Crisis on Campus_ A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities - Mark C. Taylor [7]
While many professional schools and vocational programs are doing a good job preparing students for viable professions and careers, most graduate programs in the arts, humanities and many of the social sciences are far less successful. Many of the skills cultivated in graduate programs and passed on to undergraduates are of diminishing value. It is, of course, essential for young people to learn how to read carefully, write effectively and think critically. But reading, writing and critical thinking, like knowledge itself, change with the times. With the development of sophisticated digital technologies, the resources for writing expand beyond the printed word to include animated images, sounds and graphic designs that allow for creative interaction between producers and consumers. As these resources spread, it is important to assess thoughtfully their advantages and disadvantages.
The insistence on narrow research and formats like traditional doctoral dissertations and heavily footnoted scholarly articles unnecessarily limits the creative possibilities for writing and critical thinking. While many professors are serious scholars and dedicated mentors, too often they are afraid of experimentation and change and fall back on the familiar past, making education a process of self-replication, insisting that students do exactly what has “always” been done. The past must give way to a future in which there is ample opportunity for collaborative interaction at every level of the education process. Teachers have much to offer their students, but students also have much to teach their teachers. Over the years, many of my undergraduate students have introduced me to new ways of writing and teaching that digital technologies make possible. Faculty members should work with undergraduate and graduate students to develop additional opportunities for creative expression fostered by new media.
This long and difficult process of reform will not succeed if we do not acknowledge how variegated the landscape of higher education is today. There has been much discussion about the social consequences of the increasingly inequitable distribution of wealth. What goes unnoticed in these debates is that capital is intellectual and cultural as well as financial. The story of higher education in America is a tale of two worlds: wealthy elite schools and poor public and private schools. The challenges faculty members, staff and administrators face in these two worlds are inverse mirror images of each other and, thus, one solution will not fit all institutions. If education is as important to our future as most people believe it is, we must find a way to bridge this gap by developing programs to redistribute intellectual and cultural capital. This will require new government programs designed to foster cooperation among the haves and have-nots in higher education. If the government can afford to bail out large corporations, big banks and financial institutions, it can afford to assist struggling colleges and universities.
I have learned over the years that if significant changes are to occur, they must begin modestly and grow widely. Any effective transformational strategy will have to be both bottom-up and top-down. In many ways, what is needed might begin most easily at the undergraduate level, where there is sometimes more flexibility and less disciplinary rigidity. But graduate programs at major research universities train tomorrow’s teachers and set the professional standards by which they will be judged. It is, therefore, also important to begin the difficult process of transforming centuries-old traditions that still govern the upper levels of higher education. In order to suggest the kind of tactics that can be used to initiate change,