Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More [Hardcover]

Derek Bok (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691125961 | ISBN-13: 978-0691125961 | Publication Date: December 27, 2005 | Edition: 1

Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, former Harvard President Derek Bok examines how much progress college students actually make toward widely accepted goals of undergraduate education. His conclusions are sobering. Although most students make gains in many important respects, they improve much less than they should in such important areas as writing, critical thinking, quantitative skills, and moral reasoning. Large majorities of college seniors do not feel that they have made substantial progress in speaking a foreign language, acquiring cultural and aesthetic interests, or learning what they need to know to become active and informed citizens. Overall, despite their vastly increased resources, more powerful technology, and hundreds of new courses, colleges cannot be confident that students are learning more than they did fifty years ago.

Looking further, Bok finds that many important college courses are left to the least experienced teachers and that most professors continue to teach in ways that have proven to be less effective than other available methods. In reviewing their educational programs, however, faculties typically ignore this evidence. Instead, they spend most of their time discussing what courses to require, although the lasting impact of college will almost certainly depend much more on how the courses are taught.

In his final chapter, Bok describes the changes that faculties and academic leaders can make to help students accomplish more. Without ignoring the contributions that America's colleges have made, Bok delivers a powerful critique--one that educators will ignore at their peril.

Editorial Reviews

Review

In the Bok view, American colleges and universities are victims of their own success: they answer to so many constituencies and are expected to serve so many ends that no one can agree on even a few common goals, and in the meantime they have grown complacent.
(Charles McGrath The New York Times )

Derek Bok paints a picture of colleges that, if not dysfunctional, are operating far below capacity. He questions the coherence and purpose of departmental majors, describes programs of study abroad as little more than recreational excursions, criticizes lecturers for their indifference to whether students learn anything, and, in general, hold faculty accountable for ignoring research about which teaching methods are most effective.
(Andrew Delbanco New York Review of Books )

Derek Bok makes a unique contribution by skillfully weaving his critique of campus and curriculum with an extensive review of the literature on student in a number of key areas, including writing instruction, critical thinking instruction, civic education, and diversity education. Rather than identify a narrowly defined culprit in the supposed decline of higher education, such as political correctness or neglect of the literary canon, Bok writes persuasively about the multiple aims of higher education and retains focus throughout on the question of how attention to each of these aims contributes to measurable increases in student learning. . . . This thoughtful critique of higher education will be accessible to a wide audience.
(Publishers Weekly )

In Our Underachieving Colleges, Derek Bok argues forcefully that those of us within the academy can do a much better job of educating our undergraduates, widening their vistas, and preparing them to succeed in life.
(Charles M. Vest Boston Globe )

Bok in this book criticizes the state of undergraduate education. . . . His research suggests that common problems in education extend beyond K-12.
(Education Week )

Derek Bok . . . points out in his recent book . . . that civic responsibility must be learned, that it is neither natural nor effortless.
(Michael M. Spear Editor & Publisher )

It's hard to think of anything more central to a university than teaching. . . . The cause of improving teaching quality--and of perhaps imparting practical knowledge to students--now has a well-placed champion: Derek Bok. . . . As the highest profile academic in the world, he'll have a chance to change the way academics think about the interaction between the professor and the student. But as Bok may know better than anyone else, he has his work cut out for him.
(James Beale Washington Monthly )

Derek Bok's most recent book, Our Underachieving Colleges, is worth scrutinizing. . . . Bok is . . . on solid ground in pointing out that our colleges underachieve in preparing students for citizenship.
(George Leef The American Enterprise Online )

In Our Underachieving Colleges, [Derek] Bok acts as both diagnostician and healer, wielding social-science statistics and professional studies to trace the etiology of today's illnesses and to recommend palliative treatments for what he has discovered.
(Donald Kagan Commentary )

Derek Bok makes a unique contribution by skillfully weaving his critique of campus and curriculum with an extensive review of the literature on student learning in a number of key areas. . . . Rather than identify a narrowly defined culprit in the supposed decline of higher education, Bok writes persuasively about the multiple aims of higher education and retains focus throughout on the question of how attention to each of these aims contributes to measurable increases in student learning. . . . This thoughtful critique of higher education will be accessible to a wide audience.
(Scott Walter Library Journal )

Bok focuses not on curriculum change but on pedagogy. He asks why college teachers have not taken more advantage of the extensive research that has been done on the conditions that allow students to learn most effectively.
(Ken Gewertz Harvard University Gazette )

What distinguishes Our Underachieving Colleges from other books in the genre is the author's focus on what research has to say about what students are and are not learning, along with his insistence that institutions should put their money where their mouths are and invest in the teachers, teaching, and educational experiences that are likely to help them achieve their own chosen goals.
(Mary Taylor Huber Change )

In his book, Our Underachieving Colleges, Derek Bok, past-president of Harvard University, challenges postsecondary institutions to live up to their educational mandate. . . . [H]is stature in American higher education adds credibility and weight to his challenge. Also, the book is well researched and well argued. As such, it has the potential to motivate change. . . . If you are a senior administrator or board member, please read this book. If you are not, consider making a gift of it to someone else.
(Gary Poole University Affairs )

This book is a clarion call. Attention should be paid.
(Peter Lamal Journal of Higher Education )

Review

Derek Bok's Our Underachieving Colleges is readable, balanced, often wry, and wise. This book should be required reading for every curriculum committee and academic dean. As someone who has lived his whole life in the academy, Bok knows how to bring institutional practice in line with research on how students learn best. In a period when many other countries are working hard at improving undergraduate education, this book should serve as a spur to overcome the complacency that attends most discussions of American undergraduate education, especially in our leading institutions.
(Mary Patterson McPherson, President Emeritus of Bryn Mawr College and Vice President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 424 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; 1 edition (December 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691125961
• ISBN-13: 978-0691125961
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #404,950 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Welcome Relief from the Culture Wars, April 21, 2006

By 

Wanda B. Red (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More (Hardcover)

This critique of higher education is written by Derek Bok, once and future president of Harvard University (he's taken over from Larry Summers as interim leader). But Bok's experience at Harvard - while it certainly informs his analysis - does not make him an elitist. Far from it, his suggested reforms, as he explains, may work best at schools not so hide-bound as Harvard with tradition and defensiveness: "which may help to explain why so many of the most interesting teaching innovations do not begin in the best-known universities but in colleges with less prominent reputations" (337).

Bok's analysis marks out a welcome middle path between knee-jerk defenders of the American university and its detractors. While relatively speaking, our system of higher education remains the envy of the rest of the world, it still fails undergraduate students in a million small ways, chiefly connected with its lack of attention to how students learn best in and out of the classroom. Bok's complaint is not that colleges have lost their way - he's very clear that there was no Golden Age of American higher education - but that we could be doing much better.

In a series of chapters devoted to the skills that he believes students should work at during their four college years, Bok slays a number of sacred cows and offers concrete suggestions for how to make substantial improvements. For example, he is refreshingly skeptical of the value of "concentrations" (probably known as "majors" to most of us); their requirements grow larger and larger, but what are they really accomplishing? Similarly, he expresses skepticism about distribution requirements, making the point that they often amount to a hodge-podge of unrelated courses chosen by students because they are easy or will help them get a job (though elsewhere Bok is very sympathetic to the student's need to prepare for a career during college). Even when students choose their general education courses from genuine curiosity, the courses (for example, large introductory science courses) have often been designed as "foundations for students intending to major in the field and perhaps go on to obtain a Ph.D." (261). Such courses won't really help the student who wants a basic holistic introduction to the field. Bok always wants to move us back to a firmer understanding of educational purposes.

Perhaps Bok's most serious and repeated criticism concerns pedagogy. As he observes, there is just not enough attention to it. Important introductory courses are too often taught by graduate students and adjuncts to save money for the institution and time for tenured faculty research. The courses that the regular faculty do teach are usually presented in a lecture format that does not involve students actively in their learning. Bok, however, is not a defeatist, and he does generally respect the American faculty, repeatedly noting that most college teachers are "conscientious," "thoughtful," and concerned with student learning. This assumption makes his book quite different from critiques of higher education such as those written by pundits like Roger Kimball or William Bennett. And it is what enables Bok to offer real, practical suggestions for improvement, which he does both throughout the study and especially in the final chapter.

Bok believes that, with the appropriate incentives, college faculty and administrators can be motivated to focus more on undergraduate teaching and outcomes for students. Because measurement of teaching quality and learning outcomes is so problematic, he suggests that resources be provided that encourage faculty and deans to develop plans for a "continuous process of self-scrutiny" (342) with the aim of improving teaching. He is no Pangloss; he doesn't imagine that universities can reform themselves overnight. But he is not a defeatist either. His clear-eyed and plucky approach is refreshing. He often says his reforms will not cost much ("Fortunately research of this kind is not financially burdensome" [339]); is that Harvard's endowment talking there?

To wit, I do have a few reservations: Although Bok criticizes curricular fragmentation, many of his proposals might lead to more of it, especially his mandatory courses in intercultural understanding and moral reasoning. I think he underestimates both the difficulty of teaching such complex intangibles and also the danger that these courses will devolve into indoctrination. I also think that he puts too much faith in student surveys and other kinds of educational research. Again and again he cites such studies as if they did not have the methodological problems he acknowledges elsewhere. As a lawyer, Bok tilts toward the social sciences and away from the arts, humanities, and hard sciences. Thus, it's not surprising that many of his proposals move schools toward educating students in citizenship. He may be frank about his purposes, but personally I don't always agree with them. I note in this regard that a student could graduate from the ideal university, described in this book, without having taken a single course that studied the world before 1900.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Too Little Interest in Improvement Among Faculty Members, May 21, 2007

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More (Hardcover)

Unless you are a glutton for punishment, chances are that you'll never read all of the major critiques of undergraduate education in the United States. It would take a true masochist to follow up all of that reading with a look into the latest research on how and when undergraduates can learn more at college. But only someone with a true love for the subject would also consider what colleges should be trying to accomplish for students, professors, and society. Meet Derek Bok, veteran of two decades as president of Harvard University, who recently served another year as interim president after Larry Summers resigned last year. He's a man with a mission: Make undergraduate education as good as it can be.

That zeal won't be evident to the casual reader. The material is presented in such an even-handed way that it's easy to conclude that President Bok has no strong opinions. That would be a mistake. You need a hint: President Bok started out as a professor interested in labor law where strict adherence to standards is critical to effectiveness. He later served as dean of Harvard Law School at a time when the students (my class) barricaded him all night in the library where he amiably chatted with all comers. President Bok's often turgid prose also makes his words seem less powerful than they might be.

But read between the lines. Ignore what the conservative flame-throwers have to say about too much sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll and not enough great books. American four-year colleges can do a lot better in their main missions:

1. With greater emphasis, more resources, and a pervasive role throughout the curriculum, student can learn to write and speak much more effectively.

2. By focusing more on encouraging critical thinking, emphasizing greater student participation in class, and providing more challenging assignments that require applied thought, the 95 percent of students who cannot apply any of the disciplines they were exposed to in college can make an applied contribution to the world.

3. Academic leaders need to consider that they can build character by exposing students to more ethical questions and involving students in public service community activities. Students themselves seem to want more guidance in this area.

4. Colleges should encourage knowledgeable participation in the political process. Otherwise, our form of government may atrophy due to disinterest by its best educated citizens.

5. Colleges need to move beyond integrating a diverse student body into helping each student develop greater abilities to relate to other people.

6. Expanding student perspectives beyond the domestic American views to see global issues and opportunities.

7. Creating a greater awareness of disciplines outside of one's own area of interest, especially for those with a scientific and vocational focus.

8. Better balancing student desires to get a job after college with faculty desires to ignore vocational perspectives.

9. Employing the most effective teaching methods, experimenting to find better ways for students to learn, and being flexible in shifting one's teaching style.

It's in this last area that the book's critique seems most justified. Colleges are supposed to be the home of advanced knowledge in all dimensions. Why has helping students learn taken such a back seat? It's hypocritical.

Having sat in on classes at many elite colleges over the last 30 years, I must admit to disappointment with what I experience. The amount of useful information that's exchanged could easily be assembled into a briefing document that I could read in five minutes. Surely, something better could be done with the remainder of the class time.

When I was an undergraduate, the only way I could stay awake was to try to create a verbatim record of the lecture. Then, I would summarize the results into less than 50 words. Today, I might only need 30 words.

Bravo, President Bok!

This book deserves to be treated very seriously and acted on.

Perhaps it will be. I mentioned to the president of one college that I was reading the book, and he immediately became defensive and hostile. I think at least he is hearing the message.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderfully thoughtful book on higher education, July 27, 2007

By 

Jeffrey Gore (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More (Hardcover)

Derek Bok is one of the most thoughtful observers (and participants) in higher education today. As president of Harvard for 20 years (1971 - 1991) he had many opportunities to see first hand how an elite university works--or doesn't. Many years ago I read his book "The State of the Nation", which I found to be a reasonable analysis of many of the difficult issues facing the country. In "Our Underacheiving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More", Bok is able to focus on issues that he has a unique perspetive on. The begins with the basic question: "What is the purpose of higher education?" His response is given in a series of wonderfully insightful chapters focusing on critical thinking, diversity, and character. Unlike many commentators, he takes a measured response towards such divisive topics as preprofessionalism and the degree of faculty commitment to undergraduate education. Bok presents a powerful argument that the modern university has largely abdicated its responsibility to teach a strong core curriculum, as compared to a random hodgepodge of courses that students and faculty can agree will be "fun". This book deserves to be a classic treatise on higher education, alongside books such as Clark Kerr's "The Uses of the University".