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This column from The Oregonian also speaks to this issue.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/03/a_retired_professor_speaks_out.html

posted 3 years, 3 months ago
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Recently there have been a number of articles and studies about the state of higher education in the US today which indicate that our university system is broken and must be fixed.  Here is an article from the Winter 2010 issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas that goes into some depth about the issue of educational quality at universities throughout the country, and what should be done to improve transparency of outcomes.  In addition to this, the New York Times ran this story on February 17 about a study which found that the public is not happy with the state of higher education today.  From the introduction to the study, Squeeze Play 2010, "Six out of 10 Americans now say that colleges today operate more like a business, focused more on the bottom line than on the educational experience of students. Further, the number of people who feel this way has increased by 5 percentage points in the last year alone, and is up by 8 percentage points since 2007."

To what extent are universities (particularly as publicly funded institutions) responsible for hiring and maintaining a staff of educators, and to what extent should their primary focus be research?  While the two ideas are not necessarily mutually exclusive - certainly there are great researchers who are also great teachers, and vice versa - which should be the priority?  Is it appropriate to sacrifice teacher quality in the name of carrying out research whose repercussions are often esoteric and scarcely felt outside academic circles?  Which priority (teacher quality or research) does the public believe is more important?  Which does the university administration think should be the priority?  Are the two stances compatible?

Jonna Lynn Mehrens

jonnalynn@gmail.com

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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