The problems are clear, but the solutions are difficult to get a handle on when it comes to higher education these days. The frenzied pace of change in the exterior world often makes lessons inside the walls of the academy obsolete just as they are being typeset in texts, leaving a lot to be desired in a tremendously expensive education. Only by modernizing institutional capital — including instructors — can higher education be reformed enough to be relevant and fulfilling to its primary customers, students.
The evidence is overwhelming and scarcely needs much support given that the education system isn’t all it can or should be. But for quick reference, an article in last Wednesday’s Emerald (“High schools’ lesson plans scrutinized,” ODE, Jan. 31) focused on the effort to better educate incoming high school students to be ready for collegiate academic demands. According to the article, a disturbing 40 percent of all students have to take remedial classes during their tenure here, which means they are behind in some form or another in their greater education effort.
But not all problems can be laid at the feet of lower-level public schools. Once students arrive at the University, they are forced into ridiculously rigid regions of study without being taught the basics of logic and ethics classically associated with a good liberal arts degree.
One of the main problems facing students is that there is no longer the expectation that people should be knowledgeable in logic and ethics. The ability to reason out the best and most appropriate decision befitting a given situation is surely appropriate for a generation that will have to face questions ranging from human genetic engineering and cloning to modernized warfare and our role as a superpower.
But it is not even so much a problem that students aren’t taught these fundamental skills as it is worrisome that the bureaucracy in place is entrenched and unwilling to change.
While this University will never be able to compete with Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Princeton, there is no excuse to not proactively seek institution-wide changes. It should be incumbent on smaller institutions such as this one to investigate new methods of instruction that help students retain more information while at the same time teaching them how to understand issues in a complex and dynamic environment.
The rigidity of study is a problem that stems from a bureaucracy’s inability to nimbly meet the needs of today’s demanding and dynamic world that changes as fast as the technology that drives it. If one has ever witnessed the process for change within a large institution, especially one with tenure safety for much of its human capital, it is obvious that there is a terrifying resistance to much-needed change.
A lack of change causes several problems that prevent University students from attaining the highest quality education possible. As education expands to the Web and other schools experiment with varying methods of study, the University fights any change that doesn’t include worker rights in foreign nations. That means our students are less competitive and less able to handle the demands of a changing world.
One of the main resisting forces to changing the educational process is the tenured nature of many professors. Guaranteed jobs allow professors to sit in an ivory tower and snipe at the school administration, governmental initiatives and social movements that don’t quite match their tastes, all without having to worry about developing any new ideas of their own. And of course, there is almost no chance of removing the tenure model anytime soon, because the people who help decide matters like that thrive on — that’s right, tenure.
But self-interested motives such as the tenure mentality and overall bureaucratic inability to change only dooms this school to ever-increasing mediocrity. Sure, there’s an innovation in computer science one year or the naming of a new worm species another year, but students will continue to come to the University and receive a decent but uninspired education that would leave classical educators shaking their heads in despair.