The Quiet Crisis: How Higher Education is Failing America

Citation

McBurnie, G. (2006), "The Quiet Crisis: How Higher Education is Failing America", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 189-191. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880610662079

Peter Smith describes his book as:

… a critique and a policy primer for higher education administrators, policymakers, parents, students, and other people interested in reshaping and extending American higher education so that it more effectively serves the needs of the merging population (p. xxv).

Smith's resume is impressive. He has served as University President, State Lieutenant Governor and Member of US Congress. His professional experiences inform his observations and influence the tone of the book. It is structured around three related propositions: that American higher education “works disproportionately well” for those favoured by “race and income”; that “schools stifle learning” by persisting with outdated modes of teaching; and that “technology is part of the solution” (pp. x‐xii and passim).

The first argument is that, while the American higher education model appears successful and appealing on the surface, it is decaying from within as “America is becoming a two‐class society and the great divide between the classes is education” (p. 11). This is backed by statistics for enrolment and completion rates for minority groups, and by earnings differentials between graduates and non‐graduates. Smith suggests a number of strategies for enhancing participation and academic success rates, including a rethink of financial aid approaches and offering flexible opportunities for those with work and family commitments. It is difficult to take issue with such a truism. Access and equity issues are important challenges for societies around the world, and the specifics will of course vary from country to country and indeed from government to government. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that education is but one dimension – albeit a key dimension – of broader social inequality.

The second proposition, that “schools stifle learning” holds that the current model of American higher education – structured around lectures, tutorials, books and examinations – is outmoded. Drawing upon research on learning styles and Howard Gardner's theories of multiple intelligences, Smith suggests that many learners are poorly served by traditional teaching modes. He advocates a strategy whereby the individual's learning style is professionally diagnosed, and an appropriate approach prescribed:

An area ripe for research and public investment is the development of an affordable, accessible battery of assessments that allows institutions – colleges but also employers and other nonprofits and for‐profits – and individual learners to know individual learning profiles. It would be the equivalent of the basic health information doctors collect during physicals. It would tell how each of us learns best. With the technological capacity we have, this information would follow the learner through life (p. 150).

In his enthusiastic canvassing of possibilities, Smith does not explore the potential downside. While the proposal may appeal to some institutions and learners, it does open a world of questions about the effectiveness and implications of such testing (especially given widespread scepticism by critics of current testing regimes): whether this would inevitably result in a formal or informal hierarchy of learning styles, whether students would be disadvantaged by being labelled into a particular category of learner, and privacy concerns about who should have access to the information and under what conditions.

The third proposition, that “technology is part of the solution” is by now quite unremarkable. Smith rehearses the usual statistics about the rapidly rising ICT capacity and rapidly falling costs, and observes that the technology facilitates innovations in the provision and management of education. Disappointingly, he does not engage with the wealth of literature on the shortcomings – as well as advantages – of ICT as a solution to education problems. It should be acknowledged, for example, that computer‐based learning may disadvantage those with poorer written language skills: for some, e‐mail is a far less efficient way of asking a question and getting it answered than a face‐to‐face interaction. Also, the “digital divide” is too quickly glossed over by Smith, especially considering his concerns about structural social inequalities in American society.

In various parts of the book, Smith stresses that higher education has much to learn from modern business practice. In some respects, such as focus on customer service, this is no doubt true. Success in addressing the purported needs of business is presented by Smith as potential evidence for quality:

Quality will increasingly become a consequence of institutional effectiveness, of achieving outcomes, of value added to lives … These will include the new traits called for by business leaders today: the ability to work in teams, to apply high‐level knowledge in a diverse array of settings, to communicate effectively, to reflect and think critically across different circumstances, to employ technology, to work across cultural differences, to learn throughout life, and to respond as educated people to the challenges that life generates (p. 140).

These traits do not seem to be new, nor are they confined to the business world. A variation on the theme can be found in most of the university mission/vision documents that I have seen. They are also notoriously difficult to prove or disprove!

At the same time, it appears disingenuous in the twenty‐first century to laud business as a virtuous exemplar, without acknowledging the catastrophes wrought by such bold and creative innovators as Enron and Arthur Anderson.

Those already familiar with the literature in the field will not be surprised by any of the observations or arguments in the book. Rather than taking a scholarly approach backed by close data analysis, it is a chatty primer written in a voice by turns polemical and conversational. While clearly sincere and well‐informed, it sometimes sounds like a dour jeremiad followed by upbeat exhortations from a pep rally speaker, interspersed with folksy fireside anecdotes. It is sprinkled with talk of disaster, underlined by such metaphors as the Titanic, icebergs, dinosaurs and the behaviour of the frat boys in the satirical movie Animal House. Some of this material probably works more effectively in a public speaking context, where it was no doubt honed. On the page, the metaphors wear thin and the “crisis” addressed by the book's title is asserted through rhetoric and anecdote, rather than proven. Nonetheless, the book is an enjoyable read and handily encapsulates a strand of modern thinking about the potential for higher education reform.