I may be wrong, but, if anyone reads Professor Lewis’ book, along with Academically Adrift and Aspiring Adults Adrift by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa; and, my Tale Out of School , they will have a full understanding of how horrible higher education has become. Here is why.
Prof. Lewis tells, mainly in greneral terms, how a msiguided and unprincipled his own unversity has become – and he explains it well.
Arum and Roka’s books show what the outcomes are for students. Academically Adrift makes it clear that students aren’t getting an eduation in this corrupted system. Their Aspiring Adults Adrift shows how damaging that lack of an education can be for graduates.
A Tale Out of School shows, with a detailed case study, the example that makes the generalities and the data come alive. Specifically, it shows how universities motivations, strategies and lack of principles, directly change the education that students get from what they need, into what they think they need. This, of course, leads to the outcomes that Arum and Roksa observe.
To whet your appetite for Professor Lewis’ book, here are a few quotes.
“…Watching universities struggle to resolve problems reveals much about what does and doesn’t make them tick…” (p. 1). Kindle Edition.
“…professors who carried out the [2002 curricula] review proposed…a curriculum with no meaningful expectations at all, a formula they hoped would please their students and avoid academic turf wars..” (p. 3).
“…at…highly competitive schools, students receive more and better amenities and services…To keep their students and families happy, colleges shape their programs around student demands and desires…Universities are acting not on what students need but on what they myopically claim to want…” (p. 6).
“…Universites are.even unprincipled, in their responses to educational problems…”(p. 7).
“…many professors feel themselves… even contemptuous of, the larger and less academically inclined society…”(p. 9).
“… high expectations and demands from the students and their families meet shallow, pacifying responses from the university…”(pp. 13-14).
“…universities, eager to maintain their attractiveness in the marketplace, respond by matching concessions to complaints rather than offering educational vision…whatever the curricular complaint, they respond by relaxing requirements…”(p. 14).
“…the press of bad news drives policies, universities patch things that look bad rather than understand and repair things that truly are broken…” (pp. 14-15).
“…undergraduates are often the first people to be blamed for universities’ failures. Advising is bad? Well, students won’t seek it. Not enough enrollments in the language spoken on Pluto? Well, students today are so careerist…If many students take the easiest possible courses to fulfill distribution requirements, the students are heathens or slackers, ..”(p. 16-17).
“…These students are not soulless, but their university is…” (p. 18).
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