Higher Education?

High Education?
by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus
Times Books, Henry Holt & Co. 2010

If you have college age children, anticipate having them, or look back on your own college years wondering about the quality of your education and/or the balance in your student loan accounts, you should read this eye-opening account of higher education in America.

The authors are experienced educators. They address the question of whether the value of education is reflected in the costs incurred. In this regard, they evaluate the full range of colleges from the Big Twelve to the school down the street.

The picture is not very pretty. The cost of education at major universities, public or private, can approach $ 200,000 or higher. Many students are saddled with loans that must be repaid, often from incomes that would never rationally justify the debt incurred. I am a fan of the Dave Ramsey school of financial management, which would advise us not incur debt that is not justified by the income stream that is likely to be forthcoming. Actually, Dr. Dave would say don’t borrow anything, work an extra job and go to school on the cash plan.

Mr. Hacker and Ms. Dreifus examine the world of the professorate, including the role that tenure plays in making that world somewhat less than ideal from the standpoint of providing education to young students. Use of adjuncts and teaching assistants at the supposedly best colleges, as well as power point classes taught in darkened rooms with students playing games on their laptops or handheld devices is troubling.

The role of athletics, absence of training, focus on pet subjects of professors that have nothing to do with the real world in which students must earn a living, and the changing nature of student bodies are all addressed in a readable and enjoyable manner.

In the end, the authors conclude that our colleges and universities have lost track of their basic mission of educating our young people to take their place in society. This is a significant indictment. They review the work of President George W. Bush’s Spellings Commission, and their earlier “No Child Left Behind Program,” as well as other research seeking to improve the situation.

I thoroughly enjoyed this fine work, and so will you. I look forward to the sequel in which the authors will lay out a solution.

I must say that I attended a state college and a Big Twelve law school. I continue to believe that I received a fine education at both institutions. My adult children have accumulated a total of six undergraduate and graduate degrees at a variety of public and private colleges. My parents were both college professors at a public university, and I taught at a public university law school long ago. As I read Higher Education, I kept reviewing my own experience as student and financier. I must say that the checks I wrote were the best investment I ever made, in myself and my children. My own thought is that the world of high education is hardly perfect, but what is? We need to provide the very best that we can for all of the young people in our country if we are to succeed in a competitive world. This is a range of subjective views that I look forward to discussing. It is all very interesting.

Warms, Cym