How Do We Get Students Ready for College?
George C. Leef, The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy

A lament frequently heard by college professors is that many incoming students are not ready for college-level work. Even though what passes as “college-level work” isn’t what it used to be at many institutions, professors still report that their students struggle with reading, writing, and basic math. (Lest one think that such laments are only heard at unselective, fourth-tier schools, Patrick Allitt’s book I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student, which recounts Professor Allitt’s difficulties in teaching American history at Emory University will serve as an antidote.) The question is, what can be done about this problem?

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Charles B. Reed (chancellor of the Cal State system) and Kristin Conklin (a program director at the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices) address that question. (See Enrolling in College, Ready or Not -- for CHE subscribers only).

Reed and Conklin write,

After they are admitted, students must meet institutional placement standards, measured by tests that colleges require them to take. Most of those tests focus on language skills like critical reading and writing, as well as mathematics, because those skills are the foundation of further learning. If a student can’t meet certain standards, he or she must take remedial or developmental education before moving on to regular college-level course work.

Quite true, but many students who manage to pass the placement tests still have serious academic deficits, and it is an article of faith that passing a semester in remedial (“developmental” is a lovely euphemism, but I decline to use it) English or math will suffice to get a student ready for regular college studies.

The authors recognize that the solution to the problem does not lie within higher education, but rather in the years that precede it. K-12 academic standards have been eroding for years, thanks to the “best practice” notions widely taught in American education schools. Required reading on that depressing subject includes Rita Kramer’s Ed School Follies, Martin Rochester’s Class Warfare, and Cherie Pierson Yecke’s The War Against Excellence. Today, your typical high school graduate believes that school is just a rather boring, obligatory use of his time that is tolerable only because it leads to the paper credentials necessary to unlock the door to high-paying employment. Put a lot of young people with that attitude in a classroom and a professor has little choice but to water down the material and make sure he keeps the kids entertained. On that point, one more book to read -- Generation X Goes to College by Peter Sacks.

Here is what Reed and Conklin propose: “(E)ach state needs to agree on one consistent set of readiness standards for all public higher education within that state. Otherwise schoolteachers and students cannot have a clear, focused view of what being prepared for college means and how to achieve that.” A quintessentially bureaucratic approach -- have public officials come up with a set of standards. Count me as a skeptic.

It isn’t by accident that government schooling is the way it is. Millions of teachers are doing things exactly as they believe they should, or want to. The soft, undemanding approach to education suits most of them perfectly. Why, for example, is it now rare to find a teacher who will take a red (or purple or any other color) pen to a student essay and give it severe, line-by- line scrutiny? Without that, students simply won’t learn to write well. Alas, the idea that there are rules for good writing is now regarded by writing theorists as the stuff of Neanderthals. And besides that, grading essays takes a lot of time and criticizing the way students write is apt to make them upset. Even if the teacher were capable of giving students a useful writing critique (something we should not assume), it’s much easier not to bother.

State “college readiness” standards are bound to become a political game in which the end-product will be an impressive-sounding document that won’t accomplish anything. The officials and interest groups involved will find a way to say that students need to be proficient in English and math that will take up enough pages to justify all the time that went into writing the document. Whatever the standards ultimately say, the teaching of the 3Rs will continue pretty much as it has in the past. Public education, after all, is not like a business where people need to worry about losing their jobs if they don’t perform.

Speaking of public education (or more accurately, government schooling), the complaints about students who are not college ready almost always pertain to students who have spent their K-12 years in government schools. Most children who have either attended private schools or who have been home schooled are well prepared anything college professors throw at them. Sometimes, in fact, those students find that college courses are too simple and boring. Private schools don’t have elaborate standards for “college readiness.” Nor do parents who home school. Somehow, though, the results are much better when the focus is on learning rather than on meeting bureaucratic standards.

Several years ago the writer Jonathan Rauch made the case for “enlightened defeatism” with respect to big government. Much as I want to hope that somehow government schooling will change its stripes and start graduating lots of students who are eager and well-equipped to learn in college, I strongly suspect that enlightened defeatism is in order about that. No matter what conferences are held and what standards are written, freshman classes at most colleges and universities will continue to be largely composed of “disengaged students,” as Professor Paul Trout calls them. (See Paul A. Trout, “Disengaged Students and the Decline of Academic Standards,” Academic Questions, Spring 1997.)

For decades, educational “progressives” have been promoting the idea that institutions need to adjust to the supposed needs and desires of the students. That is the implicit message in all of the talk about “learning styles” and “multiple intelligences” -- schools must conform to their students. Suddenly to do an about-face and insist that students and teachers must adjust to some definite set of college readiness standards is simply too jarring to imagine.

NAS3:01 PM

More on Professors Today
Thomas C. Reeves, The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

Along the lines of my recent posting on contemporary American professors, based on an extensive UCLA study, please refer to the Spring 2005 issue of Academic Questions, the journal of the National Association of Scholars. In that journal (and also HERE) we find another highly revealing piece of research that I want to call to your attention. “Politics and Professional Advancement,” by Stanley Rothman, Neil Nevitte, and S. Robert Lichter is a study of the politics of professors. After noting seven major studies that have shown the dominance of the Left on campus, the authors offer a detailed analysis of the question, based on a 1999 North American Academic Study Survey of 1,643 faculty members drawn from 183 colleges and universities. The results confirm the earlier studies, showing a “sharp shift to the left” in recent years.

The authors report, “It appears that, over the course of 15 years, self-described liberals grew from a slight plurality to a 5 to 1 majority on college faculties. By comparison, among the general population in 1999, 18 percent viewed themselves as liberal and 37 percent conservative. In 2004 the figures were almost unchanged—18 percent liberal and 33 percent conservative. Thus, according to these self-descriptions, college faculty are about four times as liberal as the general public.”

Among all faculty, 72 percent described themselves as liberal and only 15 percent as conservative. In the humanities, the margin was 81 percent to 9 percent, and in the social sciences the margin was 75 percent to 9 percent. On such key moral issues as abortion, extramarital cohabitation, and sodomy, faculty members took predictable positions on the Left by large margins. A mere 14 percent disapproved of abortion, split equally between “somewhat disagree” and “strong disagree.”

Especially interesting to me were the statistics on individual disciplines. Leading the pack on the Left were the professors of English literature: 88 percent calling themselves liberal and 3 percent calling themselves conservatives. Next came the performing arts, psychology, fine arts, theology/religion, political science, philosophy, history, sociology, biology, communications, music, computer science, mathematics, physics, linguistics, chemistry, education, economics, nursing, engineering, and business. Even in the field of business, liberals dominated 49 percent to 39 percent. Ideology largely followed political preferences, only 2 percent of faculty in English literature and the performing arts said they were Republicans. In sociology, not a single Republican could be found.

In the discipline of history, which ranked eighth on the list, 77 percent called themselves liberals and 10 percent conservatives. Only 4 percent were Republicans. This does not surprise me at all and helps explain the almost immediate demise of my politically incorrect textbook on twentieth-century America, published by Oxford University Press. To prosper inside academia (Eric Foner comes to mind), one must adhere to a point of view that is quite rigid and predictable. It’s a cozy world on campus, almost everyone thinking and acting the same way. No questions, just answers anchored to an ideology cast in concrete. The Rotarians probably contain more intellectual diversity within their ranks.

In a companion article in the same issue of Academic Questions, “Enhancing Intellectual Diversity on Campus -- The James Madison Program at Princeton,” Russell K. Nieli quotes John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” to emphasize the importance of a variety of ideas when searching for truth. Nieli goes on to write, that “a one-party environment ill-serves the quest for truth and makes it impossible to overcome the narrowness, distorted perceptions, and lack of imagination inherent in the human condition.” Nieli continues, “When the universities become the most politically one-sided institutions in American life, when an atmosphere of conformity and political correctness hovers over them with a chilling effect on any serious attempt to question the validity of the reigning academic orthodoxies of the day, an incalculable loss has occurred whose effects extend to the very health of our democratic political order. We need universities as vibrant centers of learning and unfettered intellectual exchange in America, and when they fail us in this task the entire social order suffers.” (See also these Two Studies on political diversity in American higher education.)

With this issue settled, we need to move on to discover exactly why conservatives have been almost shut out of academia. The study cited in the first paragraph points to evidence of discrimination against both conservatives and Christians. Some of us know this to be true. But we need much more data to document this assertion adequately. The least plausible alternative explanation comes from those leftists who admit that they dominate academia: the claim of the inherent wisdom and superiority of their dogma. Bright people, they contend, just naturally adopt their point of view; this narcissistic, secular, and often Marxist faith is irresistible to thinking people. Such arrogant balderdash. If only this issue were quite so simple.

Studies on the power of the Left in academia await further research, and their importance cannot be underestimated. The sooner the examination begins, the better we will be able to understand and to reform campus life.

NAS3:01 PM

Higher Ed Shamelessness
K.C. Johnson, Brooklyn College—CUNY

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) demanded that institutions of higher learning change their courses to “help the nation redress the causes of the inequality and disenfranchisement made all too clear in the wake of such a disaster.” The AAC&U saw no problem in professors using their classroom authority to dictate policy proscriptions.

Nearly four years earlier, the organization, to which more than 1000 colleges and universities belong, similarly exploited a national tragedy to champion its agenda. The AAC&U responded to the September 11 terrorist attacks by championing college classes that created “knowledgeable, empathetic members of society.” Once mobilized, these students would ensure that U.S. leaders made “enlightened policy decisions.”

In their intellectually sheltered environment, the organization’s leaders could not see how people of good faith might disagree on what constitutes “enlightened policy decisions.”

Funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation, the AAC&U has recently launched its most ambitious initiative, called “Making Excellence Inclusive.” Why the need to redefine excellence? The “negative” activities of “politically conservative organizations” have frustrated the group’s efforts. An organization willing to exploit national tragedies has no problem obscuring the definition of excellence to pursue its aims.

Some aspects of the AAC&U’s initiative seem harmless, if more appropriate for kindergarten. Colleges, the organization states, should seek to bring about interracial friendships. Seeing no contradiction in its aims, the group simultaneously encourages self-segregation of minority students, who require “‘safe’ cultural spaces.”

Meanwhile, standard grading practices, such as basing grades on tests or exams, can reproduce “dominant patterns of social stratification.” Equality of outcome, rather than equality of access, is desired.

The organization’s central goal, however, is molding the political beliefs of the next generation of American citizens. In the words of one AAC&U study, an appropriate educational experience will generate graduates who feel that “racial inequity is a prevalent issue that requires such remedies as affirmative action” and who endorse “more lenient treatment and punishment of criminals in our society.” Moreover, properly addressing “international issues” must “weigh heavily” in how colleges conceive of “inclusive excellence.”

This rhetoric is worth remembering the next time someone from the higher education establishment claims that the academy’s ideological imbalance does not play a role in the type of education that students receive.

For disciplines such as history, English, or philosophy, the AAC&U’s demand for prioritizing “issues of power, social justice, equity, multiculturalism, and diversity” means replacing traditional fields, such as Shakespeare or U.S. political history, with offerings in non-Western literature or classes that view the U.S. past solely through the lens of victimization and exploitation.

In math and the natural sciences, AAC&U rhetoric approaches self-parody. An example of the preferred math philosophy comes at AAC&U member Portland State University, where courses examine “family math” and the “impact of society-sanctioned math avoidance on marginalized populations.” Meanwhile, since “communities of scientists have traditionally been consisted primarily of white males of privilege,” an AAC&U study muses that gender and racial “biases might affect science at all stages of development.” So much for the concept of scientific objectivity.

A new kind of professor will teach this ideologically one-sided curriculum. Most colleges require faculty members to demonstrate merit as researchers or lecturers. In Orwellian language, the AAC&U describes such demands as “barriers to realizing the benefits of inclusive excellence.”

If professors will not be evaluated on the basis of their scholarly production and teaching skills, how, then, will faculty be chosen and promoted? “Inclusive excellence” will have colleges “develop models of collegiality” to ensure that instructors support the AAC&U’s goals. Translation: professors must pass an ideological litmus test in order to get jobs.

Eighty-four New York colleges and universities belong to the AAC&U. Do Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg envision New York’s public universities reflecting the AAC&U’s agenda? If not, why should CUNY or SUNY schools pay dues to the organization? Do AAC&U members like Cornell or NYU intend to de-emphasize research and teaching in selecting their faculties? If not, why do their administrations continue to affiliate with the organization?

If college administrators will not act, then parents and alumni should use the pressures of the market to achieve change. For instance, parents preparing to spend more than $40,000 annually so their child can receive an Ivy League education might look more favorably on Princeton and Columbia, which do not belong to the AAC&U, than on Yale or Cornell, which do. Close identification with the AAC&U signals that a campus administration has prioritized politicizing the curriculum over promoting academic rigor as the concept is commonly understood.

The AAC&U’s shameless responses to Katrina and the 9/11 attacks revealed a group so dominated by ideologues as to be beyond reasoned debate. Colleges and universities should sever their ties to this rogue organization.

NAS1:55 PM

Failing Schools
Thomas C. Reeves, The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

[Editor's Note: This entry also appears HERE on the History News Network.]


Paul E. Peterson of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University recently wrote an important syndicated column about the failures of high school education in this country. In the course of analyzing data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, he has pinpointed two major weaknesses in our high schools that may be seen as well in the country’s colleges and universities.

Peterson began by clarifying some data. The correct figure for the dropout rate among blacks is running somewhere between 50 and 60 percent, “a sad fact that remains one of the best-kept secrets in American education.” For reasons of political correctness, figures on black graduation rates are manipulated, both by schools districts and the U.S. Department of Education, to report only a 17 percent dropout rate. That half of the blacks in this country are leaving public school is surely among the nation’s most acute and embarrassing problems, requiring immediate attention.

Peterson also noted that among those in the top 10 percent of high school test-takers, reading scores have dropped four points since 1971. Their math scores have not budged since they were first measured in 1978. Only 9 percent of all public high school students take the Advanced Placement test. So the system appears to be failing at both ends of the spectrum. Is it any wonder that we are searching desperately for foreign expertise in many fields? Here too we surely have at least a partial explanation for our plummeting cultural standards.

At the heart of the high school problem, Peterson argues, are two contradictory assumptions. First, that adolescents should be responsible for guiding their own curriculum. Second, that adolescents should not be held responsible for their performances.

If given the choice, of course, young people will normally take the easiest courses offered. Why work hard when there seems to be little or no reason to be truly educated, when graduation is almost automatic for those who can muster the energy to attend, and when most colleges will accept all applicants with a diploma? Most young people quite naturally relax, have fun, and devote a lot of time off campus to making money. They don’t seem to care if they know next to nothing upon graduation, and no one else does either. Peterson argues, “To graduate from high school, students should be expected to pass, at as high a level as they can, a challenging, substantive examination in a variety of subjects that allow them to demonstrate -- to colleges and employers -- just how accomplished they are.” At present, that seems quite utopian.

The same pair of misguided assumptions reign in college and university policy as well. Students may choose from hundreds of courses to fulfill the extremely minimal graduation requirements on most campuses, and graduation depends merely upon the accumulation of enough of these credits to reach the necessary number. We cannot be entirely confident that most college graduates can even write a coherent, error-free paragraph let alone be committed to a life of study and thought. Internet chat rooms, newspaper book reviews, and “best seller” lists have a way of persuading one that literacy and serious inquiry have almost disappeared in America. The demise of intelligent television programming points in the same direction.

Until we as a nation get serious about our education, we will continue to lag behind other nations in test scores, suffer severe shortages in several occupational areas, and increasingly debase the nation’s the cultural level. We need a demanding and required curriculum, a strong commitment to teach and to learn, discipline, and solid examinations that will open or close the doors to a diploma.

The wealthy elite, with their prep schools, tutors, and prestigious private colleges and universities, already enjoys a large measure of educational respectability. It’s time to turn our attention to the public institutions at all levels and make sure that everyone has available an education that is worthy of a great people in a challenging time. There is nothing in a democracy that prohibits the presentation of a demanding and useful education. There is nothing written in the stars that prevents minorities from learning and earning degrees. Our great failing is the will to turn things around.

NAS6:22 PM