Look at any university ranking table, and the overwhelming majority of top universities are American. The Shanghai Rankings list 35 American universities among the top 50 universities with the world. The UK is next, with three among the top 50.
The rankings are not dominated by private universities – the University of California, Berkeley, is listed as second in the world, and 19 of the 35 American colleges among the top 50 are public universities.
But are these universities actually that good? Are they engineered to equip the average college student with the life skills necessary to survive in the real world, or are they elitist institutions that are geared towards research, with little emphasis on undergraduate teaching?
Consider some of the top public universities’ graduation rates. Berkeley’s four-year graduation rate is 64 percent – in other words, one in three students does not graduate on time. The University of California-Davis, ranked 46th in the world, has a four-year graduation rate of 50 percent. In other words, every second student does not graduate on time. At 53 percent, the University of Wisconsin’s four-year graduation rate is not much better.
The schools with the best four-year graduation rates are overwhelmingly liberal arts colleges and Ivy League schools. For most students, these schools are out of reach due to their prohibitive tuition rates. Four years at a school like Yale could cost a quarter of a million dollars, and while the school is known for its generous financial aid (more than half of the student body receives need-based scholarships), the cost is still too burdensome for most families.
The average student who graduates in four years can expect to be faced with nearly $28,000 in debt. This is nearly double the student debt that an undergraduate would be faced with had he or she graduated 10 years ago. Has this been reflected in the value added by a college degree?
The Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test designed to identify just how much value is added by a college degree, presents sobering results. According to CLA data, 45 percent of students made no progress in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing in their first two years at college.
In January, the Council for Aid to Education, the organization that administers the CLA, called the current situation “an unprecedented crisis in undergraduate education in the United States.” They are right.
Things need to change. First of all, schools need to prioritize their spending towards academics. In 2010, the 218 NCAA Division 1 schools spent a combined $6.2 billion on their athletics programs. Of these 218 schools, only 22 turned a profit. Among the schools operating at a loss were Berkeley (second ranked university in the world), UCLA (13th), and, unfortunately, Wisconsin (17th).
Of the $6.2 billion in expenditure on athletics programs, $2 billion was funded by state and federal governments. It is no surprise that the University of California system is in financial trouble when it allocates government money towards an unprofitable athletics program rather than investing in its student body, a group who could prove to be among its benefactors in years to come.
Another reason that universities are not providing as much value as they used to is the spike in administrative staff. According to Benjamin Ginsberg’s book, “The Fall of the Faculty,” faculty-to-student ratios from 1975 to 2005 remained more or less the same across American universities. In the same period of time, the number of administrators has risen by 85 percent.
Such a growth in administrative staff would be excusable if there were a similar investment in faculty, but such endowments are simply not forthcoming. Only 30 percent of academic faculty are tenured or tenure-track appointees – this is down from almost 70 percent about 30 years ago.
With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that professors are now divesting themselves of their teaching responsibilities, passing as much work as possible onto poorly paid TAs so they can work on their own research in the hope that it will fast-track their tenure.
These TAs, many of whom are PhD students, do not have the same depth of knowledge that can be provided by a full professor. While their efforts are to be appreciated, they are often more wrapped up in their own research and do not pay the requisite attention to their students.
America’s universities are no longer about equipping young men and women with the skills to prosper in the workplace. They have devolved into bureaucracy-ridden, insular institutions that place more interest in abstract notions of research recognition than in providing undergraduates with a well-rounded education.
UW is (supposedly) one of the best universities in the country, and yet it can only graduate every second student in four years. A radical overhaul of the university system is necessary if these institutions are to be restored to their former glory.
Shawn Rajanayagam ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and American studies.
