Soc (2011) 48:220–224
DOI 10.1007/s12115-011-9434-7
SYMPOSIUM: ACADEMICALLY ADRIFT
Is American Higher Education All That Bad?
Robert Weissberg
Published online: 25 March 2011
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Pessimism about the state of higher education is a venerable
tradition. Socrates probably believed Aristotle to be a
plodder wasting his time by observing plants and animals.
Indeed, it’s been my experience that whenever professors of
a certain age gather for chit-chat, regardless of field and
ideology, the conversation will inevitably turn to the poor
intellectual quality of today’s students, their sloth, the
rampant cheating, grade inflation, the rise of empty calorie
ideologically flavored majors and the ease by which the
intellectually indifferent can graduate. Arum and Roksa’s
Academically Adrift only supplies a more scientific account
of these oft-repeated depressing assessments.
Matters are, however, more complicated than just
cataloguing student ineptitude. This is not to argue that all
is well in the academy; all the complaints do reflect a
depressing reality. Rather, professors who focus exclusively
on students as the over-riding cause of our educational malaise
over-simplify and thereby obscure more complicated issues
bedeviling American higher education. Moreover, no guarantee exists that today’s students can be prodded to perform
better and pushing them harder may prove disastrous to those
bemoaning their woeful inadequacy.
How Much Brain Power Suffices?
Assessments of contemporary higher education implicitly
view it as if it were a factory turning out products essential for
our national well-being and, as Academically Adrift shows,
much of what falls off the assembly line is shoddy
R. Weissberg (*)
99 Battery Place 28A,
New York, NY 10280, USA
e-mail: rweissbe@illinois.edu
merchandise. With this quality control mentality in place,
gloom and doom are inevitable. Further add that our
overseas rivals out-perform US students, especially in math
and science so necessary to brain-powered modern economies. Nonetheless, the factory analogy may be inappropriate.
The sky is not falling.
For one, it is unclear how much specialized top brain
power the US requires to survive in a competitive world
marketplace. This is a maddening empirical question and
cannot be answered by assembling statistics showing that
millions of undergraduates goof off and cheat. Progress
need not arrive by armies of well-trained graduates
overwhelming a problem. After all, it only took a single
Newton to invent calculus and a few garage-based geeks to
create Apple computers. To appreciate this point, imagine
accrediting music schools and unhappily finding that most
students were tone deaf. Yet, it is quite possible that a few
outstanding graduates could supply the world’s demand for
concert pianists, opera singers and the like. The proportions
of chaff to wheat may not be the relevant benchmark.
To demonstrate that thousands of students squander their
college years guzzling beer and fail to graduate says
nothing about whether universities are supplying sufficient
intellectual talent. Better to scrutinize the job market and
salaries or ask if our intellectual needs are being met by
importing smart workers from overseas. If help wanted ads
for computer engineer jobs run in the thousands, all
offering sky high ever-escalating salaries, then it is clear
that something on America’s campuses is amiss. This does
not, however, seem to be the case. The National Science
Foundation regularly monitors America’s scientific brain
power and they do not find anything seriously wrong. One
study reports that the number of scientists and engineer has
recently increased sharply but relatively low levels unemployment still occur. In other words, since not every
Soc (2011) 48:220–224
scientist or engineer can find a job when supply is rapidly
expanding, we may even be producing a few too many. A
2008 NSF press release explicitly stated that we should not
worry about the US filling jobs in science and the recent
economic downturn may have expanded the pool of
unemployed scientific talent. If one doubts America’s
capacity to satisfy the need for brains, just ask placement
directors at many of today’s Ph.D. program. It is an open
secret that many of these programs, even in intellectually
demanding fields suffer a glut of job candidates and many
graduates find employment outside of their specialized
training.
It is equally true that many jobs do not require much
“book learning” and necessary skills can be acquired on the
job. After all, somebody has to manage proliferating fast
food restaurants etc. etc. and those who breezed through
college unencumbered by serious learning maybe the ideal
job candidate. A recent Bureau of Labor Statistics study
illustrates that the American economy is, thankfully,
unwilling to treat shoddy graduates as the real thing.
Among other findings, it reported that in 1992 119,000
waiters and waitresses had college degrees but by 2008 this
figure had soared to 318,000 and this pattern was true in
many other low-level occupations. In other words, the
market may be self-correcting when it comes to assessing
the value of empty calorie diplomas. A cynic might thus
aver that American universities do improve workforce
quality, top to bottom, albeit upping the intellectual ability
of those taking food orders.
From the perspective of how much top talent is
sufficient, the existence of indisputably first-rate institutions, the Cal Techs and MITs, may suffice despite existing
in a sea of intellectual mediocrity. Moreover, even if these
first-rate institutions could not supply the necessary brain
power so vital to our future, this shortage may be beyond
remediation given the supply of home-grown cognitive
talent. We cannot assume that matters will improve, as
reformers demand, if curriculums are made more rigorous,
grading standards stiffened and all the rest; perhaps the US
has already maxed out its supply of high IQ students so
admitting more applicants to rigorous programs and turning
the thumb screws is the equivalent of trying to squeeze
blood from turnips.
The question of adequate home-grown brain power sooner
or later raises the awkward (and politically incorrect) issue of
demography. To be blunt, much of what transpires in today’s
universities, for better or worse, is far more sensitive to
fertility and immigration patterns than decisions made by
Deans about rewarding good teaching or attempting to deflate
grades. The supply of brain power in the incoming freshman
class is undoubtedly decisive when it comes to improving
student performance. It is easy to hand out “D’s” when the
Admissions Office is overwhelmed by applicants with perfect
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SAT scores and with this army knocking on the door, current
enrollees quickly learn that sloth will not be tolerated.
The news regarding the talent pool is mixed and this should
not be ignored when cataloguing the sorry state of American
higher education. A parallel exists with expanding the number
of professional sports franchises and the inevitable talent
dilution, a reality that has brought multi-million dollar salaries
to coddled mediocre athletes. In 1980 there were 1957
institutions of higher learning but by 2007 they had grown
to 2675 and all were competing for tuition-paying bodies with
a pulse. Meanwhile, today’s credential mania has boosted the
proportion of high school graduates seeking a college degree,
from slightly more than half to two-thirds (and among blacks,
the increase is substantially larger). One does not have to be a
rocket scientist to connect the dots: continued institutional
survival often means enrolling and retaining students who
barely belong in college. So, rather than complain about
academically indifferent students and gift grades, ire should be
directed at proliferating colleges, their unwise generous
admission standards and the federal government’s willingness
to finance mediocrity with need-based scholarships.
The well-known pattern of delayed marriage among the
smart also has contributed to the dumbing down. Today’s
college classroom would be far different if high IQ women did
not pursue professional careers requiring extra years of
schooling and instead married early and had two or three
children before age 25. But without this additional supply of
smart kids, accommodating very ordinary students (plus a few
affirmative action and legacy admits, plus athletes) becomes
vital. Imposing draconian academic measures is pointless if
those flunked are replaced by those with even less cognitive
talent and worse work habits. It is thus rational, especially in
today’s enrollment driven academic environment, for professors to close their eyes and give passing grades to slackers
who download their papers from the Internet. Professors may
whine about their dreadful students, but getting rid of them by
raising standards probably means fewer professors and who
wants to risk being voted off the island?
But this thin talent pool has an antidote. Thanks to
fortuitous waves of immigration that began in the mid1960s, namely the influx of knowledge-hungry Asians and
a bit later, Russians, our domestic talent pool has expanded.
For fans of top-flight American education, this flood has
been a god-send though the legal change permitting it had
zero to do with enhancing America’s brain power. Visitors
to elite research universities daily see that the best, most
ambitious students in demanding technical fields are
children of immigrants or themselves recent arrivals. Just
walk around MIT, Cal Tech or Stanford and look at the
faces and listen to student conversations. At the University
of California, Berkeley, a study found that nearly 12% of
the enrolled were foreign born while 14.5% had at least one
parent born overseas. At New York City’s elite public
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universities the influx of Asian and Russian students has
similarly transformed institutions that nearly collapsed into,
again, a stellar institution of higher learning that resembles
an earlier era when knowledge hungry immigrant children
created the “poor man’s Harvard.”
This adaptation to the shoddy quality of American
undergraduates is perhaps most pronounced when compared to foreign graduate students recruited in fields
requiring both exceptional intelligence and diligence. In
1966 when the US labored to send a man to the moon only
14.3% of the earned Ph.D.’s went to non-US citizens with a
temporary residence; by 2003 the figure was a third and it
seems to be rising. Post 9/11 visa restrictions temporally
slowed the craving but most recent statistics show that
foreign graduate students in engineering and science are
again flooding American graduate schools. For example, in
2006–7, the number of US citizens entering graduate
programs in engineering increased by 1%; the increase
figure for foreign born students was 7%. The ratio in the
physical sciences was nearly identical, 1% increase among
Americans versus 6% for those from overseas.
It is easy to treat these get-them-from-abroad statistics as yet
more evidence on the sorry state of domestic intellectual talent
and the ineptitude of our K-12 education but all the moaning
and groaning does not say whether Academically Adrift is
describing an intractable condition or a problem awaiting an
available fix. But if I had to choose I’d put my money on the
former—it’s intractable. As somebody who has spent nearly
four decades at prestige, research-oriented universities, much
of the sloth that bedevils American higher education is, at least
in my estimation, beyond remediation. You cannot beat base
metal into silver, let alone gold. Imagine the outcome if a
professor decided to “get serious.” That is, require attendance,
assign ample dense reading, give snap quizzes to ensure that
the reading was read, demand immediate expulsion of cheaters
and impose an old-fashioned “C” centered curve? This
guarantees a rebellion among the school’s “customers,”
especially for required gateway courses, and I’d guess that
administrators would have a quiet talk with this hardnosed
professor. If the course were an elective, its unsavory
reputation would soon get out and facing a miniscule
enrollment, the professor would be re-assigned to teaching
introductory courses. Better to surrender to reality.
In the final analysis, then, when the distribution and
supply of intellectual talent is calculated, and the institution insist on surviving and pay faculty, it makes perfect
economic sense to tolerate beer-drinking undergraduates
snoozing through Mickey Mouse courses taught by blasé
faculty. To repeat, focusing on the proportion of good to
bad students (not absolute numbers) is the wrong metric.
Nevertheless, American higher education can be improved
but cataloguing widespread student deficiency seeks a
solution in all the wrong places.
Soc (2011) 48:220–224
Given our diagnosis, several changes immediately come
to mind though all are too “controversial” to be implemented. None require torturing today’s slackers. First,
reduce the number of third and fourth tier colleges, perhaps
by denying government financed loans and scholarships to
their students, replace them with vocational schools
teaching useful market skills—more electricians, fewer
majors in “communication studies.” Then toughen admission standards at elite schools by junking all soft criteria
that dilute a school’s intellectual talent, measures like
affirmative action, athletic scholarships and admission
based upon essays about overcoming hardship. An old
British saying put it bluntly: train the best, shoot the rest.
Second, enact policies that encourage smart people to have
more children. Though critics will immediately scream
“Hitler” and “eugenics,” this can entail little more than
altering the tax code to cover more child-rearing expenses
among the wealthy (who tend to be smarter). Third, open the
door even wider to highly motivated, intellectually superior
students from abroad. Have the Admission Office hire
Chinese-speaking recruiters to entice smart kids to come to
America to replace hung-over party animals. If we insist on
home-grown students, alter immigration policy to give extra
weight to those from well-educated families or those who
otherwise demonstrate a high IQ. In other words, just install a
merit-based system of higher education.
This is, of course, fantasy but it is a far superior fantasy
than trying to get blood from turnips. More important, these
suggestions, no matter how impractical to impose, forces
critics of American higher education to confront awkward
issues all too easily neglected when beating up inadequate,
lazy students is so much easy fun.
Is Critical Thinking a Cure for our Malaise?
Underlying Academically Adrift is the belief that American
universities have a responsibility to teach more than what
the course syllabus demands. This “teach more than narrow
book learning” is commendable and I couldn’t agree more.
But, going beyond “book learning” acknowledged, what
should it be? One solid candidate might be called Calvinist
virtues plus a dollop of social skills: learning to be
punctual, being able to manage time, handle crises, tenacity
in the face of formidable obstacles, restraining appetites and
impulses, an ability to follow instructions, even a talent for
cooperating with varied fellow student plus the social
graces like properly using a knife and fork. All very
sensible and scarcely needing much justification. No
doubt, the once commonplace focus on these nonacademic virtues explained why prospective employers
viewed the degree from a first-rate school, apart from
any demonstrated book learning, as prima facie evidence
Soc (2011) 48:220–224
of vocational worthiness—one would always show up,
properly behave, work hard and get the job done on time.
For Arum and Roksa, however, traditional “Calvinist”
virtues are irrelevant, perchance too old-fashioned. Instead
they emphasize a knack for critical thinking measured by
something called the Collegiate Learning Assessment
(CLA) in which the students show up once and analyze
materials presented to them which required 90 minutes of
work. That many of these same students in all likelihood
often skip class, day dream during lectures, neglect the
assigned reading, and cut corners (including cheating) when
not taking the CLA test seems to go unnoticed. It might be
interesting to know how many CLA test-takers signed up
but failed to arrive on test day.
A talent for critical thinking is the book’s leitmotiv and a
scan of the book found “critical thinking” mentioned some
87 times (searches for “work ethic,” “diligence” and “hard
work” found zero and “discipline” was used 13 times but
only once in the sense of students needing “discipline” and
that appeared in a quote). To be sure, the authors are aware
that their CLA measure is open to question but their review
of criticism largely address testing per se or CLA
measurement validity. The centrality of critical thinking in
a college education is only asserted, often by merely
quoting others who just reiterate the consensus. Nor is it
clear exactly how many jobs require critical thinking as a
condition for vocational success. Critical thinking is now
the Apple Pie and Motherhood of modern college educators
and, ironically, the passion for critical thinking goes
unexamined. According to the Wikipedia entry on the
topic, a 1972 study of 40,000 faculty members by the
American Council on Education reported that 97% of the
respondents indicated the most important goal of undergraduate education is to foster students’ ability to think
critically.
Personally, I am a great fan of “critical thinking” and
always tell my graduate students on the first day of class that
this will be stressed in my lectures and my take-home essay
exams explicitly encourages it. Over the years former students
have occasionally returned to thank me for their experience
with these exercises in connecting dots in non-obvious but
analytically rigorous ways. Many recall specific examples.
“You really made me think,” is what they say.
Burgeoning popularity and my own affection aside,
however, it is unclear why this trait should be so central in
how students approach college. Nor is it self-evident that
critical thinking can be taught to all but the very best
students (the Wikipedia entry on critical thinking briefly
cites several empirical studies skeptical of colleges being
able to impart this skill). I strongly suspect that skill at
critical thinking is closely related to IQ and given IQ
distributions, many students will just never get it. Based on
Arum and Roksa’s own data regarding academic disen-
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gagement, a better case could be made for re-invigorating a
Calvinist work ethic—always attending class, paying
careful attention, doing the required reading and resisting
distractions like excessive drinking. After all, applying
critical thinking first requires showing up etc. etc. If
students were to embrace a strong work ethic many of the
problems documented in Academically Adrift would undoubtedly vanish. If endemic sloth is the chief culprit,
promoting critical thinking is the wrong medicine.
For me, critical thinking is probably best employed as a
pedagogical tool used by the instructor to illuminate the nonobvious versus training students in this technique. It has been
my experience in following classroom discussions and reading
their essays where they are enticed to think critically, that this
enterprise just wastes valuable class time. Yes, a tiny few may
show flashes of insight when the materials are laid before them
(as in the CLA) and guided to challenge assumptions, but the
grade-savvy are far more inclined to just parrot back the
instructor’s insights. It is the autonomous use of critical
thinking that is, supposedly, so important, not its display
when the instructor provides all the necessary ingredients. To
repeat, my experience is that while students can learn from it,
very few will ever become expert practitioners.
Moreover, an ability to think critically about a given
topic presupposes an enormous amount of relevant background knowledge seldom known to undergraduates or
even graduate students. A knack for abstract reasoning
and logical reasoning is also required, abilities seldom
found outside of top school. In the way of illustration,
my graduate course on elections dwells extensively on
how the US winner-take-all, geographically-based arrangement encourages centrist political parties. I compare major US parties to what occurs in nations using
proportional representation in terms of incentives,
history and legal rules. I further discuss the purpose of
elections and their cultural component. This is, at least in my
estimation, a tour de force exercise in connecting multiple
dots to produce a quite new (at least for students) insight
about American politics. Students seem to appreciate the
lecture but giving it requires endless backtracking to describe
countless simple political facts (e.g., different types of
majorities, the legal status of political parties, how parliamentary systems work and on and on). Nearly all of this
background material is totally new to my students, all of
whom are graduate students in a selective program. In other
words, before you can connect numerous dots in nonobvious, enlightening ways, you have to know many, many
dots, and most students know only a tiny few.
The moral of this story is that critical thinking is not a
pathway to knowledge unless there is a substantial prior
acquisition of extensive information. At least in my field
(political science) proficiency in critical thinking requires
years of reading dull tomes, debating issues with colleagues
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anxious to criticize and, best of all, writing books and
scholarly papers to disentangle all the complexities. This is
boring, often frustrating hard work and will never be
undertaken without a strong work ethic. It is bizarre to insist
that a lazy, ill-informed 20-year old student can, to use two
components of the Wikipedia definition of critical thinking, be
“both willing and able to evaluate one’s thinking” and “thinks
open-mindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences.”
Let me put it this way. Decent universities even with less
than brilliant students and ordinary faculty can strengthen
the work ethic. We know how to terrorize students and, rest
assured, students will immediately react to a reign of terror.
But, do we really know how to teach critical thinking if
students are reluctant to do the demanding prior work?
Critical thinking may be best taught after a reign of terror
and this should be the reformer’s chief mission.
I would further add that bringing critical thinking to a
classroom populated by uninformed students may inadvertently exacerbate academic insufficiency. Contrary claims
aside, it will dumb down education by imposing huge
opportunity costs. Through examples students can readily
learn that knowing “mere facts,” the very building blocks of
future insight, is secondary to interpreting what little they
know to draw personally satisfying conclusion. It has been
my experience, and I’d guess many other professors would
agree, that these “critical thinking” discussions tend to be
vacuous and resemble dormitory BS sessions. The tip-off to
this fluff is the incidence of “insights” that begin with “In
my opinion…” or “I feel…” and the paucity of supporting
hard evidence. Learning, if you can call it that, degenerates
into back and forth weak arguments. Perhaps their principal
value is to fill up class time, give students the satisfaction of
having their voice heard while relieving the instructor of
providing structured lectures. It is no wonder why many
educators love it—it sure beats arduous preparation.
But it may get worse. Exercises in critical thinking can
over-emphasize the critical in critical thinking. In the hands
of an instructor pushing a political agenda, teaching critical
thinking is a license to attack the status quo by exposing its
alleged hidden assumptions, an ideologically driven search
and destroy mission so to speak. Especially where students
lack intellectual sophistication, this is remarkably easy. To
return to my own teaching about election systems, critical
thinking makes it a snap to “demonstrate” that the US
election system is inherently “biased” against racial
minorities, women and the poor while its reliance on
expensive campaigns empowers the wealthy. While some
students might rightly object to this “insight” but they are
unlikely to prevail given the instructor’s deeper knowledge
and, most importantly, power over grades. Or, if a
conservative were in charge, critical thinking can “demon-
Soc (2011) 48:220–224
strate” how our circus-like election system encourages
pandering to the poor brings higher taxes, bloated government
and staggering debt so as to satisfy parasites living off public
largess. Regardless of ideological slant, this approach is
certainly more exciting than explicating boring election law.
Some Cause for Optimism
It is easy to understand why so many professors become
discouraged with today’s students. Who can keep the fire alive
after reading their atrocious exams or looking out over a sea of
blank faces or students more interested in texting and reading
e-mail. It’s enough to drive a person to drink or, better yet,
write therapeutic books documenting this ineptitude.
The reality, however, is more upbeat. If we ignore that
ratio of good to bad students, American higher education is
performing well. Top schools produce first-rate graduates,
even in the grueling sciences, and what we cannot
manufacture at home, we import from overseas. Yes, many
“graduates” may be semi-literate and innumerate but the
post college market largely cures this defect—they become
waiters and waitresses, not rocket scientists. It also may be
futile to prod these slackers since they are performing as
well as we can expect in light of their modest cognitive
talents and seemingly intractable slovenly work habits.
Never forget that these hoards of mediocre youngsters
help put bread on the table for thousands of professors. Yes,
we suffer their stupidities but at the end of the month, the
paycheck is there. Perhaps this explains the infatuation with
pushing critical thinking—it can make learning painless fun
for those who hate boring lectures, but most of all, it will
not cull the dummies from the herd and thereby shrink
enrollments. To appreciate this inconvenient truth about
sustaining high enrollments regardless of quality, imagine
higher education consisting of only the brightest. In terms of
supplying America’s intellectual needs it would be identical—
perchance superior—to what now occurs but the number of
academic jobs would decline sharply and who can predict
where the unemployed wannabe professors would go?
Perhaps like actors waiting for the big break, Ph.D.’s would
wait on tables until retirement or death opened a teaching
position. Job announcement would now attract thousands of
applicants, not the hundreds as is common today. Armies of
dull, lazy students are both a problem and a valuable
economic resource. Be careful what you wish for.
Robert Weissberg is Professor of Political Science, Emeritus,
University of Illinois-Urbana and currently Adjunct Professor of
Politics, New York University. Recent books include Political
Tolerance, The Limits of Civic Activism, Pernicious Tolerance and
Bad Students, Not Bad Schools.
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