What Is College for?

Ezra Bowen

"I want to go to college to become a doctor," one high school pupil told researchers. Why? "So I can make some money and take it easy." A college student described her priority as "Having a job when I get out." As for the idea of studying to expand one's vision or values, another student declared: "I'm not interested in hearing about the professor's Ph.D. dissertation."

According to a major new study, conducted by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and published this week, such career-oriented replies reflect the views of 90 % of U.S. high school students and 88 % of parents asked to describe the main purpose of a college education. Only 28 % of parents and 27 % of high school students see college as a place to become a more thoughtful citizen.

The study draws on surveys of 5,000 college faculty, 4,500 undergraduates, 1,300 administrators and 1,200 high school students. The author, Carnegie president Ernest L. Boyer, points to the realities beneath this career orientation: "The University of Illinois reports that only 19 % of its humanities students have guaranteed jobs upon graduation versus 90 % for business majors." Small wonder that according to U.S. government statistics, bachelor's degrees in business have doubled from 114,865 in 1971 to 230,031 in 1984, while BAs in English and literature have plunged from 57,026 to 26,419. In the competition for enrollments, some schools have dropped such subjects as geology and music education to emphasize business specialties like restaurant management. Says one college president: "It's all right to talk about educational values, but we have to face up to what students want today."

Since it yields in these ways to social and economic pressures, the report argues, "Undergraduate education is in trouble. Driven by careerism and professional education, the nation's colleges are more successful in providing credentials [for future jobs] than in providing a quality education." The document singles out several "Deep divisions" in the typical undergraduate experience in the U.S. Among them are:

—a mismatch between faculty expectations and the academic preparation of entering students. Said a math professor: "The biggest problem I have with my students is getting them to read and write."

—a "chaotic" curriculum whose "Subjects have fragmented into smaller and smaller pieces, unrelated to an educational whole."

—a cleft between undergraduates who expect to be taught and faculty for whom "Promotion depends on their meeting research and publication requirements."

—a divorce between the requirements of an undergraduate's major field of study and those of general education. Many schools permit students to focus so narrowly on their major that "the broad vision of learning" is lost.

—disagreements and confusion over goals. The student-body president at one university told Carnegie interviewers: "If there are any goals around here, they haven't been expressed to me."

The Carnegie report is far from the only alarm being raised about undergraduate education. During the past two years, similar criticisms of undergraduate curricula and values have come from such authoritative sources as the National Institute of Education and the Association of American Colleges.

As for what can be done, Boyer argues that colleges should raise their standards of language proficiency by, first, requiring a written essay of incoming freshmen. Freshmen ought then to take a year-long English course with an emphasis on writing that should extend to other courses through all four years. The heart of those four years, he declares, should be a required core curriculum that embraces language, the arts, history, social and governmental institutions and the natural sciences. Thus everyone, regardless of individual goals, would get a base of essential common knowledge. Moreover, the major subject should be enriched with related requirements on the history of the field, its socioeconomic implications and the ethical issues it raises. If, writes Boyer, a major cannot be discussed in these terms, "it belongs in a trade school."

The status of teachers, he continues, must be raised through higher salaries and greater involvement in university policy-making. There should be cash prizes for top instructors and grants to develop improved teaching methods. "If I were to open a college tomorrow," Boyer sums up, "I'd tell the students, 'You're not going to leave this place without experiencing the core of the learning experience.' That way, they'd have a set of values to support their knowledge."