Before I begin in earnest, welcome to the first in what I anticipate will be a 6-part series of posts designed to (I hope) foster a deep conversation about higher education in the U.S. (I’m sticking with the U.S. context because it’s the context with which I’m most familiar. This is not to exclude non-U.S. readers from participating – just to be up front about my own vantage point.) If you’d like to know more about the idea in general, head on over to this page before you continue.
Now. You may be asking yourselves why I think this is an interesting thing to do, or why we should bother doing this on blogs wherein many of us aren’t writing under our professional names. Well. Here’s the thing. I think that this is exactly the medium through which to get people from all across the profession, from many different disciplines and institution types, and from many different backgrounds together to talk in an honest way both about their experiences and about potential strategies for the future. And I’m sick of what gets left out by “forums on higher education” like this and this. Not that there’s anything really wrong with what those things try to do, but they sure do leave out a lot of voices. And I’m a whole lot less interested, personally, in sweeping pronouncements about “Higher Education” in general (despite my tendency toward polemic when I post sometimes) than I am in strategies that can be used locally to institute slow and lasting change. I don’t have a whole lot of faith in collective action when it comes to these questions – primarily because “higher education” in this country is not a monolith. So, on with the show!
- Community College/ Local State School – 13th grade, where stupid people went because they couldn’t get in anywhere else, for losers who would live in their parents’ basements forever, and very cheap and very low quality.
- State School – Where I’d be going, because it would mean leaving home, and it was “good enough.” The tuition wasn’t too expensive, and they did have an honors college. Why bother even considering anything else?
- Expensive Regional Liberal Arts Schools – Too small, too expensive, too filled with people who had parents who’d attended college but who didn’t seem to realize that they would be paying a million dollars for something that wasn’t all that great and that nobody outside of the area had ever heard of.
- Elite Research Universities/Elite SLACs – People like me don’t get into schools like that. And they certainly don’t have the money to pay for them. Didn’t consider applying to one of those.
Looking over this list, I do think I was sort of savvy in that I did understand that there were different types of institutions. But looking over what I thought the different institutions signified, I wonder how much more clueless I could have been. You’ll notice my analysis very much hinged on money, and it very much hinged on wanting to leave home but understanding that as a first-generation college student there was a limit on where I could go. It didn’t occur to me that there would be differences and advantages to attending one type of school over another. I didn’t think about things like class size or the quality of instruction. I assumed (and really didn’t understand how wrong I was until graduate school) that the job of “professor” and the experience of “college” in terms of what happened in the classroom was pretty much the same across institutional types.
Of course, now I know better. I know exactly the ways in which students who end up at the regional state school don’t get the same education – no matter how hard we and they try – that their counterparts at elite universities get. I understand that community college can actually be the path to a higher-status degree, if one is willing to do the time at the CC in order to save up for the more elite school. I understand that those regional liberal arts colleges aren’t necessarily a waste of money – that they afford a kind of personal attention and opportunity for networking that one never sees at a big state school.
Anyway, I wanted to begin our conversation here, because if we’re going to talk about higher education, it probably would be helpful to be clear about what we’re talking about, particularly since I really don’t think most of the general public realizes that there are anything other than cosmetic differences and differences in price tag between the different types of schools. They really don’t understand that how much you pay really can make a difference. And part of the reason that they don’t understand that is because we don’t tell them.
My university, for example, is a regional comprehensive with the lowest portion of state money directed toward it of all the state schools in my state, with one of the lowest tuition costs, and 70% of its total budget comes from tuition. (And people wonder why we rely on adjuncts.) I teach 4 courses a semester, and while my teaching load primarily is at the undergrad level, we do have a Masters program (which, given our reliance on tuition, is needed for the money it brings in, aside from whatever good it does for students). Research is part of the gig, there is very little support/reward for doing it. Obviously my experience isn’t identical to everyone else’s, but it’s funny: when we start talking about Higher Education, all of a sudden the experiences of people at major research universities and elite schools are taken as representative. I wonder why we expect experts from schools that have so much money on top of tuition to have some sort of insight about what schools that are so tuition-driven are supposed to do. Bizarre.
But so anyway, what do you think the similarities and differences are between different types of institutions in higher education? How do the array of institution types get in the way of systemic change? Have the potential to assist it? How can we talk to one another from different institutional vantage points and contexts in order to reach some sort of consensus about the state of Higher Education generally? Is reaching that sort of consensus actually useful, or should we be dealing with these different segments of the Higher Education universe separately? If you ruled the world, what would the future of these different institution types look like? Why? What are the consequences of this tiered system in terms of access to education, educational quality, etc.?
Ok. Chat away. You’ve got a week, and then we’ll move on to the next topic….
Reassigned Time 2.0 
I teach at a CC and this is still pretty much the general opinion of them.
I definitely thought of CC as the 13th grade, but I started going to one in the 11th grade, so I had a reason. After that, it all came down to two categories: Jesus College and Non-Jesus College.
I’d say location matters a lot, too. One recent hobby horse of the Mark Taylor/Dean Dad contingent is “the comprehensive university is unsustainable.” Having never attended or taught at a university in New York or Boston, I can’t comment on whether the universities and colleges in those towns could get away with only one Philosophy or Speech Comm department per city between them (as Taylor recently proposed). But the state of Wyoming has exactly one four-year university, and if it stops being comprehensive, where will the future teachers, engineers, speech therapists, etc. come from? Not every educational marketplace is as overcrowded as, say, Connecticut…
Just for a bit of regional variation, I attended undergrad in Canada (Yes, I’m a Canuck), and did my MA in the UK (in the US now, working on the third part of the trifecta). Obviously I can’t tell you what it’s like to work at a Canadian university, but I can say this: pretty much all schools are public, or “state” schools. The University of Toronto, for instance, was founded in 1827 as King’s College. It has a very good reputation, has something like 65-70,000 students between its three campuses, and when I went there, tuition + fees (not residence, that was much more) was roughly $5,000 a year. I guess what I’m having trouble understanding is how it got to this point where publicly funded universities got such a bad rap in this country. I’ve literally seen people turn their noses up, saying things like “well, yeah, but that’s a state school“. Or are you covering that in a later installment, Dr. Crazy?
I made the same financial breakdown/calculus you did, and from the same standpoint, but came up with “regional mid-tier SLAC” as the answer, because I rationalized that they would have more money to give away, so it would be cheaper for me in the long run than going to a state school (and yes, this was after 1.5 yrs at a community college).
Now I teach at a school much like yours, and though I try like hell to give my students the same level of education I got, I just can’t. I don’t have the luxury of classes of 15-20 students. I can’t assume that my students have the basic skills that I did, or won’t drop out in the middle of the semester because someone lost a job, got pregnant, had a parent or child with a medical crisis. Most importantly, my institution’s stated mission is to “produce job-ready graduates” — a far cry from the mottos of most SLACs — and most of the students were never taught to think of a university education as anything other than a ticket to more financial security than their parents had.
It’s just a different world, with a totally different set of variables. Yet I do my best. My 100-level students will be reading Greek plays and medieval epics. My M.A. students will read a book and an article every week for the first two-thirds of the semester. “A” grades will still be reserved for excellence, with the understanding that excellence is rare.
But I’m swimming against the tide here, and that is an exhausting enterprise.
I went to a selective public high school in NYC, then an elite private university. My Ph.D. was from another elite private university. I taught briefly at a second tier elite SLAC, and then at a completely non-traditional university for adults. My husband taught at, and retired from, a third elite private university. I now teach at an underfunded R1 in a state that has a broken political system and is therefore itself broke.
My students here are very bright, but most of them have not had the exposure to the world that so many students at the elite universities have; they struggle with working, with English as a second language, etc. They don’t read as easily, and I’ve adjusted my assignments somewhat. (Actually, I realized when I taught at elite university as opposed to second tier SLAC I could give my students Hobbes and Locke and they understood them.) And because we are underfunded, none of us can give them the attention they deserve (and all students deserve). They have to take the initiative and seek us out. The flip side of it is that I rarely see the sense of entitlement I see people complaining of…
So I try to be demanding but supportive. This week my 100+ freshpeople are reading 30 pages of a Roman legal code; next week, some Augustine. And we’ll talk about it.
There are differences within public state universities, too. I was talking with my cousin’s daughter (who is a junior in high school), and she is considering attending Northern Arizona University rather than Arizona State or the University of Arizona (her choices of her home state’s public universities), and she is leaning toward NAU because it is smaller. I think that the differences within your category #2 matter for faculty and students.
Thanks for getting the conversation started, everyone. One thing that I think is becoming clear from these comments is that even from within the 4 general categories there are many further sub-divisions. So, for example, can we really consider the Flagship state university alongside the regionals (I’d say no: I’d say that we’ve got to consider research-intensive publics in most cases alongside the elite privates, though there are problems with that too….)
The question I continue to have, though, is whether there is any sort of model for newly envisioning higher education – a model that would address the economy, the increasing pressures to enroll more and more and more students, etc. – that can possibly work across institution types? This is always where arguments about unions fall apart for me, quite frankly, because while it is true that all universities have teachers, for example, the conditions of their labor differ radically depending on institution type, geography, the individual school’s mission, etc. This is not to say that I’m against unions, but rather that I don’t see how a union structure necessarily can accommodate all of the needs of those who fall beneath the umbrella of post-secondary education. (Maybe different unions for different institution types? Though, of course, that only works in states that will negotiate with unions….)
@Vellum – When did public education get such a bad rap? Well, in truth, I think that the history of post-secondary ed in the US is such that the publics were always at a disadvantage, but I think this became even more pronounced after the GI Bill. Remember, many (most?) state universities began as teachers’ colleges, and so they always had a reputation as being inferior to, for example, the Ivies. In some respects, I think that the divide between institution types perhaps best illustrates class divisions in the US. For somebody who never thought college would be an option, going to the former teacher’s college down the road is a HUGE leap; for somebody with a lot of privilege who always assumed they’d go on to higher education, the former teacher’s college is never even a possibility. (Even an academic under-achiever from this sort of background would go to a LAC of some sort in most cases.)
@B* I think you’re right that things like size are something that parents and prospective students consider, though I’d argue that they often matter less to faculty than one might expect they would. A lot of times faculty loads are adjusted accordingly, and a state school that “sells” personal attention isn’t necessarily offering faculty the resources it would take to really give that to students. (Not that I have any experience with that.) At any rate, I’ll talk more about this when I post later in the series about the “experience” of going to college vs. education.
Ok, I have to go back to writing. I look forward to watching the conversation continue!
At my CC class size is really attractive. Although I have a heavy teaching load, my classes are capped at 25. The emphasis here is definitely on “job training” so online learning is crucial. 2/3 of my load is online. I do consider myself a “professor” as I do resarch and some writing. Service is really big also. I have at least one service type / committee meeting per week. Publishing is not valued too much in the CC system and it is quite difficult to do when you have 6 classes every semester. This lack of pedigree gives us the “grade 13” label. I do think for the money students can get a very good education at a CC if they apply themselves.
@Dr. Crazy — First: regarding the history of public vs. private institutions in the US, I didn’t realize the history there. I suppose that makes some sense, even if it does still continue to smack of elitism. Second: regarding unions, while I’m not generally a proponent of unions (I find them to at the very least lead to inefficiencies, often by channeling money that could be spent on their members into paying for a beaurocratic structure that is supposed to work for them, but I digress) I do also believe there is a time and a place for them. Perhaps if this were the route we wanted to go, a question I would encourage a lot of thought about, it would be prudent to legislate that each institution receiving government funds and/or assistance in any way should be mandated to have a workers’ union; that is, one individual to each institution, rather than one overarching organization for a whole range of different universities. A union needn’t be between all universities to be effective at ensuring collective bargaining and workers’ rights.
I think it’s important to distinguish what these different types of institutions are selling, and compare it to what they are providing, analyzed from an economic/class.
The elite research universities and elite SLACs are selling access to the professional/managerial class that rides the coattails of the oligarchy, and they do a perfectly good job of providing this service. They are selling this service to the children of the middle-class who seek an upgrade and to those who are already in the professional/managerial class and seek to maintain that class.
The rest of the secondary education system is basically selling access to the middle class, and while they used to do a decent job of providing this service, current economic conditions are fucking this up. This service is being sold to the children of the middle class who seek to maintain their status and to the children of the working class who seek an upgrade.
I should add to what I said earlier: the biggest difference between my students at my current institution and those at the elite schools I know is in cultural capital. I’ve come to think that this is a really helpful concept. And part of what I’m about is helping my students get the cultural capital that students at elite institutions mostly take for granted.
State universities have different reputations in different parts of the country. After all, until they were defunded, the California universities were excellent. So were, for instance, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The New York ones, and New England ones, were (in the 1970s) definitely second rate, because there were all the SLACS. So it’s not just flagship vs. regional comprehensive, it’s regional.
Susan makes a good point, one I’d like to push a little further. Compared to the east coast, there are relatively few SLACs on the west coast. As a student who grew up in CA, in the middle class, I thought SLACs were for people who couldn’t get into state universities. I never considered the elites because those were for rich people. Until I was in a grad program, I never met anyone that I knew had gone to a private college (except my neighbors’ sons who went to a Catholic school in large part because it was a Catholic school). I never thought real people actually went to those schools, sort of.
I had no clue that people thought students from state schools were absolutely inferior until I was in grad school (in a state school with a LOT of folks from elite universities). I have to admit, I was shocked.
I went to a CC after my BS and Peace Corps experiences, and had great teachers and really interesting classes. Several members of my extended family went to them first because they were cheaper; but most of us who went to school went to one of the two tiers of state schools.
Isn’t it fair to say, though, that California has been the lone exception nationally in terms of state schools? That’s the reason that I left California out of it in my comment. And it’s worth noting that there are *excellent* state schools across the country, as well as in California: my point was not that state schools in general are lesser but rather that the vast majority of state schools are not those exceptional research universities: they are those schools like the one at which I teach which fulfill a regional comprehensive mission.
Which then brings us back to the point: What are the differences between schools of different types/status levels? The biggest one that I see in my own context is money. The two R1 type schools in my state also get the highest proportion of state funds for education (for, contrary to what the public seems to think, money for universities is not allocated in some sort of equal fashion). I’d also say that there is a greater emphasis on graduate education, which also influences the reliance on adjunct labor (i.e., a lesser reliance on adjunct labor than at a shop like mine where grad programs are about tuition more than they are about teacher training). Between LACs and my place I’d say that there is a huge difference in “community” that is fostered, as well as in the level of attention that students can expect to receive.
Are there similarities? I do think that there are, but I wonder whether the above differences are insurmountable. Even in this comment thread we don’t seem to be able to find the similarities… We seem rather to be going off on tangents t move us away from thinking about a common ground….
So here’s the question: can we come up with a definition for what “higher education” means that includes all of these institution types? And if we can’t, then should there be more transparency about the different types of education one receives at differing institutions?
FWIW, I think CPP’s analysis is pretty accurate, though I’d argue that the *language* of what non-Elite schools is selling mimics the sales pitch of the elites, which does obfuscate the differences between the two. (Which is also why I think so many of my current students feel like they’ve been sold a false bill of goods by my current institution – for 4 years everybody tells you you’re getting the equivalent of a private education at a public school price, and then you graduate and you’re working at Office Depot or something.)
I’m guessing that several western states are more like California than not: Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho. I’m guessing the Dakotas, too, probably Arizona and New Mexico as well.
“swimming against the tide” is a very dangerous activity for the untenured. The untenured teach more than 75% of my college’s classes.
My campus is a combination of an old trade school, an old voc ed school, and a post-WW2 community college. We now call ourselves a four-year comprehensive. We admit nearly all applicants, and we have significant percentages of socially-promoted freshmen with seventh-grade reading skills. Time-to-degree? Never, as they mostly never finish and instead drop away.
On the bright side, fewer working-class students have the low self-esteem common to my generation. And some of them have the sense of entitlement once peculiar to the wealthy.
@Bardiac – do you mean in terms of attitude to state schools or do you mean in terms of the status/quality of the schools themselves? If you are thinking in terms of attitude, I’d suspect you’re right, but in terms of the schools themselves… i dunno. I’ve got some colleagues who teach out west at schools like mine, and it doesn’t seem to me that their situation is anything comparable to the situation of being in the UC system….
““swimming against the tide” is a very dangerous activity for the untenured. The untenured teach more than 75% of my college’s classes.”
See, this is one reason why I think it’s valuable to have this sort of conversation in a bloggy environment, though. I think a lot of us – and most especially those without tenure – feel like we can’t have an honest conversation about these issues on our own campuses, and I feel like the national conversation leaves a whole lot of voices out. But so again, what I wonder is, what does “higher education” or “post-secondary education” mean? Is there any foundation from which institutions of differing types then build off of in different directions? Is there any common ground?
I meant in terms of attitude. I think each of those states has an R1 (or more) that’s well respected within the area, and regionals which vary. But those states tend to have relatively few private schools (compared to the east coast and eastern midwest). Colorado might fit as well.
I do think there’s an additional issue to address with California. I’m not sure if anyone said it. There are many excellent schools in the UC system with great reputations but the CSUs are another story. There’s a huge difference between going to UC-Berkeley and going to CSU-Stanislaus or between UCLA and CSU-Long Beach. The CSUs are often more vocationally oriented than the UCs. The hierarchy is built right into the system.
I think that if we’re really going to define what “higher education” and “post-secondary education” actually mean, we need to look at the purposes they serve. We can divide institutions up by size and “quality” if we like, but if we really want to get to the root of it, we need to decide why people go on to further education after high school.
There are a lot of reasons. An additional on-paper qualification (insert random BA here); additional actual practical knowledge (BEng, BBus, Trade Diploma); an increased ability to understand the world and make informed choices in life (liberal arts?); networking, both social and business; social stigma for not going (parental pressure, etc.); a requirement for a desired career path; the sheer impractical love of learning. I’m sure there are more, and I’m sure some of the off-the-cuff ones I just mentioned overlap with one another.
“Can we divide universities into categories by these functions?” is the next question. Surely they overlap, but the focus of some institutions is more geared toward some than others. I think this is what we’re trying to do when we talk about this. Comrade PhysioProf is on the right track, I think, but oversimplifies a little (not entirely, though) with the class-warfare cynicism.
Back in Canada they tend to divide up universities by their functions, at least for rating purposes (maclean’s, anyone?): so you have “community college” (which there means vocational school — until recently CCs couldn’t grand degrees, only diplomas), “primarily undergraduate” (SLAC, maybe?), and “research university”. There’s also the idea of the “engineering school”, which, while primarily undergraduate, is undergraduate with a focused mission (and concomitant prestige).
Do these line up? And once we’ve decided on the primary missions of certain universities, then I think we can start to say what “higher ed” means for each — because all they have in common as a group is that they provide something beyond what you get from high school.
Here in the UK we’ve been going through an expansion in Higher Education perhaps equivalent to what the US went through after WW2, with similar results in lowering the cultural capital accrued by having a degree.
An article in yesterday’s Guardian used a nice simile: “The scramble for degrees resembles the audience at a theatre standing up: as each row stands up, those behind them have to get up on their hind legs too – so that no one can see the play any better but everyone is a lot more uncomfortable. ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/aug/24/degrees-willy-nilly-not-helped-economy
Ruthibell – thanks for passing that quote from the Guardian along… it really does describe the situation quite well, I think.
Kind of in response to Vellum, but really I go off on a rant…. Here’s where I’m an idealist: I think the whole, “some institutions are just about job training” thing sucks. Or, if that’s what we want, then don’t call them colleges and universities. Call them “job training centers” and proceed accordingly.
The fact of the matter is that if education – even at non-R1 university sorts of places – wasn’t something beyond job training, I wouldn’t be a professor today. I surely didn’t start out aiming to be one or thinking that there was even any possibility that this was a path that was open to me. (I started off in journalism – a degree that easily translated into a job, which is the most common thing for students who are first-gen college students.) Where I am today depends on the fact that I had instructors who gave me more than job training – who opened up my world to see that there could be more to my life than just getting a job. A system in which we say that institutions of different types serve entirely distinct missions is a system that locks students like the student I was out of certain futures. Maybe that’s where we’re headed, and maybe that’s what a lot of people want. I, personally, find that way of thinking repugnant.
Here’s the thing: I teach a lot of students who are majoring in fields that easily translate into identifiable middle-class jobs: nursing, accounting, construction management, organizational psychology, education, to name just a few. *ON PAPER* we can say that those students are “just” going to college to get the required piece of paper for a middle-class career. BUT. Those students – and I really do believe this – do gain something from those courses that they take outside their majors. They learn that intellectual activities can bring more pleasure to their daily lives. They learn that there can be a point to intellectual inquiry even if it’s not career-related. They become curious about people, places, and experiences with which they don’t necessarily identify themselves. They learn to empathize, and they learn to challenge.
That, to me, is what “education” should be for all people. “Education” should be what serves you when you lose your job or when you don’t get that promotion. If it’s all about training for the workforce – the needs of which are constantly evolving – it’s a pretty bullshit undertaking. I say that not because training for the workforce is unimportant – obviously it’s important – but other things are at least *equally* as important. *And we should know that if we take as our example all of those auto workers who were “trained” in particular jobs that now no longer exist.*
This is also where I really object to the claim that comprehensive universities in a given location should basically divide the humanities up between them. I’m not saying that all universities in a given region should necessarily offer *degrees* in, I don’t know, philosophy, but the idea that if you go to Northwest Podunk U. that you just don’t get introduced to philosophy? Because you’re not a “real” student to be educated but rather just a greedy little neanderthal who’s looking for a piece of paper that will give her access to a job? THAT bugs me. A lot.
@Dr. Crazy: I’m going to try not to respond in an emotional way, but I think you just pressed a button I didn’t know I had. I’ve rewritten this three times, and I’m still not sure it’s going to say what I want it to.
I think what you’re trying to say is that education shouldn’t ONLY be for job training, and that even those attending in order to say, learn to be an electrician, should still get some degree of a liberal arts education. That, I agree with.
On the other hand, what it looks like you’re also saying is that ‘merely’ training students for work in trades is somehow beneath the function of an institution of post-secondary education — this from your “don’t call them colleges and universities. Call them “job training centers” and proceed accordingly” comment.
I’m not sure it’s fair for you or I to say what education “should be for all people”. Are you arguing that what you call ‘job training’ isn’t an education? It may not be a liberal arts education, but I think saying that it’s not the place of the college system to train people for specific jobs is a bit off base. For some people, specifically those who are attending college for the sole purpose of learning a trade, that is their reason for going. I don’t think that it’s any less laudable to pursue one subject in order to get one specific job than it is to pursue a general liberal arts education for the purposes of intellectual edification.
Vellum – I’m glad that you posted this comment. Let me try to clarify my position. I am not at all against the idea that some forms of education (and even some pieces of a university education) are about getting the necessary credentials or skills for jobs. We have no quarrel there.
I do think, however, that if a student attends a university and if the expectation is that those teaching the student will have Ph.D.s and if the expectation is that the student will come away with *the same degree as a person attending an elite university* then it is our responsibility to say what “an education” in that context means. (So I’m not saying those other things don’t count as education, but no, I don’t think they count as “higher education” in the common usage in the U.S.) If it’s not for us to say – those of us who work at universities and who shape curriculum and teach students and do research – then who does have that right? That *responsibility*?
(Aside: so far, the people who have been saying what education means the most and the loudest are people who pretty much abhor the work that universities do… and then those who respond back are at elite institutions. I’m not sure I want to leave the discussion of what education is or should be to those groups.)
As for the student who only seeks to learn a trade, great. I have no quarrel with that student, either. I *don’t* think a university degree is for everyone, and I know I’ve had students who probably would have been better served by going to a trade school rather than to my university. And I’ve known students who ended up learning things in addition to the job-training they sought at my university in spite of their initial intentions.
I guess my issue is this. I think that it is wrong for us to say that universities like mine, which offer the same degrees as elite universities, are responsible for job training first and foremost. Yes, our missions are different from those of research universities. I get that. But at a fundamental level, if it is my responsibility to educate students to receive a degree in my field that has any sort of meaning, then it is my responsibility to do more than to train them for x job. Universities like mine primarily serve a population of students that includes first-generation-to-attend-college, ethnic minority, non-traditional, and working-class-background students. If we say that a university degree from my sort of university is *not* about developing students intellectually *beyond* job training, then, well, I think that we are failing those students. We’re saying that those students are somehow not worth the same education as their more privileged peers. Or that they’re too low-class to want the same education.
Is what we really want a system in which only those who attend elite institutions – whether Research or SLAC – get to have an education that’s about more than job training – with just a few slots for “scholarship boys” (thinking of Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy here)? Are we really that unwilling to say that every institution of “higher education” in the U.S. – from community college to regional state university or LAC to Flagship research university to elite SLAC or private research university – should have a fundamental responsibility to do more than get students ready for a job? Is that really so radical?
Dr. Crazy – I’ve been discussing this with some other people today, too, and I realize now that you have something in this country called an Associate’s Degree, which is, I am told, the primary domain of the trade school. So I think this all fits together nicely with what you were saying about degrees, and specifically about the need for some form of equivalence between the same degrees from different institutions. Elite institutions don’t grant Associate’s Degrees in electrical work, for instance.
As for me, you won’t get any argument that regardless of institution type, those getting a Bachelor’s Degree of whatever type should indeed be getting some wider form of education in order to help them better understand the world at large. Moreso than just preparing them for a job.
I myself wouldn’t even be averse to the suggestion of mandated “breadth requirements” (that was what the University of Toronto called them in my day) in even an Associate’s Degree, so that every student who goes to school the learn plumbing or nursing or electrical work might have to take a course a year on something unrelated, perhaps political science or literature or philosophy. It surely couldn’t hurt to have a more educated (and therefore more adaptable) workforce.
The only thing to remember is that, in terms of the vocational schools, those attending are probably doing so because they lack the luxury of time. These are often two-year, sometimes three-year programs designed with the goal of getting people into apprenticeships or directly into the workforce with a minimum of expenditure. Perhaps you’d rather not call them “higher” education, but they’re certainly post-secondary, and when we start using terms like “higher” we start getting into value judgements, which I think we should try to avoid.
But yes, in terms of SLACs, state schools, and so-called “elite” institutions, -any- organization granting a Bachelor’s degree or higher should be trying to, in those programs, do more than provide job training. Indeed, in an ideal situation, a BA (for instance) from any of the above types of schools should provide a similar level of education, and of opportunity, to those working toward and receiving them.
Perhaps, rather than arranging matters by school type, we ought to be arranging them by the kinds of degrees granted? What say you?
Vellum, I see what you’re getting at with the term “higher education” but again, in the U.S. context, that is the common parlance for talking about colleges and universities. See, for example, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education. I suppose I could fight the semantic battle against it, but seriously? I feel like we have bigger problems than the fact that calling college/university education “higher education” implies a privileging of one kind of education over another.
(Also, it’s probably fair to say that I’m comfortable with the idea of privileging one kind of education over another and with value judgments in general. At the end of the day, if we never make a value judgment then everything is relative and nothing has value. Of course we need to be conscious of the judgments we’re making and of their consequences, and we need to be willing to revise those judgments. But I have a hard time seeing why judging the kind of education that happens at colleges/universities as particularly valuable – maybe even more valuable than other sorts of education – is a bad thing.)
As for arranging matters by degrees granted, I think doing so is less simple than you imply. My institution awards AAs, BAs, “Certificates” (both within and outside of degree-granting programs), MAs and, now, an Ed.D. That’s not at all an uncommon mix for a regional state university. In fact, I just did some quick googling – top research universities also offer AA degrees. (I imagine they don’t actually award many, but whatever the case, they are on the books.) Instructors at the undergrad level teach students across degree programs within the same course.
Further, what do you do with community colleges who market themselves on the basis of their affordability for students who plan to xfer to the state school for their BA? While those students *may* get an associate’s degree along the way, that isn’t where they’re going to end up. If all they get is “job training” at their CC, they will enter their BA program WAY behind the game.
This, among other reasons, is why I think that what it means to get a college/university education – from cc to elite university – needs to have some sort of foundational, generalizable meaning.
Dr. Crazy — I guess we’ll just have to disagree about the value judgements thing.
As for arranging things by degrees, I don’t mean arranging institutions by degrees granted, I mean arranging our expectations based on the degree program. Such that an associate’s degree from even an “elite” university would mean the same as one from a community college.
The problem about the student who starts an associate’s and ends up way behind in a bachelor’s is a bit of a sticky wicket, because there are people who go community colleges to get associate’s degrees for the sole purpose of getting a job. These are typically not well-to-do individuals who have to pay on a per-class basis, and I think to force them to take (read: pay for) more than a few breadth requirements would be cruel when their stated purpose is to get the knowledge and skills required for a job. Perhaps the answer would be intermediary, breadth- and skill-building programs.
I have a friend in Ontario who took a 2-year community college program in electrical work, and who this summer is enrolled in an accelerated program to get her up to speed so she can continue into an electrical engineering bachelor’s program in the fall. Perhaps something like this, an intermediary step, should be the norm when going between a primarily work-focused program and a more liberal arts-focused one?Dr. Crazy — I guess we’ll just have to disagree about the value judgements thing.
As for arranging things by degrees, I don’t mean arranging institutions by degrees granted, I mean arranging our expectations based on the degree program. Such that an associate’s degree from even an “elite” university would mean the same as one from a community college.
The problem about the student who starts an associate’s and ends up way behind in a bachelor’s is a bit of a sticky wicket, because there are people who go community colleges to get associate’s degrees for the sole purpose of getting a job. These are typically not well-to-do individuals who have to pay on a per-class basis, and I think to force them to take (read: pay for) more than a few (not “any”, mind you, it’s certainly fair to expect them to take some) breadth requirements would be cruel when their stated purpose is to get the specific knowledge and skills required for a job. Perhaps the answer would be intermediary, breadth- and skill-building programs.
I have a friend in Ontario who took a 2-year community college program in electrical work, and who this summer is enrolled in an accelerated program to get her up to speed so she can continue into an electrical engineering bachelor’s program in the fall. Perhaps something like this, an intermediary step, should be the norm when going between a primarily work-focused program and a more liberal arts-focused one?
If students in those programs (who went into those programs to get specific jobs) want to make the leap to a more liberal arts bachelor’s degree, then maybe an intermediary program would be be the best option, so that they aren’t way behind when they get in. That way, only those who choose to pursue a more liberal arts education have to pay for that.
The problem, I suppose, is that you can’t say “this is what education at a college/university means” unless you accept that job training is at least one of the roles that colleges and universities play in our society. That’s why I suggested dividing things up by degree, so that you can at the least say “this is what it means to have a BA” and “this is what it means to have an associate’s in electrical engineering” and “this is what it means to have a PhD”. Because I’m having a lot of trouble reaching much of a “foundational, generalizable meaning” for all degrees and all programs.
Thus what I’m suggesting is the idea that a more job-geared program, say, an associate’s degree, would require fewer breadth requirements than a bachelor’s degree — not none, but fewer. In that way, I suppose you could say “to have a degree from a college or university means that you have learned skills beyond those learned in high school, and have had your horizons broadened to more fully encompass an understanding of the world at large” or, you know, something like that. What say you?
Not much time to respond, so quickly:
I see what you’re getting at in trying to break it down by degree. The question is, if the whole reason we’re discussing it is to talk about how to make higher ed. sustainable given the realities of budget constraints that are probably not going anywhere, global employment conditions, etc., what does breaking it down by degree do? How does doing that assist with figuring out the adjunct problem, or the problem with the gutting of the humanities, or the problem of the increasing corporatization of universities, or the oversupply of PhDs in many fields, or problems with accrediting bodies vs. resources, etc.?
This is the issue: funding needs and resource needs don’t neatly break down in terms of kind of degree that students receive. Further, even schools that are primarily BA-granting in the US sell themselves to the public AS job training (see Notorious’s comment about her situation way up thread).
As I see it, a practical benefit of trying to find common ground between these institutional types is that it would allow us to try to find some common solutions for some of the overarching problems in higher education generally – solutions that aren’t just imposed by the elites on the none-elites or imposed by accrediting bodies on institutions or imposed by corporate or legislative interests. If finding that common ground isn’t possible, then I’m not sure that we will find workable solutions across the board. I think, perhaps, that the only way forward at that point is through greater stratification of institution types, and greater ghettoization of community colleges and then, subsequently, of regional comprehensives, leaving all but the most privileged classes (whether we’re talking about student population, region, or faculty) out of the conversation.
[…] link love! August 28, 2010 — nicoleandmaggie I like Dr. Crazy’s new discussion format for these big issues. But commenting seems like extra work to me! A good read […]
As I see it, the only way to prevent and/or reverse the stratification of degree-granting institutions is to ensure that the same degree means the same thing, regardless of where one receives it. If everyone can agree that a BA is a BA is a BA, regardless of where one receives it, then the so-called “elite” institutions don’t get to define the terms of the discussion. Surely an agreement on what it means to grant a specific degree would constitute common ground, at least between institutions that grant that degree?
As to your questions regarding how it’s going to help make post-secondary education more economically sustainable, this is how I see it:
The problem is one of common ground. If a specific degree means a different thing at each university or college, then their goals are going to be different and their economic policies to address those goals are going to be different. If those degrees mean the same thing, on the other hand, then they could all work together toward finding the best economic model for providing those degrees.
It makes sense in my head, at least.
Just found this, am looking for descriptions of types of institution so as to advise people on it for job market. So my interest is different.
What I have realized by experience, that I did not know: I never applied for any jobs not at elite research institutions and elite SLACs, except this one, which I applied to on experiment.
What I wish I had known: many of the things I enjoyed about my public elite research institution (which was very inexpensive when I went there) were the “state school” aspects of it. It did not resemble a SLAC at all.
@ “I do think there’s an additional issue to address with California. I’m not sure if anyone said it. There are many excellent schools in the UC system with great reputations but the CSUs are another story. There’s a huge difference between going to UC-Berkeley and going to CSU-Stanislaus or between UCLA and CSU-Long Beach. The CSUs are often more vocationally oriented than the UCs. The hierarchy is built right into the system.”
They are two systems. The CSUs were originally state teachers’ colleges, “normal schools.” They were upgraded to universities, with additional programs, in the 2d half of the 20th century and they vary a lot in character and quality. The UCs are the elite system, originally Berkeley was the only one, and they’re public Ivy or close to it.