Radical Reforms From Inside Academe

Recently, from inside of academia, veterans of academe have made proposals for reforming higher education that may be among the most far-reaching of any to come from colleges and universities in many a decade.

For example, Benjamin Ginsberg of Johns Hopkins University argued in The Chronicle of Higher Education that colleges and universities should  be subject to the federal Sarbanes-Oxley law that governs financial institutions in the United States.  “Since the early 20th century, America has boasted the world’s finest universities,” he wrote. “In recent years, however, questions have begun to emerge about the quality of American college graduates, the shift of foreign students to Asian and European universities, and a slippage in the global rankings of American universities.”

“One reason for this change is a transformation within the academic community. Today’s great universities were built by members of the faculty who—contrary to the myth of the impractical professor—often were excellent entrepreneurs and managers. Over the last several decades, however, America’s universities have been taken over by a burgeoning class of administrators and staffers who seem determined to transform colleges into top-heavy organizations run by inept executives.”

He points to Purdue University as an example of this troubling trend. “Between 2001 and 2010 at Purdue University, for example, the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty increased 12 percent, the number of graduate teaching assistants declined by 26 percent, and student enrollments increased by about 5 percent, according to research by the Purdue chapter of the American Association of University Professors,” Ginsberg notes. “Meanwhile, the number of university administrators increased by an astonishing 58 percent, and resident tuition rose from just under $1,400 to nearly $9,000 per year in a pattern that appears highly correlated with administrative growth. These data suggest that hard-pressed parents are being asked to pay more and more to support a growing army of administrators who make no direct contribution to the education of their children.”

Meanwhile, Paul Goodman of Carnegie Mellon developed the idea of a learning contract that would be signed by, at a minimum, the student and the professor.  “An organizational learning contract (OLC) is a shared agreement among major parties in an educational institution regarding their roles and responsibilities with respect to learning,” Dr. Goodman writes in his book, Organizational Learning Contracts: New and Traditional Colleges (Oxford University Press). “The relevant parties are students, faculty and staff, as well as alumni and external parties in some cases.”

“The contract is ‘organizational’ because it is initiated by the educational institution and represents a common or shared understanding among the parties about the learning process. In other words, the contract is between the institution and its members.”

“The contract we are talking about here is focused on learning. It spells out the actions each party should take, as well as defining what, how, when, and where learning unfolds in the institution.” Dr. Goodman directs the Institute for Strategic Development at Carnegie Mellon.

“The contract only works if there is a shared understanding about learning,” Dr. Goodman explained to me in an e-mail. “The major players are the students, faculty, and staff,”

“Although it may seem less obvious, staff is critical.  They go to high schools to recruit.  They run the admissions process and orientation.  These are key places for socialization to occur.  In schools with strong contracts the socialization begins before people are even accepted into the school.  In strong contract schools there are really impacts on learning and how to learn.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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