The Economist on higher education in America

There's a large pull-out series in a recent issue of the Economist on higher education in America. I wanted to post a link to the overview article, but it's subscription only, so I'll pull out some tidbits instead.

The article claims that the U.S. still has the best higher education system in the world.

It is all too easy to mock American academia. Every week produces a mind-boggling example of intolerance or wackiness. Consider the twin stories of Lawrence Summers, one of the world's most distinguished economists, and Ward Churchill, an obscure professor of ethnic studies, which unfolded in parallel earlier this year. Mr Summers was almost forced to resign as president of Harvard University because he had dared to engage in intellectual speculation by arguing, in an informal seminar, that discrimination might not be the only reason why women are under-represented in the higher reaches of science and mathematics. Mr Churchill managed to keep his job at the University of Boulder, Colorado, despite a charge sheet including plagiarism, physical intimidation and lying about his ethnicity.

With such colourful headlines, it is easy to lose sight of the real story: that America has the best system of higher education in the world.

Actually, what the above stories really reveals is how difficult it is to get rid of a professor with tenure (but I have heard rumors that CU is still trying to get rid of Churchill; these things take time).

The main reason for America's success, however, lies in organisation. This is something other countries can copy. But they will not find it easy, particularly if they are developing countries that are bent on state-driven modernisation.

The first principle is that the federal government plays a limited part. America does not have a central plan for its universities. It does not treat its academics as civil servants, as do France and Germany. Instead, universities have a wide range of patrons, from state governments to religious bodies, from fee-paying students to generous philanthropists. The academic landscape has been shaped by rich benefactors such as Ezra Cornell, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins and John D. Rockefeller. And the tradition of philanthropy survives to this day: in fiscal 2004, private donors gave $24.4 billion to universities.

That last figure is not surprising. In my experience, your university will track you down like a dog in order to try to extract money from you. Mine has followed me to numerous towns and through 2 name changes, and I've never even donated. And now, the college my stepson is currently attending is piling on. They are already getting 40K a year from us, but they want more. They can go whistle Dixie at least until he graduates, and probably after that, too.

Limited government does not mean indifferent government. The federal government has repeatedly stepped in to turbocharge higher education. The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 created land-grant universities across the country. The states poured money into community colleges. The GI Bill of 1946 brought universities within the reach of everyone. The federal government continues to pour billions of dollars into science and research.

The second principle is competition. Universities compete for everything, from students to professors to basketball stars. Professors compete for federal research grants. Students compete for college bursaries or research fellowships. This means that successful institutions cannot rest on their laurels.

The third principle is that it is all right to be useful. Bertrand Russell once expressed astonishment at the worldly concerns he encountered at the University of Wisconsin: "When any farmer's turnips go wrong, they send a professor to investigate the failure scientifically." America has always regarded universities as more than ivory towers. Henry Steele Commager, a 20th-century American historian, noted of the average 19th-century American that "education was his religion, provided that it be practical and pay dividends".

This emphasis on "paying dividends" remains a prominent feature of academic culture. America has pioneered the art of forging links between academia and industry. American universities earn more than $1 billion a year in royalties and licence fees. More than 170 universities have "business incubators" of some sort, and dozens operate their own venture funds.

The article claims that not all is rosy in American higher education, though. As my son would say, DUH.

The biggest risk to American higher education is the erosion of the competitive principle. The man often cited as the architect of American academia's current success is Vannevar Bush, who was director of the office of scientific research and development during the second world war. After the war he insisted that research grants be allocated to universities on the basis of open competition and peer review. But in the 1980s universities began undermining this principle by lobbying their local congressmen for direct appropriations. In 2003, the amount of money from the federal research budget awarded on a non-competitive basis topped $2 billion, up from $1 billion in 2000.

American academia's merits still outweigh its faults. Many American undergraduates are savvy enough to get a first-class education. Many academics resist the temptation to censor ideological minorities. The vast bulk of research grants are allocated on the basis of merit. Yet American universities are acquiring a growing catalogue of bad habits that could one day leave them vulnerable to competitors from other parts of the world -- though probably not from Europe, which has overwhelming academic problems of its own.

I'll finish with an obvious question. How long can America's higher education possibly remain the best in the world, when its K-12 educational system is admittedly failing?

And as far as competition is concerned, how about starting with some competition in research and development grants for mathematics education? Constructivist programs received a major boost from the NSF when, in the early 1990s, it anointed grant programs for education departments and school districts that adopted the NCTM's constructivist principles, and funded the development and marketing of commercial texts designed along those lines (I was blown away when I first discovered how that worked). How about some funding for competing ideologies, at least until we figure out which methods get better results?


Alan Greenspan on rising inequality
rising inequality, part 2
rising inequality, part 3
median income families UCSC students
another statistics question
channeling the Wall Street Journal
Financial Times on US college costs
Economist on US higher ed
The Economist on rising inequality in universities

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