 percent held positions in 2010 that did not require an engineering degree, and an additional 7 percent were without a job.¹⁴ Other analysts agree that the earnings of engineers have risen only modestly, not at all what one would expect if a serious shortage existed.¹⁵

      After considering the evidence, Capelli concludes that employers are complaining about a nonexistent skills gap because they prefer having a surplus of qualified workers on which to draw rather than having to increase wages and provide more in-house training.¹⁶ Since there has been no dearth of qualified candidates since the recession of 2008, Capelli claims that many companies wait to fill job openings in the expectation that ideal replacements will eventually appear possessing sufficient work experience to hit the ground running without a need for higher salaries or added training. Under these conditions, he concludes, whether it makes sense for society as a whole to send a higher percentage of high school students to college expecting that they will all earn the same [earnings] premium, in the absence of any evidence of increased demand for college-level skills, is not obvious.¹⁷*

      Well-known difficulties in estimating future economic fluctuations add to the confusion over the future educational needs of the economy. Estimating labor market trends, like predicting movements in the stock market, has always been an uncertain enterprise. Sharp differences of opinion over the likely effects of new technology make current projections of future job requirements even more problematic. Thus a recent study by two Oxford professors concludes that 47 percent of the jobs in America are now at high risk of displacement by machines, but that computerization will mainly do away with low-skill and low-wage jobs in the near future.¹⁸ On the other hand, author and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Martin Ford argues that advanced technology is already beginning to displace highly educated workers in fields such as law, radiology, and medical diagnostics, and that we are running up against a limit both in terms of the people being herded into colleges and the number of high skilled jobs that will be available to them if they manage to graduate.¹⁹

      The Immigration Solution. Even if a shortage does exist in subjects such as science and engineering, and even if the need for advanced skills grows more acute, it may not be necessary to solve the problem by massively increasing the number of people graduating from college. Instead, America could meet its needs by increasing the supply of well-educated immigrants. Large numbers of able young people regularly come to the United States to complete their education, and many of them want to remain here to work. Already, immigrants account for 15 percent of America’s workforce, including one-third of all employees in STEM occupations and half of all employed engineering doctorates. The supply of highly educated workers could easily grow more rapidly if immigration restrictions were eased.

      This situation may not last forever, once leading suppliers, such as India and China, develop their own economies sufficiently to offer more attractive career possibilities to their most talented graduates. Still, America could probably adjust immigration limits to meet the demand for highly educated talent for at least another generation or two, especially in STEM fields, a step enthusiastically supported by high-tech employers in Silicon Valley.²⁰ By responding in this way, policy-makers could avoid the risk of encouraging more young Americans to earn college degrees only to find no need for their skills.

      At the same time, immigration would do nothing to increase the career prospects of employees who have seen their earnings stagnate or even decline over the past several decades. For generations, the American Dream has portrayed the United States as the premier land of opportunity where those who are willing to work hard enough can realize their ambitions, however humble their origins. This belief has been an important factor in maintaining social solidarity and securing acceptance of the existing economic system despite its high levels of income inequality. In recent years, however, a number of researchers have examined the evidence and concluded that the American Dream is actually just that—a dream. Far from being exceptional, our current rates of upward mobility appear to be lower than those of a number of advanced European countries.²¹ Relying on immigration to meet the demand for highly skilled employees will do little to change this situation.

      In addition, the percentages of our young people who earn college degrees continue to be much higher for the offspring of white and well-to-do Americans than they are for blacks and Hispanics or for children from low-income families. From 1995 to 2015, the percentage of whites aged 25–29 with BA degrees or higher rose from 29 to 43, while the percentages for blacks rose only from 15 to 21 and those of Hispanics from 9 to 16.²² The trends for young adults with an associate degree or higher followed the same pattern, rising from 38 to 54 percent for whites but only from 22 to 31 percent for blacks, and from 13 to 26 percent for Hispanics.²³ In short, the educational levels of blacks and Hispanics are not only much lower than those of whites; the gaps have widened rather than narrowed over the past 20 years. Immigration will do little to lessen these differences.

      Much the same is true of the levels of educational attainment achieved by members of different income groups. Among Americans born between 1979 and 1982, 54 percent of those from high-income families earned a BA degree or higher compared with only 9 percent of those from low-income families.²⁴ Larger increases have occurred in the percentage of low-income students graduating from community colleges. Yet these gains, though beneficial, do not result in career opportunities or average earnings premiums as great as those achieved by graduates

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