Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

STRENGTHS:

Concise: 221 small pages with big font.

Provocative: Big ideas and insightful critiques of the higher ed labor market, curriculum, organizational structure etc.

Passionate: Taylor is passionate about teaching and learning, and believes that institutions of higher learning must evolve and reform to continue to thrive.

WEAKNESSES:

Solutions: Proposed solutions, beyond dismantling tenure (for the non-tenured) do not address fundamental issues of cost and access.

Ahistorical: The current state of higher ed is not placed within an historical context, making analysis of issues and problems less informative.

Economics: The economic aspects of higher ed are not analyzed. Chapter on tuition focusses on "sticker" price, not accounting for true costs of tuition.

OPPORTUNITIES:

Book Club: Great book to a campus book club - will get lots of discussion.

Speaker: I bet Taylor would make a great speaker on campus.

Readable: Book is short and an easy read - good chance that people will read for a discussion.

THREATS:

Elite Bias: Taylor seems to be writing primarily for institutions similar to where he has taught (Williams, Columbia) - failing to address the state of community colleges and other Institutions

For-Profits Excluded: Limited discussion of the role of for-profits in the educational landscape.

Limited Examples: 'Crisis on Campus' would have benefited from more examples of innovative institutions, programs, and leaders in higher education.

Have any of your read 'Crisis on Campus'? Plan to read? Thoughts?

What are you reading?

In several places, the author drops in cliches, such as the need for students to study foreign cultures, for the purpose of enhancing their chances for success in the global economy. (I suppose to merely advocate the benefits of understanding various sorts of people, independent of which foreign culture they are embedded in, wouldn't generate as much justification for higher education). Then at the end of the book we get a forecast for the year 2020, with a somewhat cloying vignette of a young American, Luke, who has become fascinated with Islam because of an online course that he took in high school. Luke aspires to attend the NYU campus in Abu Dhabi, bypassing traditional aspirations for such institutions as Columbia or Williams. In his online learning experience with Islamic students "He is surprised not only by their differences but also by how much they share. His new friends like many of the same films and much of the same music, and have many of the same fears and hopes that he does." Well, the author is a Professor of Religious Studies, so by habit he probably cannot resist poking at any understanding we have formed about diversity. And to think that other university professors, who had researched cultural diversity, teach us that that Islamic people generally don't admire American films or pop culture. If diversity education is so complicated and ever changing, maybe students should spend their tuition money on other courses, until the diversity principles are more thoroughly established.

By coincidence, at the time I was finishing the book, the 09/20/2010 edition of Newsweek arrived with an article titled "The trouble with going global". The NYU venture in Abu Dhabi campus does not get favorable reviews. Harassment of human-rights activists is mentioned. The article concludes "... we can't help but feel that ill-considered adventures abroad can only strain what's left of our higher education at home". The post-Columbia, post-Williams world maybe needed a better vignette.

The author's specialty in Religious Studies handicaps the book in more substantial ways, at least for me: a lack of analysis of science and engineering education. I would not advise an American student to use a study of Confucianism, traditional Chinese painting, or other traditional Religious-Studies cultural lenses, for the purpose of figuring out why a young person in Nanjing is beating her at own her Western-reductionist game of mastering the principles of electrical engineering. It might be better for the American to study options for conceding the game and to study options for alternative career plans, based on a raw analysis of the international economy, rather than an analysis of cultural diversity. The author's personal saga, for example highlighting how the job prospects for current Ph.D.s in Religious Studies are so much different from that of his own generation, is certainly readable. However, the parallels with the experiences of degree holders in science and engineering are rather modest.

Parts of the book are worthy of five stars: sharing verbatim responses to the author's incendiary NYT editorial, highlighting the impact of the financial meltdown on higher education, an analogous lack of fluidity and value in intellectual capital, eyewitness history of the epochs of identity politics and political correctness, the timidity of the aging faculty to embrace the online technology and networking, the timidity of universities to impose a yearly 5% salary reduction on tenured professors (unless offset by a 5% raise for meritorious performance). Much of the analysis about the educational failures of the university lecture hall has been stated elsewhere. The author makes a good case for the impending financial failure, as the large captive audience, a prime source of university revenue, is about to walk away.

Taylor picked a topic with plenty of material to write about; unfortunately, "Crisis on Campus" covers little, and does so superficially and with little or no data. He asserts that it is no longer preparing students for life after graduation, but provides only generalities and trivial points to back that up. Taylor also references the large amount of resources taken up conducting research with little or no value, but again fails to detail this with examples of arcane research or the costs involved. Taylor also fails to detail the problems of faked and distorted research, especially in the health care area. Rising student costs are clearly detailed, but not coupled with typical graduate starting salaries, nor does he address the frequent canard that claims the investment provides high returns. "Too many PhD graduates are being produced," purportedly evidenced by the growth of applications over four years for 3-4 postdoctoral fellowships at Columbia from 300 to 1,000. Taylor continues to propose ending tenure, yet bemoans the fact that only 35% of college/university positions are 'tenure-track;'(perhaps he meant 'permanent positions.'

The financial condition of 114 privates failed to meet DOE guidelines in 2009, but readers are left guessing what those guidelines emphasize or require. Harvard's debt was $6 billion that same year - so what, its endowment is much, much larger. Public university tax support is now less than 10% for many - how many, and what was the average prior level of support? Twelve percent of mail carriers have college degrees - ridiculous, but he doesn't cite other courses reporting that only 51% of graduates take jobs requiring a degree, down from 59% in 2000.

Courses are outdated because they don't incorporate the influence of new communications media like he does, citing a course he's teaching on the impact of technology allowing classes and meetings over the Internet - sounds like trivia to me. Taylor could also have complained that many courses have nothing conclusive to offer - eg. macroeconomics ("put three economists in a room and you'll have four opinions." Finally, little or no detail about the growth of overhead staff (I was appalled by observations during recent visits to a local university), skyrocketing professor salaries, etc.

I'd strongly recommend instead "Higher Education?" by Hacker and Dreifus.

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