NAS Blog

In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, Emory University history professor Patrick Allitt discusses the research finding that college students are putting in less and less time on their coursework, yet expect (and mostly get) high grades.

I’m particularly glad to have Professor Allitt comment on this because his 2004 book I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student was such an eye-opener, detailing his difficulties in getting students — at a pretty strong university — to take the work seriously. You can read my review of his book here.

Philosophy professor James Otteson weighs in with some thoughtful comments here.

In today’s Pope Center piece, my colleague Jay Schalin writes about the flap over the fact that some colleges have accepted funds from BB&T Foundation with the proviso that the money be used to support courses in which students will learn about Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and in particular her defense of laissez-faire capitalism.

The argument raised against this is that colleges are supposed to allow the faculty to decide upon curricular matters. Naturally, some professors who are adamantly hostile to the case for laissez-faire (although I doubt that many have ever read Rand’s Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal or have heard a thorough explication of the damaging consequences of government interference in the spontaneous order of the free market) say that schools should shun BB&T money. Jay gets a whiff of double standard here, since professors on the left don’t much complain about the importation of material into the curriculum they find congenial. Rather than a defense of princple, their stance seems to be an instance of selective indignation.

Econ 101 is often taught as a dull, mechanistic and to many students baffling exercise in graphs and abstruse theories having little apparent relationship with life. Adding a BB&T catalyzed course that allows students to see how Rand and other advocates of laissez-faire (Ludwig von Mises, e.g.) looked at economic questions would be a beneficial offering.

Colleges should be open to the marketplace of ideas. Like the marketplace of goods and services, sound ideas tend to win out and unsound ideas tend to be rejected. (I say “tend” because it doesn’t happen automatically. After all, we still have cigarettes in stores and professors who preach socialism.) John Allison of BB&T is trying to get colleges to open their curricula to another idea (or set of ideas). No harm in that.

In this Chronicle post, Richard Kahlenberg responds to some criticism (which he labels as “right” and “left”) of his signature issue, namely promoting socio-economic diversity as another criterion in college admissions. I don’t think his responses are convincing. Moreover, he overlooks two assumptions his case rests on. I know that at least the latter of the two has been attacked because I have done so.

First, Kahlenberg leaps to the conclusion that just because a student comes from a relatively poor family and succeeds in school well enough to qualify for college admission, that student is a “striver” who has “overcome obstacles.” I don’t think that follows. Being relatively poor in the U.S. does not mean deprivation of anything essential. And with the lowering of academic standards, graduating from high school with “good” grades is pretty easy these days. Some kids from poorer homes no doubt have had to deal with serious problems and disruptions around them, but we shouldn’t assume that low-income status implies that. Besides, there are non-poor students who have managed to deal with difficulties.

Second, what is the reason for thinking that it’s a “reward” to go to an elite college or university? If, for example, a student from a relatively poor family in eastern North Carolina could get into East Carolina on his merits, is it much better for him to instead go to Duke? The assumption seems to be that schools with higher US News rankings are “better” schools, but what justifies that assumption? Courses are not necessarily taught better at Duke; they may be taught less well. Will the student have a brighter, more lucrative career with a Duke pedigree than ECU? Possibly, but it’s by no means certain. The reverse is possible, especially if the student is near the bottom of the more intellectually competitive student body at Duke. Finally, the more prestigious degree might help the student land his first job, but in the long run people are rewarded on their productivity, not their credentials.

I’m with Roger Clegg (see his comment) in thinking that the less colleges give preferences to applicants because of characteristics such as family ancestry and circumstances and the more they evaluate them on academic interest and aptitude, the better.

In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, Professor Donald Downs (author of Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus) discusses the lawsuit UNC-Wilmington professor Mike Adams has brought against the school, in which he argues that its refusal to promote him was grounded in hostility to his writings and thus an infringement upon his First Amendment rights.

Downs doesn’t think the case is clearly black or white, but worries that the district court’s ruling in favor of UNCW (the case is now on appeal to the Fourth Circuit) represents a further erosion of First Amendment protection for speech by public employees.

I don’t think this is an easy case either. We have here a collision between the First Amendment (or at least “First Amendment values” of uninhibited speech in the public realm) and another consideration that has, unfortunately, been given short shrift for most of the last century — freedom of contract. I’m strongly inclined to say that employers and employees, public and private, should be free to enter into whatever contracts as they mutually agree. Professor Adams thought he deserved a promotion (a modification of his contract with the university), but the UNCW administration didn’t agree. Should that decision be overridden in the courts because Adams’ writings bothered the administrators? Does the First Amendment mean that public employees can never suffer any adverse consequences because of things they’ve said or written?

Suppose we turn this case around so that the professor who wants the promotion is a rabid, hard-left socialist whose posts on, say, The Daily Kos, cause heartburn among the school’s administrators. Would it be a blow to free speech if they told him that he won’t get a promotion because his outside writings are such an embarrassment? Or would it be a sensible and harmless exercise in freedom of contract?

That’s the subject of my Clarion Call today.

I like some aspects of the book. Best of all is Wildavsky’s argument that we should abandon educational mercantilism — the notion that nations have to compete to be tops in educational “investment,” university prestige, and similar distractions. Because knowledge is not constrained by national boundaries, we should stop worrying about musty old “us versus them” ideas. Also, Wildavsky doesn’t go for the tendency to bash for-profit higher ed, showing that it fills some important niches.

What I didn’t care for so much was the author’s enthusiasm for the trend toward globalized universities, with lots of American universities setting up campuses in places such as Abu Dhabi. I see that as mostly glitz and conspicuous consumption rather than true educational advance.

The careful image campaign that the higher ed establishment has conducted for decades seems to be wearing off, if this Washington Examiner piece is any indication. The writer observes that lots of American students now get their high-cost college degrees, but can’t even do basic math. Many of them can (and will!) hector you about “sustainability,” their concerns about social justice, institutional racism and so on — but they can’t work out the simplest of numerical problems.

A large number of jobs now “require” college degrees, but that requirement rarely has anything to do with actual knowledge. It’s a screening device to keep out supposedly less prepared and trainable high school graduates, but it’s becoming clear that many college graduates are no better.

Princeton’s Russ Nieli has an illuminating essay on Minding the Campus entitled “How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others.” It absolutely knocks the stuffing out of the contention we hear so often from college administrators that their reason for using certain preferences is that a more “diverse” student body will enhance learning and break down stereotypes. If they actually wanted to do that, they would look for students who really do bring different beliefs and perspectives and would drop the bias Nieli shows against students from military families, those who have been active in groups like 4H, and so on. They aren’t looking for Justice Powell’s phantom “educational benefits of diversity” but are merely looking to fill quotas.

Nieli advocates that elite colleges get over their diversity mania and follow what he calls the Cal Tech model: focus on enrolling students who are the most academically talented and the most eager to learn.

In today’s Pope Center piece, Professor Robert Weissberg argues that they’re more likely to do the opposite. They tend to promote mediocrity and encourage at least some profs to pander to the students in order to get nice evaluations.

In a course where most of the students are actually there because they want to learn, a professor could certainly benefit from their feedback. On the other hand, where the typical student is disengaged, ill-prepared, and enrolled in college principally to have fun, evaluations are a waste of time at best.

That’s what most people say, but the truth of the matter is that quite a few highly successful individuals never earned college degrees. Some of them have created great companies that ironically demand college degrees for jobs far less demanding than that of their non-college CEOs.

In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, Jenna Ashley Robinson writes about people who are very successful but who don’t have any college credentials.

Maybe a future piece should be about people who have college degrees but can hardly even keep a low-skill job.