Inside American Education (43 page)

When a conservative student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania included a campus homosexual organization on its list of the biggest wastes of money by the university,
⁶¹
it
was deemed guilty of “harassment,” lost its official recognition, and the university bookstore stopped advertising in it.
⁶²
M.I.T.’s report urging an anti-harassment policy defined harassment to include, among other things, anything which creates an “offensive environment.” This includes things said or done, “on or off campus” and penalties range “up to and including termination of employment or student status.”
⁶³
At the University of Connecticut “harassment” includes “misdirected laughter” or even “conspicuous exclusion from conversation.”
⁶⁴
When not talking to someone becomes “harassment,” Newspeak clearly reigns.

A special class of tendentious rhetoric has been created by the simple use of words which refer to conditions
before the fact
—“access,” “prejudice,” “privilege,” “exclusion,” “opportunity,” etc.—to refer instead to results
after the fact
. Outside of academia, no one would say that Babe Ruth had more “opportunity” to hit home runs than his team mates had. If anything, he had less opportunity, because pitchers became very cautious about how they pitched to him and often walked him, rather than take a chance in a critical situation. What was different about Babe Ruth was his performance—that is, the results
ex post
. Yet, in academia, performance and behavior are shunted aside by rhetoric which implicitly assumes that whatever result is observed
ex post
is a measure of circumstances
ex ante
.

For example, writings which have become classics because many generations of educated people have appreciated them, are referred to in many academic circles as “privileged” writings, taught to the “exclusion” of other works. Typically, no argument or evidence has been considered necessary to support such characterizations. This
utter disregard of behavior and performance
runs through all sorts of academic Newspeak, confusing
ex post
results with prior conditions. For example, any adverse judgment of the behavior or performance of any of a number of groups currently in favor is automatically dismissed as racism, sexism, or homophobia—that is, as prejudices before the fact rather than assessments after the fact.

Again, these are arguments without arguments, because it is not even considered necessary to advance a speck of evidence to support such characterizations. It is, presumably, impossible for various individuals or groups to have done anything to
merit any adverse conclusion on any aspect of their behavior or performance. Conversely, any groups or segments of the population with higher achievements are called “privileged.” Although this kind of rhetoric is especially prevalent among ideological zealots, it has spread well beyond their circles to become part of mainstream academic thinking. Thus Derek Bok has argued that to apply the same admissions standards to minority applicants as to everyone else would be to “exclude them from the university.”
⁶⁵

Academic Quality

The quality of American college education has been under attack in recent years from a number of critics, of whom former Secretary of Education William Bennett and best-selling author Allan Bloom have been the most prominent. But, while critics tend to focus on the problems of undergraduate education, defenders tend either to shift the focus to the graduate level or to lump the two together, as President James Duderstadt of the University of Michigan did when he said, “we’ve developed the strongest system of higher education in the world.”
⁶⁶
Harvard’s Derek Bok also shifted the focus as he struck back against critics:

In international opinion surveys, our universities invariably dominate. We are the country of choice for students around the world seeking to pursue their education abroad. Business leaders and government officials from overseas extoll the quality of our academic research and admire its stimulative effect on the economy.
⁶⁷

Statistical studies of the contribution of education to American economic development seem to confirm the conclusion that education has been a major positive force.
⁶⁸
However, both the statistical and the impressionistic evidence suffer from the same fundamental flaw: They lump together all sorts of heterogeneous activities and call them “education,” just as Derek Bok lumped together both teaching and research in extolling “our universities.” No one doubts that the development of hybrid corn through agricultural research or the development of a polio vaccine through medical research have been of enormous
value to the human race. That does not mean that the tendentious mumbo-jumbo of “deconstructionism” in literature or the propaganda courses which are spreading increasingly through the undergraduate curriculum are a contribution to American society or to the world.

The influx of foreign students is likewise by no means unequivocal in its implications. Vast numbers of people choose to come to the United States, whether legally or illegally, as tourists or as permanent residents. That foreign students should be like other people in wanting to come to the United States is hardly decisive evidence as to the quality of American colleges—which is what is principally being criticized—especially since nearly half of all foreign students come to the U.S. for postgraduate study.
⁶⁹
Moreover, it cannot be assumed automatically that those who come to go to college are seeking the best education in the world.

The largest number of foreign students in any American academic institution in 1989-90—more than 5,000—went to Miami-Dade Community College,
⁷⁰
a respectable institution but hardly where one would go for world-class scholarship. Among colleges with undergraduates from more than a hundred countries, the California State University in Los Angeles—definitely not to be confused with U.C.L.A.—led the way with students from 120 countries.
⁷¹
In percentage terms, among the institutions where more than 10 percent of the students are foreign are Cogswell College in San Francisco, an institution of little renown, despite its auspicious location, and such Washington, D.C. institutions as Mount Vernon College and Southeastern University
⁷²
—both little known, even among Washingtonians.

This is not to say that foreign students go only to lesser-known or lower-quality American colleges and universities. Foreigners are of course even more heterogeneous than Americans, since they come from everywhere on the planet except the United States. Many foreign students in fact go to leading American colleges and universities. More than 2,200 were enrolled at Harvard in 1989-90, for example, though that was still less than half as many as were enrolled at Miami-Dade Community College.
⁷³
In short, the argument that large influxes of foreign students are evidence of the high quality of American colleges and universities will not stand up under scrutiny.

There is no need to challenge the claim that American academic research is among the most highly regarded anywhere. Harvard Dean Henry Rosovsky made a more complete statement when he claimed, “fully two thirds to three quarters of the best universities in the world are located in the United States” and at the same time admitted, “we also are home to a large share of the world’s worst colleges and universities.”
⁷⁴
Elsewhere he clarified this point by noting that the top American universities he was referring to were “about 50 to 100 institutions”
⁷⁵
—out of more than 3,000. The
lumping together
of all kinds of institutions, courses, and programs, at all kinds of levels of quality—ranging down to some of the worst in the world—is what make both impressionistic and statistical assessments of the value of “education” in general so meaningless and misleading. Moreover, however much American research universities predominate internationally, that is not to say that their associated—indeed, subsidiary—colleges are providing high-quality education for undergraduates.

There is yet another side to the question of the influx of foreign students and the high quality of leading American research universities. Both phenomena are especially prominent at the postgraduate level. As of 1989, just over one-fourth of all doctorates awarded at American universities were awarded to foreigners.
⁷⁶
The more difficult and demanding the academic standards of the field, generally the higher the percentage of the Ph.D.s which went to foreigners. In mathematics and engineering, half or more of all the Ph.D.s awarded at American universities have been earned by foreigners.
⁷⁷
In the much easier—not to say trivial—field of education, Americans have their highest representation among doctoral recipients, 83 percent.
⁷⁸

Over the past two decades, in every field surveyed by the Council of Graduate Schools, the proportion of graduate degrees in the United States going to Americans has declined.
⁷⁹
In mathematics the change has been especially dramatic. In 1977, just under 20 percent of all Ph.D.s in mathematics in the United States were received by foreigners. But a decade later that proportion had more than doubled to 44 percent.
⁸⁰
The number of Ph.D.s in mathematics earned by Americans declined absolutely, by 39 percent.
⁸¹
As a
New York Times
news account revealed, there was a reason for such trends:

Recognition is growing that many American students cannot make the grade in the demanding graduate and postgraduate levels because they have not received adequate training and motivation, especially in the sciences, from kindergarten through college.

“Our graduate schools are extremely attractive internationally,” said Peter D. Syverson, director of information services for the Council of Graduate Schools, a national organization. “We get terrific applications from abroad, but not the same level and quality from American students.”
⁸²

This declining representation of American college graduates among the recipients of postgraduate degrees in the United States cannot be blamed on reduced financial support. On the contrary, during the two decades when Americans were receiving a declining proportion of postgraduate degrees, across fields, expenditures on higher education were generally rising. These expenditures were rising not only absolutely, but even as a percentage of a growing Gross National Product (GNP). By 1987, almost twice as high a percentage of GNP went to higher education as in 1960.
⁸³
As elsewhere in education, money has never been the crucial factor.

To such plain and damning facts, defenders of the educational establishment such as Derek Bok can only reply with the misdirection of a magician: When critics denounce American college teaching, respond with praise of American university research. When critics condemn colleges for selling out to threats by ideologues, point out that there is not as much violence as during the 1960s. When criticized for racial double standards, point to statistics showing more “diversity.” When criticized for the prostitution of the classroom to propaganda, reply that students are resistant to propaganda.
⁸⁴

None of the “vehement” critics who have so “savagely” attacked universities, in Derek Bok’s words,
⁸⁵
has said that there should be
no
education at the university level, any more than critics of American education in general have said that we should abolish it all and become an illiterate society. The specific criticisms which they have made are precisely what Bok and other defenders of academia refuse to confront, but instead seek refuge in large generalities about the contributions
of universities in general. Their evasions are perhaps more telling than the critics’ attacks.

Money and Sanctimony

Nothing inspires such sanctimonious replies to critics as discussions of money.

When a federal investigation of Stanford University turned up all sorts of questionable items charged to government grants—including depreciation on a yacht and part of the cost of University President Donald Kennedy’s $17,000 wedding reception.
⁸⁶
—President Kennedy replied that he would eliminate “expenses that are easily subject to public misunderstanding” and would examine “especially carefully” anything “that smacks of entertainment.” By the time he said this, Stanford was already under investigation by the Office of Naval Research, the General Accounting Office, and a Congressional subcommittee.
⁸⁷
According to Kennedy, Stanford was now “reexamining our policies in an effort to avoid any confusion that might result.”
⁸⁸
This picture of innocent misunderstandings and a confused public was somewhat undermined, however, by the fact that one of Stanford’s own officials had previously been in demand as a speaker at other institutions, explaining to them how to extract more money from government grants.
⁸⁹
Its credibility was further reduced when the investigation of Stanford led other colleges and universities to begin suddenly returning money to the government.