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By Kathleen Parker Opinion writer January 28 $
Follow @kathleenparker
President Obama is correct in wanting to make higher
education more affordable and accessible, but Americans
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would also be correct in wondering just what they’re paying
$540
for.
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The need for a better-educated populace is beyond dispute.
Without critical thinking skills and a solid background in
history, the arts and sciences, how can a nation hope to
govern itself?
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Answer: Look around.
Kathleen Parker
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column on politics
and culture. She
received the Pulitzer
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Commentary In
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The problem isn’t only that higher
education is unaffordable to many but that
even at our highest-ranked colleges and
universities, students aren’t getting much
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bang for their buck.
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Since 1985, the price of higher education
has increased 538 percent, according to a
new study from the American Council of
Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), a nonprofit, nonpartisan
research group that encourages trustees and alumni to foster
improvement where institutions may be reluctant to go
against popular trends.
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For perspective, compare tuition increases to a “mere” 286
percent increase in medical costs and a 121 percent increase
in the consumer price index during the same period,
according to the ACTA.
Although the council confined its research in this study —
“Education or Reputation?” — to the 29 top-ranked
liberal-arts schools in the nation, where tuition, boarding and
books typically run more than $50,000 per year, the trends
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Kathleen Parker: The diminishing returns of a college education - The W...
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highlighted are not confined to smaller, elite institutions.
These include an increasing lack of academic rigor, grade
inflation, high administrative costs and a lack of intellectual
diversity.
While these recent findings are not so surprising to those who
follow such studies, one can still be stunned by what can only
be described as a breach of trust between colleges and the
students they attract with diversions and amenities that have
little bearing on education and that will be of little use in the
job market.
One need only be reminded of the recent scandal at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where a
whistleblower revealed that phony classes and fake grades
have been offered, mostly to athletes, since the 1990s.
UNC, one of the historically great institutions of higher
learning quite apart from its legendary basketball team, is
scrambling now to repair its damaged reputation with
oversight and other fixes. But reputations, cultivated over
decades and sometimes centuries, are like love — hard to
repair once trust is broken.
On the flip side, the ACTA proposes that many schools, rather
than offering the educational quality that earned them a
golden reputation in the first place, often depend on public
reverence for the past rather than present performance.
Of great concern is the diminishing focus on core curricula —
the traditional arts and science coursework essential to
developing the critical thinking necessary for civic
participation. Among the 29 schools surveyed by the ACTA,
only three require U.S. government or history, just two
require economics and five colleges have no requirements at
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all.
In a separate study, the National Assessment of Adult
Literacy found that though Americans pay the highest
per-pupil tuition rates in the world, most graduates fall below
proficiency in such simple cognitive tasks as comparing
viewpoints in two editorials or buying food when the price is
given per ounce.
Instead of the basics, students might look forward to more
entertaining fare, such as Middlebury College’s “Mad Men
and Mad Women,” an examination of masculinity and
femininity in mid-20th-century America via the television
show “Mad Men.”
I confess I’d enjoy a dinner discussion along these lines, but
as an education consumer, I’m not sure a semester-long
investigation is worth even a tiny percentage of the tuition.
ACTA President Anne Neal acknowledged that such courses
may be interesting and even valuable. “What we do question,
however, is allowing such classes to stand in lieu of a
broad-based American history or government requirement,”
she said, “when we know how severely lacking students’
historical literacy can be.”
Given the ever-escalating tuition costs, one may wonder
where all that money is going.
Out of the 29 colleges evaluated, 22 have administrative
budgets that are at least one-third of what the schools spend
on instruction. More than a third of the college presidents
earn as much or more than the president of the United States
($400,000) for running these schools, many of which have
fewer than 2,000 students.
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Other findings of the 46-page report are equally compelling
but too lengthy for this space. Summed up: American
students are paying too much for too little — and this, too,
should concern Obama as he examines ways to make college
more affordable. Getting people into college is only half the
battle. Getting them out with a useful education seems an
equal challenge.
Read more from Kathleen Parker’s archive, follow her on
Twitter or find her on Facebook.
Read more about this topic:
Robert J. Samuelson: It’s time to drop the college-for-all
crusade
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Free college? We can afford it.
Charles Lane: Colleges are headed for a reckoning
William E. Kirwan: Not college for all, but college for more
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Summary for Sanford J. Ungar “The New Liberal Arts”
In the article The New Liberal Arts, written by Sanford J. Ungar in the book
(They Say I Say), the author mentions seven misunderstandings about the liberal
arts education in the United States and explains his view by showing the peoples
understanding.
In the first misunderstanding, most people see that liberal arts education is
financial burden and cannot find lucrative employment opportunities. On the other
hand, the author opinion’s the liberal arts give people who have this kind of arts
degree multi-personal skills such as writing, speaking, and how to recognize the
science concepts.
Second misunderstanding, Ungar argues that the college graduate of liberal
arts education may face troubles finding good jobs but this is not true, based on a
survey for the association of American colleges and universities shows more than
half of the nation suggest that collegebund students follow that school.
Third point, most people think that liberal arts education mainly for rich
people and they will hold the critical thinking, as Ungar mentioned this is not true
when he gave us an example of president Obama how he has been raised by a single
mother and came from a poor place as well.
The forth misunderstanding is that a liberal arts education covers many
majors beside art such as science and math and shows the historical back ground of
the liberal art education by showing trivium and quadrivium.
In the fifth misunderstanding, liberal arts students have nothing to do with
the liberal democrats who are ruling the United States. Democratic is part of the
liberal studies but is very conservative.
Sixth misunderstanding, Ungar discusses that America is not the only
country that appreciate the liberal arts education but he shows that China is one of
the country that appreciates liberal art as well.
In the last misunderstanding, Ungar shows that the general educations in the
U.S are too expensive and going out of control as well as the liberal arts even that it
has no demand but the cost is increasing.
In conclusion, Ungar shows that schools should take more care in the liberal
arts in all its stages because it helps us to understand and build eternal truths within
us. The writer himself confirms this when he says, “Through immersion in liberal
arts, students learn not just make a living, but also to live a life rich in values and
character” (Ungar,p190). In other words, the liberal arts add many things to human
in terms of understanding life and deal with it as required. In fact, life practical has
required that individuals must have a diverse knowledge in various fields of life,
which individuals can learn throughout liberal arts. At the same time, the liberal arts
also help to have the idea of finding solutions to problems; thus it enhances the
innovation and creation inside individuals.