The Chronicle of Higher Ed has an engaging panel discussion on the topic online. The participants talk past one another and spout a variety of things we’ve all heard or thought before, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
The take-home point seems to be that there’s not so much a lack of consensus on this (although there may be) as a lack of consensus as to how to answer the question, or what the precise question even is.
In any case, the mounting crisis–too many students in over-large classes, taught by too many grad student and too few professors, who are educating them more and more in things they need less and less–is, of course, entirely unresolved. Ask in a generation, or even a decade, and the answer may, sadly, be the same. But if they are, the tone will be a good deal more heated.
Tags: admissions, universities