One Professor’s Observation of Higher Education

PROFIT MOTIVE AND INTELLECTUAL SACRIFICE

Teaching, for me, is a calling. To nurture another human to be a critical thinker, to be an effective and persuasive speaker, is my desired role. And I have hundreds of students who stay in touch, or contact me to thank me because what they learned with me helped them land a job, win a case, sell a product, heal a relationship.

Yet, I must abandon what I consider an imperative.

Like so many post-Covid crisis employees, professional educators are joining the Big Quit. Some are leaving because of health concerns amid the covid pandemic. Some, like me, are leaving because we cannot face, for one more moment, the disrespect, the negation, and the misguided, profit-driven mission of our educational institutions.

I used to care deeply about my students and their success. Now, I could not give a flying duck. I await the moment our reality is Idiocracy. Or Wall-E. I am taking my genius, my experience, and my devotion to educating others and leaving the playground. Society has decided learnin’ is too hard, and I have acquiesced to its repeated demands to kick me to the curb.

We have a flood of graduates who cannot think critically, who parrot whatever they are told by another parrot who sings the popular song, and who buy degrees but avoid education. You’d think with all these college graduates, more people would enjoy reading, understand personal finance, and successfully start businesses. But that’s not the case.

The question is why all these degreed persons are so ill-prepared for societal participation?

Tenure and Those Who Teach

Universities award tenure to the deserving, right? Yes, but how do we define deserving? If educational institutions believe attracting, hiring, and retaining instructors who have zero experience but use the correct pronoun is the route to educational success, they are sorely mistaken.

Many professors deserve their posts. No doubt. But, if you hang around long enough, you can find a means to sue to be awarded tenure. If you receive positive student reviews because your class is an easy A, you will get the ultimate pat on the back. Or, you just have to have the right letters after your name.

In a Business Communication course, for example, the directing professor has never had a job outside academia. She’s never analyzed a financial statement, or worried over job security because of failed profit or sales goals. Her student’s final project is a poster-board. They get to use markers and glue. My students write a business plan to attract investors. She has tenure.

Who academia values is deluded. Donations, applicants, and press coverage drive the hiring of professors based on degrees-earned, or popularity. Universities tout: We have 3,000 PhDs teaching here! I’m more interested if their graduates can read and write, think and contribute to society meaningfully.

So, why hire professors who, in many cases, have no skill or expertise? Because it ensures the next aim is effortless.

Keep It Stupidly Simple

Low-skilled professors make superior automatons. Professors who sing the administration’s song, and who, with limited expertise, merely follow dictated programming, are the ideal candidates to implement the Keep It Stupidly Simpleobjective. The initiative requires the elimination of core courses, the elimination of texts and reading, and the simplification of coursework.

Under the guise of cognitive science and diverse approaches to accommodate learning styles, universities are demanding a dumbing-down of instruction. “Don’t make it so hard. They don’t need to write a research paper. Skip the exam.”

The administration deemed my 3000-level junior course too hard. For that course, I carefully built concept upon concept with students completing four application exercises to demonstrate mastery of the material. They also had one research paper on a chosen topic, within defined contexts, and an exam. The administration demanded I shorten the paper to an essay and remove the exam.

Administrations also demand the elimination of complex textbooks and academic journals. “Let them watch videos or read periodicals” is the mandate. They decry additional readings. All that reading is deemed too much work and they direct professors to create slide presentations and video snippets so classes become little TikTok sound bites.

In the last five or six years, I have heard students’ demand to remove core requirements. “We just want to focus on our career courses.” When the hell did college become trade school? College should produce a well-rounded, intellectually superior person who can meaningfully contribute to society. A graduate was someone who understood culture, history, economics, politics, science and mathematics.

Over the years, I have witnessed a steep decline in students’ understanding of and acquaintance with these core topics. I have suffered the student who argued slavery should be illegal in the United States. Or the one who argued to eliminate the electoral college, but had no familiarity with its purpose. Or the student who asserted the president was the head of the state governors. These are the students demanding elimination of core.

The honor of attending college and earning a degree is dissimilar to a trade school. We have forgotten that precept. We ask: Why is reducing rigor the mandate?

Grade Gifting

When courses are geared to sixth-graders, most college students can earn a coveted A by merely showing up for half of the class meetings. The resulting university-wide high-grade average dupes applicants, employers, and the public into believing the education at that institution is valuable.

If a professor is determined to maintain college-level rigor, the administration will pressure him or her to inflate grades. Between negative reviews on Rate my Professor and low-scoring student surveys, the pressure is high to curve towards the A. Being rated “too hard” or “hard grader” is academic death. It’s not celebrated, as one would expect. At the end of the semester, you may get an email asking to explain your grade curve or justify why a student failed.

In a painful example, after a majority of the students failed to complete a single assignment or follow the syllabus in any manner, the administration feared I would issue failing grades. In a lengthy meeting, the administration communicated its fear about how the failures would “play.” They removed me from the course. The entire class received an A from my replacement.

Recently, a student handed in a plagiarized paper that had nothing to do with the assignment. When I failed her, she reported me to the administration. The administration investigated me for two weeks, requiring a dossier showing the steps I took to help the student, explain and justify the assignment, and ensure I had been fair. They did not hold the student accountable for gross violations of several ethical codes, although the administration confirmed her failing grade.

Students who do not participate at all, or fail miserably, still have a route to a passing grade. In a most-recent travesty, when I refused to alter her grade, the underperforming student forced the administration to change her failing grade to a passing grade. Because she was under a lot of pressure during the semester and the work was too hard and she was sad and she tried and, and.

When did the concept that a student earns his or her grade get lost in a sea of shifting responsibility? And why, we might ask, is all this grade inflation so necessary?

Come On In

Grade inflation is necessary because a large proportion of students are emotionally and academically ill-prepared for college. While many professors will dodge questions of student competency, I will declare that most of my students in the past ten years were unable to do mathematics, qualitative or quantitative research, or read or write past the sixth-grade level. And many of my students did not have a desire for knowledge or the fortitude to succeed.

That desire is key. The desire to buy a degree has replaced the desire to learn. Perhaps our misguided business environment, which demands a master’s degree to wait tables, is the driver. Perhaps it’s something else. But the result is apparent.

The requirements for acceptance into college have been eviscerated. Have a pulse and obtain that loan, and you’re in. We’ve eliminated–or started to eliminate–standardized testing. We have blurred the line between higher education and highschool or trade school. A university education, once meant for the academically successful, driven student, should not now become High School Two. Students entering higher education must be held to definite and clear standards:

• Be able to read and understand complex material.
• Be able to use and understand mathematics.
• Be intellectually curious.
• Be able to use the scientific method.
• Be able to explain cultural, economic, and political history.
• Have the tenacity and endurance built from years of dedication to his or her education.

If a student has not acquired these skills, or built that endurance, the solution is not to lower the barriers to entry. And the solution is not to kowtow to ensure retention.

When faced with the academic rigor required from dedicated faculty, many students, frankly, crumble. In most cases, inflating grades and simplifying courses are the panacea. In other cases, hand-holding is the rule. Ask a professor you know how many students have faked a death in the family. In my favorite example, when a professor-friend called the family to extend condolences, the deceased mother answered the phone.

By lowering the barrier to education, by lowering the standards, we subject people who cannot face the required academic rigor to undue stress — while creating an environment that must lower standards to keep these students — and where those who are prepared no longer receive the traditional benefits.

So, again, why all these accommodations? The flag-waving professionals argue the paradigm shift in higher education is to ensure inclusivity.

I call bullshit.

The Why

In the over twenty-years I have taught at the university and graduate levels, I can attest that successful, brilliant students have spanned the races, ages, and cultures of this planet. Acceptance standards and academic rigor do not see demographics. While I will concede that socioeconomic conditions can create a disparity in preparation for higher education, I still question the open-door policy that demands the rejection of high enrollment standards.

Could we not encourage those who are academically and emotionally unprepared for the rigors of higher academia to attend community colleges? To participate in preparatory and remedial programs? As a taxpayer, I would be behind such initiatives.

Oh, wait. We have those programs — and have since the 1970s.

To graduate an educated electorate, who appreciates culture and diverse viewpoints, and can think critically, were once the goals of higher education. Those goals were based on the value of an evolved and evolving society.

Today, the value is profit. Pretty gardens and impressive arenas. Big name talking heads spouting drivel and granting autographs. The goal is strictly to make money to fund outrageous administrative salaries. Institutes of higher education focus on the numbers: Acceptances, enrollment, graduates. And tuition dollars.

Quantity not quality, baby.

And society is and will continue to pay dearly for the result.

Assignment: Do some research and see who is celebrating — and benefitting from — the demise of higher education.

But that’s probably too hard for you. Just go binge watch some reality television show and vote for the person the news tells you to elect.