The College Charade
Here's one message that college seniors won't hear from graduation speakers: "higher education" is a mess. We have plenty of superb colleges and universities, and many students get excellent educations. But on the whole, our colleges are educationally undemanding and economically wasteful. They are a symptom of low educational standards-and a main cause.</br></br>The attrition rate among college students is enormous. Of entering freshmen at four-year colleges, only 41 percent have earned a bachelor's degree after six years. At community colleges, the dropout rate appears to be even higher.</br></br>Two-thirds of college faculty members say their schools increasingly teach what students should have learned in high school. Students don't disagree. About 40 percent of incoming freshmen say a main reason for going to college is to improve "reading and study skills." In 1971, 22 percent said so.</br></br>The value of many degrees is suspect. Nearly 30 percent of bachelors' degrees are in "business" or "communications"-double the rate of 20 years ago. In general, these degrees don't make significant intellectual demands on students or provide important technical skills (such as engineering).</br></br>Our college and university leaders are aware of their problems, but few discuss them candidly. Derek Bok, the president of Harvard, recently wrote a 15,000-word report on U.S. higher education without mentioning any of the facts listed above. College leaders see themselves as the victims of poor high schools. This rationalization is at least half backward.