I recently read an article from somewhere. It got me thinking about the future of our higher education, liberal art education vs preprofessional in college (look like some US colleges may be the only non-preprofessional ones.)
I apologize it if this is too long. I could not provide the link to that article for an apparent reason (blog). However, I think I could provide a link to a Forbes article (about the same topic):
It’s been said the landscape of higher education has changed more in the last five years than in the last 50 years. As a professor, this concerns me. And it should concern anybody who goes to an American university or who has a relative/child who attends one.
… we still have the finest universities in the world. And the reason why is because of three things: 1) money, 2) age and reputation, and 3) the English language.
I did my undergraduate education at Yale, and my doctorate at Oxford. So I am intimately familiar with both systems. And sadly, Oxbridge (the amalgamated term to refer to Oxford and Cambridge) lags way behind the Ivy League universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
If you look at the World University Rankings (there are three different rankings, put out by the London Times, by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and by QS aka Quacquarelli Symonds), consistently the top ten are American and British universities. But in reality, American universities far outstrip even their British counterparts because they have much more money. Harvard’s endowment makes Oxford’s look like a pittance. The reason for this is America’s tradition of alumni fundraising. Conan O’Brien, who graduated from Harvard, was recently asked to speak at Harvard’s commencement. He joked to the graduating class: “There is also sadness today, a feeling of loss that you’re leaving Harvard forever. Well, let me assure you that you never really leave Harvard. The Harvard Fundraising Committee will be on your ass until the day you die!” Truth. So now the British universities are trying to play catch-up by starting alumni fundraising which isn’t part of their culture but it better become so soon if they are to stay viable.
Thus far, Oxbridge is able to stay competitive just because they have world-famous reputations…But reputation can only go so far—at the end of the day, it is money that is king in today’s world. Money can draw the best professors, and money can build the most advanced buildings, and money can purchase the best equipment for research and the biggest library holdings.
The other reason for the dominance of British and American universities worldwide, other than money, and age/reputation, is the English language.
One of the things that separates American higher education from the rest of the world is the emphasis on a liberal arts education—as opposed to a pre-professional education. The latter prepares you for a career; the former teaches you how to think, and then you go to your Masters or doctorate degree to prepare you for your career.
The rest of the world (including “rich” countries like Britain) looks at American undergraduate education and shakes their collective heads, as if to say: “How can you afford four years of just learning whatever you want, without it being relevant to your career? That’s a luxury nobody can afford!” This is why places like Britain (and the rest of the world) offer pre-professional undergraduate education where you learn your life’s trade between the ages of 17-21. For example, in Great Britain, if you want to become a lawyer, you don’t go to law school for grad school, you major in law as an undergraduate and that’s your law training. The problem with this is: what 17-year-old knows what they want to do with the rest of their life? Even 21-year-olds don’t know what they want to do with the rest of their lives!
So part of the crisis of higher education today is this (especially with regard to a four-year liberal arts education which doesn’t really give you many concrete skills): is it even worth it? The Chronicle of Higher Education has published numerous pieces on students going into over $100,000 worth of debt and not being able to find a job that can pay off that debt.
The federal government has begun to weigh into this too, because they are offering many of the loans that make college education affordable. And when students graduate and can’t find jobs, they default on their loans which makes the government lose money. So the government has enlisted the aid of accrediting agencies such as WASC (the Western Association of Schools and Colleges) to “crack the whip” and get universities to revise their educational outcomes to make their graduates more employable. Basically, they are orienting undergraduate universities away from a liberal arts education toward a pre-professional education. But is this a good or bad thing, that American colleges are starting to look like trade school.
Thus begins the reign of pragmatism. As a parallel, the golden days of airlines is gone when air travel was a luxury like sailing on a cruise ship. Now airlines nickel-and-dime you for everything, don’t even serve meals, and charge you for luggage and movies on board. Airlines have become cattle cars in the air, and universities have become cattle cars on the ground where personalized attention from faculty is giving way to churning out students (who are stamped with just a number not a name) in droves so that universities can stay financially afloat. We are shifting away from catering to students’ needs, to seeing each person with a price tag sticker on their head.
This is certainly the case with the PhD which has become a cash cow for universities. No matter that there is only one professor faculty position open for every 100 people who earn their PhD—universities just want the tuition money and thus “defraud” doctoral students by instilling in them the false hope that they will have likely employment upon graduation. By the time the students realizes what a dismal prospect getting a job is, they’ve already invested seven years of graduate tuition money. When an undergraduate student comes to me these days and says that they want to do a PhD, I say to them: “I don’t mean to discourage you, but that’s kind of like saying to me that you want to be a movie star or a professional athlete. It might be possible, but the chances are slim. And yet, I don’t want to say no to you lest I become like the high school coach who infamously cut Michael Jordan from the basketball team. Who knows, you might be the next Michael Jordan of academia. But if you go down this path, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” But how can I discourage them when I myself went down this path and earned a faculty position? It is a tough sell but I’d be hypocritical to say no to them.