Young Americans buried by student loans want fresh thinking from presidential candidates on the crisis.
Source: Democrats Offer Ways to Make College Affordable – The New York Times
My questions:
The fundamental problem in higher education today is not affordability. It’s ACCOUNTABLITY – or, rather the lack of it.
The real questions for each candidate is:
1. How are you going to ensure that students get an education, not just a degree?
2. How are you going to keep colleges from doing what David Riesman observed them already doing in 1980; that is, catering to the
“…wants of students [which are] are quite different from the “needs” of students…”
3. In specific cases, what are you going to do when department chairs at colleges like Washington University in St. Louis ask math professors like me to make critical engineering requirements into “cookbook” courses? and when a Dean of Academic Integrity writes – in response to an email telling them that the students that do poorly are the ones who cheat on their homework – that their main concern in “retention”. (The documented details are on my blog inside-higher-ed )
We can no longer afford graduating students that are far less educated that 30-50 years ago – as documented in the book “Academically Adrift”, which every concerned citizen should read.
If Thomas Jefferson was right about the dire consequences for a democratic society without an education citizenry, then we are in dire straits in America.
(Jefferson’s quote and some disturbing facts from “Academically Adrift” are on my blog.)
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