People tend to be increasingly cynical about higher education.
Tuition and fees have increased markedly in the last 40 years, more than doubled, according to Bankrate. Equally troubling, many students leave college without a diploma and still have substantial debt. Approximately 40% of college students who take out loans never complete their degree. According to a University Business report, the dropout rate is higher among borrowers compared to students who go to college with little or no debt. This is legitimate anxiety.
To add insult to injury, some struggle to find jobs that justify the debt. Many people question whether a college degree is worth as much as it used to be. Often, a college education as preparation for vocational work is seen as a mismatch from inside the campus gates. Shameful. Graduates feel unprepared for the workforce. Many degrees appropriately lead to graduate study or professional education rather than placement in the workforce, but students need to be made aware of that on the way in. Powerfully important is a strong core curriculum where students are exposed to the fundamentals of history, political science, writing, natural science, and numeracy. Unfortunately, some institutions undervalue the authority of the core curriculum by substituting too many classes offered based on slivers of faculty interest rather than broader student need. College is worth it when correctly conceived, but 22% of respondents in an Inside Higher Ed study believe it is not. That misperception lies on the doorstep of universities. Peddling Nirvana through a weak degree program is a mindless mission.
Increasingly, according to a Pew Research study, some universities are seen as ideologically biased, especially by those leaning toward the conservative side of the political spectrum. Distrust follows amongst those who feel their views are underrepresented or dismissed, reports the Associated Press. One only needs to read the news regarding anti-Semitism. And unfortunately, the brush that paints these institutions as misappropriating educational dollars is broad. Too many universities that do a good job of heightening the concept that ideas are more important than ideology quietly sit back while the illuminati of some premier institutions appear indifferent to the negative impact of promoting ideology on a constitutional republic by demeaning members of certain racial or ethnic groups. Maybe patriotism and equal opportunity are declining, opine Newsweek contributors Clay Routledge and John Bitzan. Unacceptable at any university, but profoundly so at a public institution. To suggest that this is not ideologically based is reason-blind and detached from common sense.
Universities of every stripe, public and private, have grown nonteaching staff at remarkable rates. Robert Kelchen reports that, coupled with this administrative bloat, some faculty members continually fight for smaller teaching loads. These phenomena lead to a public perception that teaching importance is falling in the hierarchy of commitment at universities. Instead, ancillary services often climb to the top of the pyramid. True or not, the perception is reality for many. Effective universities must manage their mission so that students and teaching remain at the apex. This is true even for institutions that produce annually $1 billion or more of funded research. If teaching is not number one, the institution’s mission is diluted. No formula anywhere suggests that strong teaching and excellence in scholarship prowess are mutually exclusive. Instead, they are like breathing. One cannot value the act of inhaling as more important than the act of exhaling. To be sure, scholarship and study on the part of faculty are like inhaling, and they should be revealed to students in classrooms and laboratories in the form of exhaled insights and ideas.
The practically minded public asks whether or not “A college degree leads to better opportunities in the workplace?” The Lumina Foundation addresses the legitimate mindsets suggesting that some vocational or technical certifications offer better economic returns than a traditional four-year degree. The curriculum should be balanced to provide a vocational capability, like being a good writer or understanding a simple algebraic relationship, and a general grounding in addressing the age-old question, “How then should we live?”
In too many cases, campuses are seen as places that “coddle” students or create a cancel culture. Increasingly, young people see college as outdated and unnecessary in a world with alternative learning paths, including but not limited to, computing in coding Boot Camps, entrepreneurship, online learning, and learning through practice.
Effective universities in the coming decades will be responsive to this changing environment in higher education. A university brand, like a Mercedes or a Rolex, may have an impact. However, in both cases, is the brand an opportunity expressed as capability or simply a symbol? A university education always becomes an opportunity for a motivated graduate. The symbol, or emblem, is an individual’s accomplishment.
Without attention to these ideas, universities will underserve students, and eventually, the institution’s stock will fall, eroding the value of the degrees offered—but not at effective universities like WT.
Walter V. Wendler is the President of West Texas A&M University. His weekly columns, with hyperlinks, are available at https://walterwendler.com/.
