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Authors: Murray Sperber

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Furthermore, the
Princeton
categories “Professors suck all life from material,” “Professors make themselves scarce,” and “Class discussion rare” turn up many of the usual suspects—research universities in big-time college sports, including those often high in the NCAA football and men's basketball polls: Arizona, Arizona State, Arkansas, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Michigan, Michigan State, Maryland (College Park), Minnesota (Twin Cities), Missouri (Columbia), Ohio State, Oklahoma, Penn State, Pitt, Rutgers, Buffalo, Texas A & M, UCLA, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia.
This guidebook also includes a category “Teaching assistants teach too many upper-level courses,” and, in addition to many schools listed in the previous paragraph, Alabama, Boston College, Florida, Florida State, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina (Chapel Hill), New Mexico, Purdue, Rhode Island, and Seton Hall score high here.
Princeton Review
does not include a “Worst overall academic experience for undergraduates” list, but it is easy to find candidates. Indeed, the school that ranked at or near the top of almost all of the negative academic categories in 1999 and 2000 was the University of Buffalo (see Chapter 6).
The
Princeton Review
's methodology is not perfect—and universities earning negative ratings sometimes dispute its procedures—but because this
guidebook bases its rankings on an enormous number of questionnaires, its results do not vary greatly from year to year. The schools committed to providing a quality undergraduate education for all of their students continually score high, and the large, public research universities, particularly the big-time college sports factories, consistently rate poorly in the academic categories. Considering the size of the
Princeton Review
's poll, its results indicate important truths about the institutions that it examines annually.
 
The bottom line in terms of beer-and-circus-the party scene accompanying big-time college sports—is this:
A majority of schools earning very negative ratings in academic categories feature beer-and-circus; on the other hand, almost every institution achieving high positive rankings in academic categories is not involved in major intercollegiate athletics and none are on the “Party schools” list.
THE FACULTY/STUDENT NONAGGRESSION PACT
G
uidebooks like the
Princeton Review
present evidence of the deplorable state of general undergraduate education at large, public research universities. For specific information on how these schools neglect this crucial enterprise—ironically, their most dependable source of income—it is necessary to examine what happens, or fails to occur, in undergraduate classes at these institutions. This chapter provides this information, as well as an inquiry into why many undergraduates accept beer-and-circus as a substitute for a meaningful education.
 
 
A mutual nonaggression pact develops between lazy students and lazier professors: “I won't bother you if you don't bother me.”
—Anne Matthews, higher education writer
 
We encountered colleges where there was a general agreement that academics were weak, and faculty and students had a tacit agreement not to burden one another.
—Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University
 
I think it's really sad that my friends and I didn't go to class much. I mean, we all go down there [to the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana] to get an education, and then we don't go to class. But you can get a good grade without going, so it's tempting not to go.
—Dorothy Puch, University of Illinois student
Big-time U's handle their undergraduate education problem by establishing a truce between faculty who want to spend a minimum amount of time on undergraduate teaching and students who want to obtain a degree as easily as possible. Sadly, this truce short-circuits students' natural curiosity and desire to learn. Many studies reveal that even the most collegiate or vocationally inclined students enter universities hoping to acquire an education. Often their wishes are inchoate, but, in a supportive academic environment, some of these men and women would fulfill their hopes and talents. However, no one ever accused a Big-time U of being supportive and nurturing: “impersonal” and “mean” are the adjectives that undergraduates most often use to describe these schools.
As detailed in chapter 7, because Big-time U's reward faculty primarily for research, not teaching, they assign professors to teach massive undergraduate lecture courses, and these classes severely restrict student learning. For example, in all parts of the country, introductory courses in psychology, an inherently fascinating subject for undergraduates trying to establish adult personalities, consist mainly of huge lecture classes. Indeed, at some universities with high-powered research departments in this discipline, administrators increase the size of basic psych courses to many hundreds of students to generate more money for research programs, and to provide employment for large numbers of graduate students—they work as teaching assistants in these mammoth courses. However, for most undergraduates, exploring one's identity along with hundreds of other people in the same room is not a learning experience—indeed, it turns the vast majority of students away from this field. But as one psych professor remarked, “That's the whole idea. Who wants a lot of undergrad psychology majors hanging around a research department?”
Across the curriculum, many introductory courses, including in such foundation subjects as math and English, are frequently taught in large lecture courses. If the lectures also contain a discussion section component, or the courses enroll only a moderate number of students, usually an inexperienced TA or underpaid part-timer is in charge of the smaller group (see Chapter 7). The recent Boyer Commission study noted that, “ironically, the first years of university studies … the most formative years [for students], are usually the least satisfactory.” Professors dislike teaching introductory courses because the material is so far from their research, and TA's “rarely come armed with serious training in pedagogy” (nor do most faculty, for that matter). “As a result, freshmen—the students who need the very best teaching—may actually receive the worst.”
Another view of this situation suggests that because of the finances of the research university, and its pursuit of the “nonaggression pact” between
faculty and undergraduates, Big-time U's try to persuade entering students to accept inferior education as the norm. The mammoth lecture classes during freshmen year help accomplish this task, reducing students to passive and cynical attitudes about these courses and, soon, their entire undergraduate education.
It is important to note that some regular undergraduates at research universities fight the system and gain meaningful educations—a testament to their extraordinary determination. Similarly, some faculty members at these schools teach their undergraduate courses conscientiously, spending long hours on this activity—an indication of their idealism and career fool-hardiness. In addition, one other group avoids the nonaggression, nonlearning trap: honors students. However, when large, public research universities siphon off their best students and substantial resources for special honors programs and colleges, they confirm and even increase the woeful conditions of general undergraduate education. (See chapter 13.)
 
Despite Big-time U's shabby treatment of regular undergraduates in the classroom, they need their tuition dollars and often offer a substitute for genuine learning: a diploma, plus a “fun experience,” including beer-and-circus. Because many students arrive on campus predisposed to the collegiate subculture or immediately become immersed in it, they accept the university's deal. A University of Missouri (Columbia) undergraduate explained:
Most students here, except for the journalism majors, feel they don't need to try hard [in classes] and they can get by and get their degree. You find that out when you walk into your first class here … . Most Mizzou students are satisfied with easy schoolwork because other things are much more important to them, mostly partying and following the Tigers.
The
Insider's Guide to the Colleges
confirmed these comments in its review of Missouri:
Like many large state schools, the University of Missouri is defined by an active frat life and a relatively loose attitude toward academic life … . Academics are not a great source of stress for many Mizzou students … . [However,] athletics plays a big role in Mizzou life. There is a lot of spirit behind the Tigers … .
 
What should be the campus mascot?
The drunken frat boy.
 
 
The need for as many undergraduate tuition dollars as possible—Missouri accepts 90 percent of its applicants—as well as Upward Drift and empire-building propel schools to what one critic calls “gigantism—the sheer size and complexity of the modern university,” which “militates against … closeness and intimacy” and a student-centered approach to education. Indeed, even before entering a classroom, the size and impersonality of a Big-time U intimidates and turns off many incoming freshmen, as do the indifferent advising system and the mammoth high-rise dormitories and research buildings. One student told Anne Matthews, “This school is the anti-‘Cheers,' where nobody knows your name.”
On the questionnaire for this book, an Ohio State female freshman wrote:
I feel like just another number at a large state school. I have to use my social security number for everything here. Many of my friends here and at other state schools say the same thing. Also academics is not at the top of my priority list anymore, although it was when I came here, and I've started to live for the weekend parties and Buckeye Fever [rooting for the school's football and basketball teams] … . For me and my friends here, our courses would be lucky to make the middle of our priority lists.
A comprehensive survey of student attitudes at Indiana University, conducted by that school's administration, confirmed the anti-academic and alienated feelings of undergraduates. In response to the statement “Students come first” at this school, only 14 percent strongly agreed; and the same small percentage affirmed the statement “Students are intellectually engaged in their academic work” here.
In a more graphic manner, a columnist in this school's student newspaper discussed the common undergraduate problem of staying awake in class: “I've seen people bring Big Gulps of [caffeine-laden] Mountain Dew, liters of Jolt and mugs of coffee as thick as milkshakes to class,” then consume them, “only to slip into unconsciousness as soon as the overhead projector lights up” and the prof starts talking. This writer admitted that the “typical college student's lifestyle (pizza at 11 P.M.),” and so on, influenced class alertness, but finally the lack of engagement with undergraduate education was the main culprit.
A folklorist studying college life noticed that the comments students carved into desktops in all parts of the country mainly “express boredom or frustration” during classes. One of the most common inscriptions—a
cry for total escape—was the line from the TV show
Star Trek
: “Beam me up, Scotty!” Yet these sentiments seem old-fashioned-recalling the historic hostility between most undergraduates and their professors—compared to contemporary student comments on the new “mutual nonaggression pact.”
 
 
The entire discussion [in the apartment living room] began after someone mentioned a student who walked in five minutes late to class, then slept through every class [in that course] last semester … . Then someone interrupted [the discussion], articulating the sentiment of our generation:
“Teachers should be happy that people just show up for class at all.”
I pondered that idea—that we placate ourselves by lowering educational standards to the point where simply arriving at class equals valuing school … . The sentiment now is that since students “paid” for the class, they also “own” the rights to do with it what they will while in that class.
—Amy Webb,
Indiana [University] Daily Student
columnist
This writer protested the consumerist trend in university life, but she blamed her fellow students for this situation. She titled her article, “Students Should Respect Professors,” yet many undergraduates would respond to her declaration by listing the ways that profs “diss” students. A story in
U Magazine
captured undergraduate attitudes on this issue: a student in a theater course had to learn a dramatic monologue to deliver during the next class meeting, but he lost his tape of the speech. He could only rent a tape of a different monologue, so he rented it, claiming that “the professor was so far gone she'd never notice.” She never did, awarding him a high grade on this exercise, her “only comment [was] that he shouldn't be afraid to pause longer between phrases.”
This student's description of the professor as “far gone” needs translation: probably she was neither demented nor absentminded; instead, she was mentally detached from teaching and, in student vernacular, “didn't give a shit” about what occurred in her courses or whether individual students accurately fulfilled her assignments or not. She gave them high grades so that she could get through her teaching as quickly and easily as possible.
U Magazine
included this story in an article headlined, “WHAT ME STUDY?”—illustrating it with a photo of a male college student asleep on a park bench, a copy of a
Cliffs Notes
pamphlet covering his face. A major flaw exists in this symbolic photo: many undergraduates no longer need
the
Cliffs Notes
shortcut to mastering reading assignments, as numerous professors now supply “study guides” that furnish everything a student requires for a course, including exam questions and answers. The
Chicago Tribune
quoted undergraduates who explained that the study guides sum up the course material, and “if they [students] put question marks at the ends of the topic headings in the study guide, they have the exam” questions followed by the answers.
A similar “dumbing down” of university courses occurs when faculty members, not even bothering to dispense study guides, recycle the same exam questions year after year. Student organizations, particularly fraternities and sororities, assemble “test files” (called “test banks” at some schools) for these profs' courses, and the Greeks and their friends use the old exams. A Purdue undergraduate commented, “It's not what you know in a course, but who you know. Who's got the ‘test files,' even for profs who don't let students keep their exams. Some students always sneak out copies for the ‘files' and so the exams are out there somewhere.”
Under these circumstances, many undergraduates feel that attending class is worthless, and studying anything other than the guides or the old exams makes no sense. This system seduces even conscientious students, and various reports on the amount of time per week that undergraduates spend studying reveal amazingly low numbers of hours.
Almost every university, in its official handouts to freshmen, suggests a minimum of two hours of studying for every hour in class, therefore a student with a standard fifteen-hour course load should put in at least thirty hours per week studying. However, many surveys on this topic reveal that most students at Big-time U's study far fewer than thirty hours per week. The responses to the questionnaire for this book indicate that 18 percent of undergraduates spent one to five hours a week “studying and doing course assignments”; 35 percent logged six to ten hours a week on these activities; 29 percent, eleven to fifteen hours; and only 18 percent, sixteen or more hours per week. Women studied more than men but not significant amounts of time more.

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