Posted on 01/14/2025 1:45:52 PM PST by karpov
A common refrain among observers of American higher education is that it changes at a glacial pace—if even that fast. The structure of our colleges and universities serves largely to protect faculty and administrators who are comfortable doing things pretty much the same way they were done a century ago. Many argue that our colleges desperately need to make changes but cannot.
One of those observers is Brian Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College in Minnesota. He has written an engaging, informative, and sometimes frustrating book entitled Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education.
In the book, Rosenberg calls upon his years of experience as a professor and administrator to present a bleak picture for much of higher education (specifically schools other than those with gigantic endowments) because of institutional features including shared governance, tenure, and the fixation on scholarship and reputation.
He writes, “Yet this industry that ostensibly fosters growth and transformation in its students just cannot seem to change or transform itself in ways beyond the incremental.”
There isn’t anything new in Rosenberg’s analysis of arteriosclerosis in higher education. Higher-ed insiders have long noted that it is stuck with old if not ancient practices, but Rosenberg makes his case in an appealing and often humorous way. Isn’t this, however, a case of crying “wolf”? After all, our higher-ed system has managed to survive despite its resistance to change.
Rosenberg argues that although American higher education has coasted along fairly well in the past, conditions are changing dramatically.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
We could lose about 90% of our universities and not really suffer from the loss.
As long as there are sheep willing to be fleeced then higher education will remain stuck in the past. It is in their self-interest to do so.
I don’t think there is any other service that has outpaced inflation more than the higher-ed scam. Just ridiculous amounts of bloat and waste.
I just saw a statistic on Gen-Xers between 55 and 60 years old and 11% of them still carried personal student loan debt (i.e., not their kid’s). Wow.
Education is important, but cold beer is importanter.
Higher Ed is stuck in the bog of Peer Review. Community paradigms become canon; dissenting voices are isolated.
Now, collectivism is the message of the campus, and they have pulled up the draw bridges.
What they can’t see is what happens over time when there is only one genetic code in a population.
There is so much that can be done to enhance the education experience that it’s not funny.
There is no reason, other than dogma, that we can’t have the education system quality that we had in the 1950’s.
Send your kids to Trade school or trucking college.
NO! ITS STUCK IN THE WOKE PRESENT
Yes. The accreditation process assures that they’re about 100 years behind the times.
The unions don’t help either.
When a university has as many administrators and staff as students (or are close to approaching that scenario) costs are going to unreasonable, and educational results are unlikely to change for the better (and will probably be worse).
If higher education was stuck in the past we’d have a far greater educational system with extremely smart graduates.
Higher education has eroded in recent years to an overpriced educational system that produce idiots at a staggering rate with useless degrees in useless studies that further erode society.
I wish. The days of teaching reading, writing, rhetoric, science, math, medicine, philosophy, architecture, engineering, and all the other hard sciences are long gone. Now they teach garbage to dummies who have no business being in college.
Administer to student ratio, stuck in woke useless degrees and add to that constantly new buildings and facilities not related to education.
those that before man flew in the air declared themselves “ post modernists “ ?
and
” progressive” ?
thought they were unburdened by the past and were marching into a bright marxist pagan utopia ,
and where the cause of all crime , sexual restraint, was eliminated.
the new aristocracy of credentialed chomo secular humanist experts that herded all humanity into a new world order.
say it isnt so .
/s
teaching students to hate america while teaching them to cut off their testicles and breasts in the process isn’t written in history books...
Baron Trump should show the way. Drop out after 1 year like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Throw in Tiger Woods.
I’m sure his dad could give him a job in the family business. Rebuild Pacific Palisades. Be the point man. 2044-he’ll be what, 38? POTUS material by then.
baron trump showed the way to his father’s interview on joe rogan’s podcast...
Some colleges have replaced tenure with five year renewable contracts. So a professor will be formally evaluated every five years and his or her contract may or may not be renewed. Typically the actual evaluation will be in year four, so if the contract is not renewed, the professor has one year to search for a new position.
I am sure studies have been done to chart the student/faculty ratios over time and the student/administrators and staff ratios over time.
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