If you want to find what issues your college president is talking about ,
read the fall 1997 issue of Daedalus. The Journal of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences titled "The American Academic Profession-15 very
readable articles by scholars and college presidents.
Although hopeful about the future, they stress hat higher ed. faces
challenges like :
a public that is less enthusiastic about college education and
appalled at its cost
federal and state legislators who are reluctant to give ever
larger appropriations to colleges.
Note: Although many state treasuries have surpluses his year, the
money wont go to higher ed- except for capitol improvements and
technology. Meanwhile enrollment has increased.
After 50 years of growth, college are facing more criticisms and attacks
and a "no growth" period.
The public and legislators seem to feel that offering the opportunity to
attend college to 60% of our high school grads is enough and we shouldn't
plan to expand that number even though there will be a huge tidal wave of
students coming in the next 15 years.
Increasing public funding for college is no longer a national priority.
The experts are taking a cold, hard look at developmental education - and
recommending that since teaching remedial courses is more like teaching
high school than teaching college courses, they can be outsourced to
extension, private companies and/ or computerized. Flagship universities
have turned over dev. courses to extension divisions or community colleges.
Courses like ESL and beginning foreign language courses (those that have
always been lowest on the academic totem pole) are being outsourced or
taught by technology Second tier universities are rapidly divesting
themselves of their remedial programs.
We can expect the new students to be somewhat better prepared but more are
apathetic about school -so they will still come loaded with
problems.Students with very low test scores will have great difficulty
getting admitted unless they have lots of money.
What is clear is that ther will be more scholars but fewer dollars in the
years to come. We'll have to do more with less.
Martha Maxwell
