The PBS documentary "Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk" raised serious concerns about the state of higher education in the United States. John Merrow, host of The Merrow Report and education correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, talked to students, faculty, and administrators at four very different institutions to explore what happens at college between admission and graduation. The film highlights many challenges facing colleges and universities today.
To encourage continued discussion of this significant topic, the Center of Inquiry asked for responses to "Declining by Degrees." We appreciate those who answered our invitation with the following thoughtful observations.
Find out more about "Declining by Degrees."
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Paul Ranieri
Associate Professor of English
Ball State University
"Declining by Degrees": A Vision of the Past or a Plan for the Future?
Could any of us involved with higher education really be surprised by the issues raised, either by Hersh and Merrow’s documentary or their collection of essays? All of the issues cited are critical ones. We would waste our time arguing that any of these problems can be ignored.
The critical question, however, remains: "In what context should we address such problems?" What overall perspective, frame of mind, or vision should direct our problem solving?
We could surrender to history and culture and take an economic stance. Many institutions have consciously or unconsciously raised that white flag. Those of us concerned for liberal education have noted with alarm the rising number of entering students over three decades who say they are pursuing an education to make money. However, this issue has become more critical with the past decades’ steep rise in the percentage of college costs being passed directly to students. Which of us feeling that kind of economic pinch would not often ask ourselves if we are receiving our money’s worth? Our institutions tell state legislatures that they benefit the economic health of the state; why wouldn’t students wonder if we don’t benefit their economic futures as well.
Faculty members are not immune to this subversive economic self-interest. In such an environment, teaching and research pull in more extreme directions. Can we readjust that tension to benefit teaching, or more importantly, learning? Will faculty do that, drawn by their own desires to enhance their own economic futures with more research, grants, and patents, more released time from teaching?
For me, I’ll cast my lot with an older, more ancient view of liberal education grounded in such concepts as practical wisdom, clear thinking/expression, collaboration, civic engagement, and arête. Space does not permit further details, but a history of liberal education (see Bruce Kimball’s Orators & Philosophers and H. I. Marrou’s A History of Education in Antiquity) documents the success across centuries of what Kimball calls the "orator" tradition. About its ancient exemplar, the Greek educator Isocrates, Marrou points out that Isocrates, not Plato, educated fourth-century Greece, while Cicero notes that, "from Isocrates’ school, as from the Horse of Troy, none but leaders emerged."
Little in either this documentary or collection of essays can guide us toward readjusting the present for the future. The documentary is a jeremiad meant to renew the popular appeal of "A Nation at Risk" from two decades ago. The essays are a mixed lot: some well-written but mainly descriptive of problems (e.g., Maeroff, Deford, Gregorian, Levine, Suro/Fry, and Johnson Kidd); others are lost so deeply in their own ideologies of the past that they cannot adapt their recommendations to the twenty-first century (e.g., Kirp, Sperber, Wathington, and Botstein). Two essays hint at a vision (e.g., Gardner and Schneider). Both are thought-provoking, inspiring in places, but in the end both require a clearer sense of where liberal education has been in order to set a more direct course for re-energizing an honored past for a challenging future.
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Graduate Students at the University of Missouri-Columbia
sent in by Christian Basi
Responding to a call from the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, we as students in a graduate class in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Missouri-Columbia offer the following response:
The video "Declining by Degrees," while raising serious concerns about the state of higher education in the United States, gave a very biased and limited view of colleges and universities. Often showing one extreme or the other in several categories related to higher education, the video does not provide Americans with a comprehensive view of higher education.
Discussing financial aid, the video argues that higher education institutions give too much merit-based aid. This statement reduces the quality of the academic achievement that these students have rightfully earned. It also gives a negative illustration of low-income students, focusing on attrition as the only outcome. The video assumes that low-income students do not have the academic achievement to gain merit scholarships.
Similarly, the video portrayed tenure-track professors as not caring about their students and focusing only on tenure and research. The commentator appeared to pick the most extreme examples from his interviews. If the commentator truly spent two years on each of these campuses, he must have witnessed other examples of faculty who expressed interest in their students and were able to complete quality research while creating a successful learning environment that emphasized teaching.
Most of the students in the video also were depicted as not being academically committed, seeing college solely as a social outlet. There are students, displayed by the national merit scholars in the video, who view college very seriously and study many hours for their classes each week. This example demonstrates how the video displays the extremes without giving an accurate view of college.
Finally, the portrayal of athletics was skewed, narrow, and incomplete. The video did not bother to give the academic progress report of the athlete at Amherst, even though it discussed the choice of the University of Arizona player who chose to leave school for professional sports.
If the producers really wanted to give an accurate portrayal of college, they would have devoted more time to showing average or typical college students instead of trying to find extremely negative examples of college life.
Are the examples in the video true? Yes, we submit that colleges and universities do have issues relating to student learning, financial aid, and the balance between teaching and research. However, there are many colleges and universities that have demonstrated successfully how to provide the proper environment while challenging their students to learn.
PBS was at fault for not preparing properly for this documentary, instead only choosing to focus on the negative, and potentially damaging the hopes and dreams of many prospective students.
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Arthur Quinn
ASHE member
Boynton Beach, FL
A Future-Oriented Reflection on "Declining by Degrees"
In the PBS special "Declining by Degrees," an underlying theme seemed to become evident throughout the presentation of examples of various educational institutions. That recurring theme appeared to be the contradiction between the role of schools to provide quality education and the practice that seems to focus almost exclusively on quantitative means to measure success. It is easy to report numbers enrolled, retained, and graduated as an interpretation of intended outcomes. This practice requires little effort or reflection and, unfortunately, is rewarded as institutions compete for public funds, private grants, and increased revenues. This money-centered model is transforming education from opportunity to privilege as favor is directed toward students with financial resources and valuable skills, and away from those that need it most.
Furthermore, some instructors and students become resigned to this reality and adopt a cynical attitude, as they may consider themselves powerless to strive for higher ideals in education. A culture is born out of an administration that values amounts over quality. This filters down to faculty who eventually consider their efforts at quality teaching to be futile in such a culture and choose to comply with the system rather than challenge students. Students, in turn, learn how the system works and their learning curve is most apparent in working the system rather than the content of their education.
Individual professors and administrators can make a difference, but that difference is in a limited area, for a limited time, and is not sufficient to change the culture that breeds the problems described in the program. When people that make a difference move on, their influence may be quickly displaced by the pervasive tendency to educate by the numbers. This is essentially an ethical problem.
The recent trends in higher education demonstrate a system that places greater value on appearances than on reality. Test scores, GPAs, and cohort rates are used to justify requests for funds and to market education as successful. What is being questioned is whether these numbers accurately reflect what they claim to represent. It may be clear that misrepresentation of what students are actually learning is not ethical. The more troubling trend may be that all stakeholders in higher education will collectively submit to this system and fail to adequately answer the self-analyzing question, why be ethical?
The emphasis on quick turnover and short-term goals is counterproductive to the purpose of higher education. Real success is more accurately measured in the long-term. For students to earn their education, they must be challenged by instructors that support long-term goals. In turn, administrators must challenge instructors to improve teaching. When administrators value the long-term goals that define good education, a culture is created that encourages instructors to share those values and, in turn, students also share those values. In the end, the success of higher education lies in the ethical values held by all stakeholders.
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Kristin Wilson, Jessica Starke, Masako Hosaka, and Beth Holt
Graduate Students at the University of Missouri-Columbia
As graduate students in a higher education program at a research extensive university, we watched the PBS video "Declining by Degrees" and were bewildered by its presentation of college life and the considerable generalizations made about students and faculty. The messages of the video include: many students drink, poor students cannot access four-year institutions, smart students are segregated into honors programs, students are apathetic and do not earn their grades, the financial burden of college is overwhelming, and faculty either do not care about student success or do so at the expense of their careers. Although we believe higher education in the United States has weaknesses, we also believe the high drama of the video underemphasized the strengths.
Our personal experiences as faculty and staff in higher education institutions do not match the portrayal on the video. Noting the production techniques utilized in the video imply generalizations can be drawn from individual vignettes, we offer the following vignettes as a counterargument.
"As a full-time faculty member at a community college, my teaching load is five classes a semester with class sizes capped at twenty students. I spend a great deal of time outside of class counseling students on coursework and advising them on transfer issues. My institution is committed to developing and maintaining relationships with our transfer institutions, and I make this a reality by insuring the curriculum in the courses I teach is as challenging as the curriculum in similar courses at our transfer institutions."
"Having worked in Residential Life for the past five years, I continually see students who are invested in their classes, focused on their academics, form relationships with faculty, and who are extremely successful. My department is committed to bridging academics and student life via learning communities, co-enrolled classes, and continuous educational experiences in the residence halls."
"Although the college I work for is not as selective as Amherst College, students received individual attention from tutors and instructors. The academic support center was always crowded and many students studied at the library at nights as well as weekends. It seems to me that the quality of education does not necessarily relate to the prestige of school as it was portrayed in the video."
"As a former high school teacher, I know from first-hand experience that students who make the highest grades are not necessarily the brightest. Universities should give those with lower secondary grades the chance to prove themselves. What surprised me most about this video was the elitist view of honor students it presented. At my alma mater, honors classes were available, but were open for anyone wanting to participate in the program, regardless of whether you lived on an honors floor or had a full academic scholarship."
As we work and study in institutions of higher education, we see commitment, empowerment, and dedication in students, faculty, and staff. We see the problems, but we also see learning.
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Steve C. Schenk
Assistant Professor of Biology, Darton College (Albany, GA)
Doctoral Student in Higher Education, Florida State University (Tallahassee)
Review of Declining by Degrees
It seemed from the introduction to Richard Hersh and John Merrow’s book Declining by Degrees that their primary goal for the book (and its companion documentary) was to place public focus on undergraduate education in order to get higher education at large to focus on the same issue. References by the distinguished contributors to mostly outside influences (e.g., annual U.S. News and World Report rankings; money tied to the private sector or athletics; faculty focus on research), however, came across more as a lament of the status quo than a real call to self-reflection. Not only does the tone adopted by many contributors detract from potentially potent arguments, but the lack of consensus among them undermines the very argument that a series of core problems are weakening American undergraduate education.
In spite of this, some portions of the book were enlightening. Carol Schneider’s examination of the interplay between liberal studies and professionally-oriented curricula provided a comprehensive and honest examination of a fundamental problem with which faculty and administrators constantly wrestle. Vartan Gregorian and Arthur Levine each superbly explored the full breadth of problems facing American higher education with a focus on challenges to (Gregorian) or mismatches within (Levine) higher education. And while some contributors seemed to miss the two-sided nature of many challenges for higher education, Frank Deford’s acknowledgement of conflicting inequities within college athletics was both refreshing and sobering.
Of all the contributors, James Fallows came closest to dealing with a very serious concern within higher education that seemed lost in most other sections of the book. In examining the "marketization of the admissions process," Fallows indicated that the stress and anxiety most Americans associate with college admissions is restricted largely to a relatively small number of students applying to top tier institutions. There is, as Fallows points out, a range of selectivity within American colleges and universities, and only a small number are highly selective.
It is on this last point that Fallows approaches a point largely untouched by most of the contributors: the wide gulf in America between the research universities, the smaller four-year colleges, and the community colleges. While several contributors noted the emergence of for-profit institutions in higher education (e.g., University of Phoenix) and made reference to two-year institutions, the bulk of the concern expressed by the contributors revolved around issues of greatest relevance to the larger institutions. While there can be no argument that public perception of higher education in America begins and ends with the large research universities, there can also be no argument that an increasing number of American college students spend some (if not all) of their college careers in smaller four-year and two-year institutions. In a nation where the gulf between rich and poor grows ever wider, it seems a sad omission to not consider the parallel problem within higher education while debating the roles of admissions, money, and research focus at the big institutions.
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To learn more about "Declining by Degrees," we encourage you to visit the official "Declining by Degrees" website, which provides a wealth of information and relevant links. We invite you to also read the following:
• Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk, by George Leef
• Transcript of Tavis Smiley & John Merrow, Tavis Smiley: Late Night on PBS
• Interview with Richard Hersh, by Tim Gorel, University Business editor
• Declining by Degrees, by John Merrow
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