In an OpEd piece in the NY Times, Eugene Hickok thinks it is a good idea that the US government to standardise/regulate/control the US tertiary system. Apparently this is a flow on from the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 which aimed to increase the performance of primary and secondary education in the US through standards based/outcome-based education reform. The current Education Secretary, Margaret Spellings, is looking to make reforms in tertiary sector.

Yes, there are a lot of left-wing identifying supporters at universities but is that a reason for the petty hatred of those who want to bring down the system (funnily, they get called “conservatives”)? It really is a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Americans should have more information about higher education curriculum and teaching. Higher education in this country differs substantially from elementary and high school education, most obviously in what is offered and how it is offered. The academy responds to the demands of disciplines and faculty. It is a culture that cherishes independence and freedom. And it is a culture seriously out of touch with much of America.

I find the last two sentences quite incredible. A culture that “cherishes independence and freedom” is “seriously out of touch with much of America”. Perhaps that is true under the Bush Administration. The fear of that academic independence is disturbing:

Faculty members decide what they want to teach and when they want to teach, if, indeed, they teach at all. This is particularly true regarding undergraduate instruction, which is something of an afterthought on many campuses. Faculty members typically spend fewer than 200 hours a year in the classroom. That amounts to just five 40-hour weeks.

Because a good academic is judged by his/her face to face teaching hours. What about research so that you actually have something up to date and relevant to teach? What about writing up that research so that you share your knowledge and progress your field? What about administration and applying for funding so that your department can grow and new opportunities for students? What about preparing  your classes? What about marking? What about the time it takes to create the mountain loads of bureaucracy any sort of “accountable” system creates? Talk of “accountability” really just comes down to a desire to control:

Take a look at what passes for subjects of scholarly and instructional focus on campuses. Should taxpayer dollars really go to underwrite courses in such things as the history of comic book art? Policy makers and tuition payers need to be made aware of what sorts of courses institutions consider appropriate to fulfill core academic requirements, if anything resembling an academic core even exists. And there needs to be a greater emphasis on teaching students what they need to know, rather than what faculty want to talk about.

Who decides at a tertiary level what students “need to know”? I see some basis for general standards at primary and secondary levels because that is when you learn your core skills and have little or no choice as a child, your will being controlled by others (though there has been criticism of standards based teaching as resulting in “teaching to the test”). However, as an adult, you have free will and the responsibility to decide what you want or need from life. What does anyone “need to know” at a university level? If there is enough interest in the history of comic book art, why shouldn’t it be offered? Who is to say that it may not prove more useful in terms of jobs and return of skills to the community (thus justify taxpayer investment) than a course in Descartes or the French Revolution? In any case, comic books are an important part of our culture and history. If we didn’t have anyone studying it, an understanding of an important facet of our society would be lost. So the danger of imposing a centralised values system on to the myriad of academic interests becomes clear. We don’t know what future generations may find important to study and preserve. One only needs to take a look at the disdain towards Impressionists at the beginning of last century and the now astronomical values of their paintings to show how wrong people can get it. With diversity, more gets studied, more gets preserved.

What are “core academic requirements” anyway? There are many ways of teaching a subject. If course is professional then there are professional boards to assess
whether a university’s course fulfils their profession’s core
competencies. There are plenty of universities in the US, if “what the Faculty wants to talk about” doesn’t correspond with student needs and expectations, then it will be valued poorly by the market and it won’t attract the necessary students to run the course.

In any case, they should study the Australian system more before they start thinking “accountability” will make for better universities. It really just seems more about bureaucratic control. The amount of paperwork created by the Australian federal tertiary education reforms is immense and largely incomprehensible and the rules and policies have insinuated themselves into much of the fabric of academic life. It very much is the government driving the curriculum agendas of the major universities and that worries me deeply. I guess maybe principles of independence and freedom are out of touch with much of Australia too.

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