Mission-free 'multiversities'

March 2021. Just when you thought it might be safe to back into the college classroom....

What is wrong with American four-year colleges and research universities? Although Covid is getting the blame for the perilous positions of many marginal colleges, as with most Covid related problems, there were plenty of co-morbidities in place before Covid struck, many of which would be fatal in and of themselves, were it not for the resilience of colleges to the reality of the real world.

One recent critique of the status quo, the president emeritus of MacAlester College (now at Harvard, which immediately makes me wary), offered cost cutting and the reduction of silo-like department structures. Those 'solutions' are band aids at best, and a useless exercise in futility in addressing the real problems at worst. Rather than the former, the system needs to be built from the ground up, sort of – but not quite -- zero-based budgeting. It’s the old, “If you were starting from scratch today, would you include this in your university?” More clean sheet thinking, less muddling through or incremental change. As to the latter, the university is really a multiversity, across disciplines and also across the other 80% of the university operations. They don't just educate, they entertain, feed, house, counsel, exercise, discipline (at least a little, sometimes, and usually without due process), finance, bank, network (social and information) and more.

Face it, a humanities professor has little in common with a social science professor, a STEM professor or a professional school professor. And their methods vary as well. You could do a humanities degree with a great library and three years of reading. Professors offer personal and unsubstantiated interpretations that might actually dilute the education effect rather than enhance it. You’d be better off forming students into book clubs, not three-credit classes. Or use the St Johns model. As to the social sciences, so much of their content is based on highly problematic ‘research,’ fueled by the ‘publish or perish’ syndrome that crappy or middling colleges use to try (usually in vain) to legitimize themselves as prestigious. Most of their research is trivial, almost never replicated, the product of p-hacking, and full of unreliable and invalid constructs, and confused over the difference between ‘statistically significant at p<.05 level' rather than truly meaningful research outcomes. The result is a lot of drivel presented to students in the majors they create. It is also the home of feelings over facts. STEM professors at least usually have some more objective measures and knowledge to convey, but they can be subject to political gamesmanship in the grant process needed to fund their research and to build their labs. At least engineers get certified and licensed, like CPAs or CFAs. Yet professional undergraduate programs are another animal. Business works if there is attention to the values and skills involved in an effective, sustainable business, not just theory. But I’ve seen the military do a better job of teaching strategy, teamwork, leadership, communications, and other skills that a business major needs. Or even the nimble thinking and creative decision making you’d want from a liberal arts major. On the other hand, education schools and 'majors' are a total waste of money.

The idea that a baccalaureate degree can be the product of forty three-credit courses completed over four years – which has become quite rare in itself – is ludicrous on its face. Or that a single letter grade assigned for each of these forty courses can somehow be added up, divided and averaged to provide a three-digit summary of that work – regardless of differences across disciplines and professors is just as absurd.

Missing in all of this is any real assessment or accountability for results of four years hanging out in the dorms. We need to assess knowledge, but also skills, values and aptitudes. Grading one’s students is almost a conflict of interest: Did they do poorly because of me, or because they did not do the work? Who decides if I am using valid test or grading metrics? And if student satisfaction with teaching gets me tenured, why should I be a critical grader? So I would propose a separate assessment process, much like the Brits use. Or this: When I was at Binghamton fifty years ago, we had a new academic unit, the ‘School of Advanced Technology’ (a precursor to computer science, data science, and IT) graduate program. Each year, each prof wrote questions for annual exams taken by every student AND every faculty member. The author of the question blind graded the exams and the passing grade was the lowest grade earned by a professor. MOOCs have problems with authenticating the person’s identity in granting a grade or degree. And as the college admission scandal showed clearly, even the SAT can be hacked by special test-taking circumstances and poor test security.

So we are left with core elements of a potential ‘college’: (1) transmission of knowledge, skills and aptitude; (2) knowledge creation with innovative, important and valuable research; (3) assessment of student potential (for admissions) and learning (for exit certification), and (4) system maintenance that ensures the processes to be sustainable, effective and reasonably efficient. You can do (1) or (2), or both, but you must do (3) and (4), and do them well, or (1) and (2) are much less effective, if not pointless.

Bottom line to me is this: Is a college education today costing up to $300,000 and four years of potentially productive employment a good investment? And that goes for ‘free’ college tuition, where the true cost of that education is costing taxpayers the bulk of the expenses. The answer is probably: For some schools, some majors and some students, yes. But not many. And at a huge social cost.

Colleges need to get out of the social engineering business (leave it to the churches and charities) and return to their original missions: enhancing the knowledge and skills of society by creating new knowledge and disseminating it well, creating life-long learners who 'infect' all that they touch with an appreciation of the most meaningful parts of life. Good citizens, good parents, good employees, good entrepreneurs, and good educators. Not social justice warriors. Not institutional myopia. Not political correctness. Rather, free speech, open academic inquiry, critical thinking built on knowing and understanding critical facts, spirited yet civil discourse, even disagreements. Science, not sophistry. A healthy skepticism bundled with fundamental truths. This might sound like I am asking a lot -- I am. But the hundreds of billions of dollars society devotes to education demands something from the educators and educational institutions in return, more than pablum and platitudes about the value and joy of learning, unless such joy is accompanied by serious attention to the things that really matter.

A significant obstacle is the difficulty of expecting significant change from within. Any person whose sent any time in the faculty lounge, at a faculty meeting or at an academic conference appreciates the quip about changing the way colleges do business to be akin to 'moving a graveyard' or, as a colleague noted, "The elephant in the room is that the elephant are making the decisions." This is not the time for a meeting of group thinking college presidents, or pious academics. Change is coming from outside the ivy-covered halls and in some cases, closing down the ivy-covered halls. There are smart people in those ivy-covered halls on campus. But we should demand more and better outside thinking and accept less hand wringing and whining from million-dollar university presidents.