Customer Reviews

Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More (New Edition)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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".

As a college instructor teaching one of the most labor-intensive subjects -- composition -- I'm always interested in thoughtful critiques of the system, and Bok does that, albeit from a more centrist position. Bok's perspective as a former (and now interim) president of Harvard lends him enough experience with a wide range of relationships within 4-year institutions to make the broad critique stick, at least in part.

Bok argues that while undergraduate education in America is percieved to be the best in the world, by scholars and students, that it fall short of what it could achieve. He lays out the history of positions regarding the undergraduate curriculum(s) beginning with the rise of land grant institutions and their challenge to the more elite schools' focus on classical education models and continuing on to the current situation, which he claims has stagnated due to market pressures from prospective students and the unwillingness of tenured faculty to branch out beyond their diciplined walls and work with the overall administration.

Bok first turns his attention to the role of the faculty in addressing the need for improvement. He claims that faculty can understand and gauge better exactly what their students are learning by placing more emphasis on their paedagogy through reviews of individual teaching styles, furthering the somewhat nascent study of pedagogical methods, and by working with faculty in other departments to create a more interdiciplinary environment. He points out the difficulty with such a venture, but claims that is necessary if the university is to re-evaluate and reasonably meet its goals.

Throughout the bulk of the book then, Bok focuses on what he sees as reasonable and necessary goals for undergrate curriculm. According to Bok, undergrads should be expected to: learn to communicate effectively, learn to think critically, be able to reason morally, be able to participate in the democratic process, be able to co-exist in a diverse society, be aware of global ideas and issues, understand core material in a broad number of subjects, and to have basic skills necessary for their careers. In each of these areas he calls for an expansion of the use of tenured faculty over grad students and interns, for an inclusion of non-academic staff such as counselors and reidence hall directors, for colleges and unversities to partner with overseas institutions.

Overall, Bok makes some great observations. I have always looked back on my own undergraduate career as dissappointing; I wasn't challeneged in many of the courses I took, which made graduate school feel like a real awakening. My writing coarses never pushed me, my language requirement was ineffective at best, and most of the large lectures I took, I could have, and often did, sleep through. I never bought textbooks, let alone read most of the assignments, and I passed most courses with A's. I was never challenged to make solid decisions regarding a career, never pushed to take an internship, nor was I given helpful skills to obtain jobs like resume building and tips for interviewing. So, Bok's critique seems at least partly on-target.

However, His solutions feel more like finger pointing, and he never gets to the heart of the issue. His solutions might have been more concrete had he attempted to deal with lasting impact of industrialization and de-industrialization, or even to deal with the effects of a percieved "culture war," which undergirds many of the other critiques of higher ed that Bok dismisses in his introduction. Bok never goes there, nor does he deal with the failure of primary and secondary education, which I believe to be the fatal flaw in his argument. It is not in a faculty's interest to have to make up for the overwhemingly poor results of our high schools, nor is it entirely in their capacity. There is research that has shown that many of Bok's goals of imparting deeper understanding of language, mathmatics, and science are more easily imparted to children between the ages of 2 and 10. How in the world can an even smalller body of instructors be expected to fulfill expectations not met by a body 20 times their size? Instead, Bok would be better off looking into how colleges and universities could better help our struggling schools.

I do appreciate that this critique is not an echoing of day-time talk radio, but it could be so much better, kind of ironic given the premise.

Derek Bok's books are always interesting and always reliable, within certain parameters. They are anchored in research; every observation, including the uncontroversial ones, are footnoted. The facts and data are always there and they are always interesting. And the research is complemented by experience--decades as president of Harvard, after all.

So where is the problem? There is no problem, but there is an issue and Bok's recommendations in this book must be seen in light of it: he is, at base, a law school professor. This serves him very well when, for example (in another of his books) he is writing about the threats to the modern university of commercialization. He can expertly state the history, the precedents, the advantages and the liabilities. In this book, however, he is talking about undergraduate education, when he spent a large portion of his career teaching in a top, post-baccalaureate professional school.

One example: he argues for engaged learning, i.e., students actively participating in class, studying problems and issues, discussing them among themselves and hashing them out in a small class taught by a member of the regular faculty. He is very cool on lecturing, arguing that little is learned in that way and that most of it is forgotten anyway. He is, in fact, cool on `content' in class. At this stage in our civilization there is too much to be learned. Hence, the students should obtain the content for themselves and then, actively discuss the issues in class. As Professor Kingsfield said, "You teach yourselves the law; I teach you how to think like a lawyer."

And that's fine in law school, but lecturing has been common for nearly a millennium for a reason. Some material (in a basic science class, e.g.) is better conveyed through didactic instruction. Some material requires the help of an experienced scholar because the students will require contextual information to understand it (the thought of Wittgenstein, e.g. or the multiple meanings of `romanticism').

Bok's focal point of experience is (as with all of us) both personal and unique. He comes from a distinguished legal family; his wife's parents were both Nobel laureates. He attended Stanford and Harvard. He has taught in and been president of an institution that is unique in American higher education. He is used to teaching students who are very gifted, highly motivated and very well prepared. His notions of a classroom experience or the potential nature of a classroom experience will be very different from those of individuals teaching at regional, public 4-year institutions or community colleges.

What does the book argue? Bok positions himself, explicitly, between the earlier, conservative critics who were troubled by the erosion of general education, the study of the so-called great books and such issues as political correctness and affirmative action and the contemporary public voices lamenting the rise in costs, the indebtedness which students carry and the demand for more vocational education. He focuses upon a number of things which we should do far better than we do, e.g., preparing students for citizenship, developing multiple interests beyond the purely vocational, fostering critical thinking skills, inculcating a `global' perspective and a high comfort level with `diversity', aiding moral development and honing students' skills in both written communication and public speaking.

It is very interesting that (in a book focusing on underperformance) he spends very, very little time talking about such things as grade inflation or `expectations'. Fundamentally, students are learning less because they are not asked to learn more and they are graded ever more generously for accomplishing less. Bok's conservative Government department colleague, Harvey Mansfield, now gives his students two grades--the grade that they actually earned and the grade that the Harvard ethos would now demand.

There is very little in the book concerning students' lifelong reading habits or the cultivation of curiosity and virtually nothing that I recall concerning the involvement of undergraduate students in faculty research. While there is a body of educational research which he marshals to make his points, Bok acknowledges that educational research is often squishy and is unlikely to convince the faculty. And this is correct. Hence, he recommends local studies, more pertinent to the individual institution. And that is correct. However, the culture from school to school is vastly different, as he notes, with harsh comments, e.g., for the engineers (some of whose skills--in writing, e.g.--even regress during college).

In the areas where he has recommendations (e.g. public speaking skills) he displays impressive knowledge of the `state of the issue', the `state of the research' and so on; for the issues which he chooses to highlight his voice is informed, reliable, clear and articulate, if not impassioned. He is not impassioned because he accepts two major constraints which, he believes, he is powerless to change: a) the wishes of the faculty and b) the wishes of the students.

He accepts the notion of the student as consumer and says that colleges must accede to students' wishes if they are to maintain market share, enjoy deep applicant pools and, inevitably, solid USNews rankings. However, if there is any institution in the country which is positioned to go a separate way here, it is Harvard. Harvard could hire faculty capable of teaching anything in any way. Harvard could offer students what it believed to be an authentic, enduring, coherent educational experience and say, `take it or leave it'. And if Harvard did that, all of the institutions which aspired to be like Harvard would follow its lead.

He is also, it must be said, very naïve with regard to specific issues. He talks about the `great books approach' and says that while it actually is the only approach which shows concrete, positive results, those results might be due to the fact that the instruction was conducted actively rather than passively and in small classes. However, he says, the `great books approach', previously associated with Chicago and, to a degree, Columbia and now principally associated with St. John's in Maryland and New Mexico, has never been widely adopted because the students don't want it. St. John's attracts less than 1,000 applicants and admits ¾ of them, many of whom matriculate elsewhere.

There is a great difference between a doctrinaire great books approach (in order to learn Chemistry we will read Lavoisier) and a coherent curriculum which exposes students to great writing and historically-consequential writing (among many other things). Should students hold a baccalaureate degree in the liberal arts who cannot give a simple explanation of the thought of Freud, Marx, or Adam Smith? Should every educated person have read Shakespeare? Should she or he know the meaning of a `Faustian bargain' or the connotations of the word `spartan'? "Cultural literacy" (generally associated with grammar- and high school education, but also a part of general education at the college level) is very different from the `great books approach'. The problem now is that no one wants to define that `literacy'. The result is that, as Wanda Red writes as an Amazon reviewer of Bok's book, "a student could graduate from the ideal university, described in this book, without having taken a single course that studied the world before 1900."

For me, the problem is that the ivy league in general and Harvard in particular set(s) the bar for all aspiring institutions. Their students, however, come, in many cases, from wealth, privilege and top preparatory schools. They are also gifted. They already have a great deal of cultural literacy as well as social capital. First-generation college students, minority students, working-class students, immigrant students often do not. However, if Harvard acts as if a serious program of general education, with specific requirements, is unnecessary, others will as well. In one very interesting section of the book, Bok discusses the benefits of vocational vs. liberal arts education in the workplace. Vocational ed is very useful for the first ten years. In the next ten years, however, when promotions are at stake, the liberal arts graduate has the advantage. For the executive boardroom, neither--Bok argues--has an identifiable advantage. Without a solid liberal arts education (including a coherent general education component), the minority student, the first-generation college student, the working class student and the immigrant student will all be at a considerable disadvantage and the (ultimately shortsighted) demands for university education that is increasingly vocational will accelerate and, increasingly, be heeded.

President Bok obviously understands colleges and what ails them. Though no polemic, this book takes to task both the prevailing wisdom about higher education (Liberal professors are undermining student thinking) and the myth that students just want to use a college education to get to a great graduate school. There is much wisdom here for all sectors of education. Thank you, President Bok.

In this book, Derek Bok does an incredible job of laying out the shortcomings in undergraduate education. However, he does this without failing to acknowledge the good being achieved. As a former college president Dr. Bok speaks from a position of authority on the subject. The problems he identifies he backs up with thorough, thought provoking research. He does not just leave the problems as they stand but offers helpful, realistic suggestions for improvement. The greatest strenght of Dr. Bok's book is that he appreciates the complexity of the problem. The issues he raises as well as the solutions he proposes are not simplistic answers to superficial issues. This book is a must read for anyone involved in education. On top of all that, it is well written and thus a pleasure to read. In fact, I recommend it for anyone who enjoys reading a well written book.

Much of what Derek Bok decries about higher education is common sense; however, that doesn't mean it is not worthy of study. There doesn't seem to be much common sense these days about college. Maybe it's because outsiders don't realy know what goes on inside college. From any professor's perspective, it is not a pretty sight much of the time. Unfortunately there is not 'industry' in America that is so little known by its consumers (nowadays for middle-class Americans it's the PARENTS of students, not the students as most people mistakenly think). Before you hand over your $25 thou a year, you should investigate the teaching methods of the teachers at the school your kid is attending. How many parents know that most college professors have never taken a class in education in their lives, or that most courses are taught by teaching assistants or adjuncts at many 'top' universities. Why do you see entire sections of newspapers devoted to advertisements trying to entice students into undergraduate and graduate degrees? Is it because the administrators have students' interests at heart? If you think so, there's a Bridge I could try to sell you but I wouldn't venture it since it's quite beautiful and should be in the public domain. In any case Derek Bok talks with the authority of an insider although at times his perspective is a bit narrow owing to his ivy-league orientation. But to be fair, he seems well-rooted in seeking a balance between an education to prepare you to make a living and one to prepare you to make a life.

Research Professor Derek Bok's "Our Underachieving Colleges" (2006, hardback) presents a new way of thinking about education in American colleges. Understanding that his presentation could create academic criticism, Bok builds his argument upon a substantial foundation of convincing research (with 49 pages of endnotes).

Suggesting that American undergraduate education produces a global affect that results in stiff foreign competition, Bok challenges U.S. colleges to reorganize, with candid faculty reappraisal, in order "to lift the performance of our institutions of higher learning to new and higher levels" (page 6). He says that American education may no longer take teaching and learning for granted. He frets that college students are learning less now that in the 1960s and 1970s (history's most anti-education era). Bok presents this book to show how students learn and how colleges effect student development.

The author proposes that college faculty should be prepared to change its teaching methods (principally lecturing) for the benefit of students. Bok correctly believes that the college's tasks involve teaching undergraduates to think critically (chapter 5), actively communicate (chapter 4), build moral character (chapter 6), and prepare for good citizenship (chapter 7). He questionably believes that teaching diversity, multiculturalism, and specializing in career preparation should be important in American education.

The best part of this book is Bok's presentation of Eric Mazur's quantitative teaching application (pages 132-34). I plan to implement Mazur's process in my next teaching forum. The book is least helpful in suggesting that group learning is better than lecturing (pages 118-123). Although lecture teaching does present certain challenges in assessing learning, group work (where student discussion takes over from professorial guidance) is vastly inferior to most other teaching methods. It is almost impossible to gauge individual learning form group exercises. (Group work relieves teacher responsibility while promoting aggressive students. Because teachers guide classes, give tests and award grades, student group work should be kept to an extreme minimum.)

"Our Underachieving Colleges" is a responsible presentation about how American colleges may reform themselves to lead 21st century worldwide and teaching learning. Bok's argument is persuasive and his wisdom is profound. This book is recommended to all concerned with U.S. higher education, teaching reform, and looking for new teaching methods. Order your copy soon.

I have not read all of Derek Bok's critique, but I did cover his chapter on "communication" and I must commend him for his honest appraisal of how the teaching of writing and rhetoric gets no respect in academe despite its advertising to the contrary. This is old news to many of us who have dedicated ourselves to developing students' capacity for rigorous attention to argument and their abilities to engage in constructive civic and civil discourse. In this chapter, Bok shows that the academy may talk the talk, but when it comes to adequately compensating teachers of writing, either financially or with due respect, it has failed and continues to fail despite its periodic genuflections towards the goals of "critical thinking" and "writing across the curriculum." The road to success is OUT of the writing classroom
and into the trendy regions of theory. It is an essential hypocrisy of English departments in particular to foster this sort of thing and even though it's old news to so many of us, it's heartening to read someone like Bok send it out yet again. If the rest of the book sustains this level of acuity, I will be most satisfied.