The global preoccupation with universities as a means to employment has introduced yet another worrisome element into the evaluation of the college and university system: declining standards. Recent studies of the American university system have produced disturbing insights into the limited learning that occurred among many students, and the low skill levels among both entering and graduating students. This is also seen anecdotally in, for instance, the notorious YouTube video in which undergraduates at Texas Technical University are asked the question “Who won the Civil War?” and a disheartening number don’t know.[6] The nature of the modern academy, where the expansion has been fuelled by an increasing commitment to accessibility, is such that the quality of the education provided has come under intense scrutiny. The picture that emerges is not pretty, for it describes (for American students and for many of their counterparts in other countries), serious problems with the students’ basic skills, limited curiosity, lack of commitment to studies, and disengagement from learning as a whole.
There is another set of issues related to the faculty members that includes an overemphasis on research and professional engagement; a surge of political correctness and sensitivity to issues of gender, ethnicity, class, and the like; the intellectual turmoil associated with post-modernism; and a publish-or-perish mindset that detracts from faculty commitment to the university experience. The struggle to reassert the primacy of college teaching is shaping up as one of the epic professional battles of the twenty-first century.
But governments, to say nothing of parents and students, want results. And just as the commitment to universal high school education has led to a gradual reduction in the quality and academic standards of the secondary system, so are pressures to retain and graduate students from universities resulting in noticeably lower standards for course work and eventual graduation. The one place where this really attracts attention in the United States relates to college athletics, particularly basketball and football, with a regular cycle of scandals relating to “bird” courses, assistance in writing papers and examinations, special concessions from faculty members, and other measures designed to keep the student athletes in school and eligible for competition (and, less urgently, on track to graduating from college). The worst current example is the appalling scandal at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where football students for years took fake courses to retain their eligibility to play.[7]
At many institutions, faculty members are under various forms of pressure, subtle and otherwise, to allow students to progress so they stay eligible to play, with many non-elite colleges and universities mirroring the behaviour of public schools in their desire to reach performance targets. That keeping students in programs adds to the institutions’ financial bottom line and therefore pays for faculty and staff salaries is an additional incentive to let academic standards sag.
Overall, the picture from the perspective of student success is not a happy one. Certainly it is far removed from the cheerful pictures in the recruiting brochures and the promises to students and their parents about supportive academic environments. Some American institutions—places like Reed College, Colorado College, St. John’s College, and the members of the Colleges of Distinction consortium—uphold the spirit of the learning-centred academy (as opposed to that of places focusing on preparation for careers; for instance, a teachers’ college or a law school), but they are clearly the exception rather than the norm in the modern university system. What this means, to be blunt, is that many students—the number unknown and likely unknowable—have mediocre college and university experiences, do not see their skills improve significantly, and are not well positioned for the transition to the workplace. Some universities do much better than others. Elite technical institutions, such as MIT, CalTech, and Waterloo, for example, and specialized universities like Juilliard (fine and performing arts), Rensselaer (technology), and the Colorado School of Mines, attract focused, eager, and career-oriented students and, not surprisingly, produce graduates whom companies, government agencies, and organizations find very attractive.
But too few people have noticed the unfolding of a basic economics lesson: the production of millions of university graduates, in numbers beyond the capacity of the labour force to absorb them, has lowered their value overall and individually, especially at the bottom end. Richard B. Freeman, a Harvard-based labour economist, fears that American college graduates may suffer further from international competition. As he noted, “The college graduate situation has a global dimension—6 million bachelor’s graduates in China that affect the U.S. market as well—which is very different than in the past.”[8] Freeman is right. But add in millions more from Turkey, India, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and many other countries. In the 1960s, as we showed earlier, North American and northern European countries had the global lead on post-secondary education. Now, North American graduates are swimming in what looks like an ocean full of fish with mortarboards on their heads. Companies looking to build high-tech operations near a pool of skilled labour can choose among a few key sites in North America, but they can also go to Hong Kong, Melbourne, Oulu, Stockholm, or Copenhagen; to several cities in Germany or Istanbul; or to leading high-tech and higher-education urban areas in India. And the choices don’t end there.
In technology, North America set the gold standard immediately after World War II and held pride of place into the 1970s. But its leadership has steadily eroded—despite the continued success of Stanford, University of Texas at Austin, University of San Diego, Waterloo, MIT, Harvard, Duke, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, and several other major centres. Imagine, if you will, a global firm (say a former American-centric multinational like Sun Computer Systems that now has much of its research capacity in Asia) trying to decide on the best location for a new digital research centre. Their eyes—if they are smart—will scan a few American hotspots, contemplate Bangalore, consider London or a European centre, and then take a good hard look at China. A quick check of Beijing would reveal dozens of excellent universities, topped by Tsinghua University, one of China’s best and a world leader in engineering, math, computer science, and other scientific fields. A check of the student population and workforce will reveal thousands of creative, eager, highly skilled workers who are willing to work for wages that are lower than those in the West. North American schools produce many graduates of comparable quality—Tsinghua is on par with Stanford, Princeton, Waterloo, and Toronto in this area—with the important caveat that many of the undergraduate and graduate students in these institutions were born in Asia, too.
The Employment Crisis
The employment crisis has hit unevenly. For graduates with specialized degrees—from Accounting and Electrical Engineering to Medicine and Digital Communications—the evolving scientific and technological economy still provides excellent opportunities. High incomes, multiple job offerings, and rapid advancement exist in the world of Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco. But many of the jobs in the evolving “new economy” belong to the service sector. While some young adults—most notably in the deservedly derided finance sector—discovered world-class opportunities for wealth and advancement, the majority left university to find that most jobs offered low incomes, short-term contracts, and insecurity. Having gone into debt to pay for their degrees, the graduates find themselves in low-paying, undependable jobs with few prospects for advancement. Not many parents and young people expected that four to six years of academic study would lead to work as a cashier, though in 2008 more than 356,000 cashiers had college degrees, up from 132,000 in 1992.[9] Of course, as Matt Gurney points out in the National Post, there’s a fairly easy fix for the student indebtedness problem—get a job straight out of high school, save like crazy, and go to university later.[10]
In country after country, the rapid expansion of university systems and the number of degree