America is being held back by the quality and quantity of learning in college. This is a true educational emergency! Many college graduates cannot think critically, write effectively, solve problems, understand complex issues, or meet employers’ expectations. We are losing our minds--and endangering our social, economic, and scientific leadership. Critics say higher education costs too much and should be more efficient but the real problem is value, not cost--financial “solutions” alone won’t work. In this book, Hersh and Keeling argue that the only solution--making learning the highest priority in college--demands fundamental change throughout higher education.
We're Losing Our Minds
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"We're Losing Our Minds adeptly describes the systemic nature of limited learning in higher education. As the authors convincingly argue, the task is not to change a few practices or chastise a few institutions, but to alter the core of higher education in America. Their proposal for change is at once simple and radical - higher education institutions need to develop a serious culture of teaching and learning. This is a straightforward proposition, but one that will require a fundamental transformation in the attitudes, priorities, and cultures of colleges and universities. Based on years of experience and research, Keeling and Hersh are aware of the challenges ahead yet bold enough to outline strategies for success. Only one question remains: Will higher education leadership have the courage to heed their call for transformation?" - Josipa Roksa, University of Virginia; co-author of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses
"Keeling and Hersh clearly state why we're 'losing our minds' and what needs to be done to turn things around. Anyone who has a stake in higher education - that is, most of us - would do well to read their work and join in the discussion." - Terry Christner, Library Journal
"This text is more than a call to action. It is a steppingstone in the conversations that need to be occurring on the national and local levels." - Stephanie Bibbo, NACADA JOURNAL
About the Author
Richard P. Keeling leads Keeling & Associates, LLC, a comprehensive higher education consulting practice based in New York City. Dr. Keeling serves on the Board of Directors of the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) and has been president of four professional organizations in higher education. Before creating Keeling & Associates, Dr. Keeling was both a tenured faculty member and a senior student affairs administrator at the University of Virginia and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Richard H. Hersh has served as President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Trinity College (Hartford), and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at The University of New Hampshire and Drake University. He also served as Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Oregon and was Director of the Center for Moral Education at Harvard University. In his early career he was a high school teacher, professor and dean of teacher education.
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Richard H. Hersh has served as President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Trinity College (Hartford), and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at The University of New Hampshire and Drake University. He also served as Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Oregon and was Director of the Center for Moral Education at Harvard University. In his early career he was a high school teacher, professor and dean of teacher education.
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43 of 53 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I support the spirit in which this book was written and I believe that the core thesis is spot-on correct. Thus, the book's very existence may help draw attention to the issues on which it is focused. At the same time, I regret that its further usefulness may be limited.
The thesis is that the vast majority of commentary on American higher education has missed the mark. The true problems have little to do with issues of efficiency and cost. The key problem is value. While commentators continue to talk about the need to run universities like businesses, reduce costs, streamline programs, enhance access, and so on, they miss the central point: students are simply not learning. Undergraduate learning per se is not even a priority in most institutions and many of the steps that have been taken to enhance efficiency have, in fact, further reduced the possibility for higher learning.
Those who have read my recent eBook on higher education will know that I support this argument and have made it myself. Keeling and Hersh's desire to press this issue and bring more attention to it should be applauded. The point was already hammered home by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, but others have also addressed the issue and additional voices are always welcome.
Keeling and Hersh's solutions to the problem are, unfortunately, not likely to bear a great deal of fruit. They argue, in very general terms, for learning experiences that are more intense, more coordinated, more developmental, more vertically and horizontally integrated, and so on. In other words, approximately half of the book consists of counsels of perfection of the sort that one is likely to hear at an academic conference or in a foundation report.
Problems: Messrs. Keeling and Hersh's backgrounds do not prepare them well for addressing these issues; one worked specifically in student affairs (actually student health) administration and the other in teacher training. The result is an overemphasis on the role of student services professionals (most with master's degrees at best, virtually none with specific instructional responsibilities) in the delivery of undergraduate education and a tendency to focus on `holistic' and other touchy/feely principles. This is a central point in the debate: should colleges attempt to inculcate learning of an intellectual nature or should they set themselves the task of taking responsibility for the full range of elements in a student's maturation? Are students adults who come to institutions of higher education for education or are they barely-out-of-adolescence children who need the nurturing hand of an army of student services professionals? The fact that the average age of American undergraduates is now approximately 29 and that the vast majority of students work (taking responsibility for their lives in ways that children do not) should be a part of this discussion.
Keeling and Hersh's key advice with regard to the problem is that we need a national discussion on the issue. The discussion must be led by universities. We have a problem. We need to talk about it. We really need to talk about it. We really, really need to talk about it.
Here is the problem: the vast majority of those in higher education who would lead the discussion have taken the current situation for reality throughout their academic careers. The faculty who studied twice as hard as current students when they were undergraduates have largely died or retired. The student-as-consumer, the student-as-customer evaluating faculty, e.g., emerged in the mid-to-late 1960's. This (rather than the student as apprentice, which Keeling and Hersh and I advocate) is simple reality to the faculty who took their degrees in the 1980's and 1990's. So too is grade inflation. So too is the radically reduced core curriculum. So too is the shunting off of general education requirements on graduate teaching assistants and contingent faculty. The charismatic teachers around whom colleges were built have been gone for generations. The norm for a top faculty member now is to be on leave whenever possible, have a small teaching load, largely confined to graduate students, not to teach a large number of students and represent, in a sense, the institution's signature. Current faculty, by and large, have no personal experience of such a world and they are inured to their administrators' continual polishing of the university `brand' rather than seeking to achieve a definable signature.
Keeling and Hersh are also naďve with regard to many of their proposals (though I have great sympathy for them). They understand that high-touch, high-expectation, intensive academic experiences are expensive. They point to Oxford tutorials, for example. I would love to see our students have such experiences, but it is simply not going to happen across American higher education. I have participated in that kind of instruction, taking students on tours, for example, that involve instruction, discussion, site visits, and so on. Where a drama class might now consist of the study of a half dozen plays, my students attended 10-12 in the 2 weeks of evenings following daily lectures, discussions and visits. It's all wonderful, but you cannot do it for more than 15 students at a time and you have to take them to London and house and feed them. Students with jobs and family responsibilities have a great deal of difficulty in participating in such experiences. That is why so many students pursue for-profit education; they can schedule their academic work around their lives.
There is another great risk, one that several commentators have now indicated. If we were to have a national discussion about education, why--given the current professoriate and given the fact that American higher education is now overwhelmingly vocational/'professional'--would we assume that that discussion would lead to higher expectations, more coherent curricula, more intensive learning experiences, and so on? What if it would lead to curricula that were more `expressive' than substantive? Curricula that focused on identity politics to an even greater degree than current ones? Curricula that further reduced requirements or further lowered expectations? Curricula that were more politically biased? Curricula that enabled faculty to pursue their own narrow interests to a greater degree than current ones? Note that the lowest grades awarded by the alumni/trustees group for coherent core curricula are usually received by the nation's `leading' institutions. These are the institutions that most colleges seek to emulate.
Keeling and Hersh argue for a common reading experience prior to matriculation. What if the book or books chosen are vapid? Unchallenging? Politically biased? They argue for a universal requirement of a freshman seminar, taught by tenure-track faculty. What if the faculty largely choose to teach narrow subjects related to their own research interests, without regard to student interest or need? (As an undergraduate I was required to take a great books Junior Seminar, taught by all members of the faculty--the kind of course that brings stars to the eyes of academic planners: the faculty and students, joined harmoniously in an academic community, learning together. My section was taught by a mathematician who knew very, very little about world literature, classical political thought and the history of ideas. He was a nice man but he taught us virtually nothing.)
They argue for rigorous assessment. At St. John's? Fine. At West Point? Fine. In a large public institution with dozens of colleges and schools, hundreds of majors, multiple `general studies' majors, majors with minimal requirements? I understand that their argument is that we need to totally change American higher education in order to provide true, `higher learning'. I agree. But what is the likelihood that we will close all professional schools at the undergraduate level, particularly when the parents and politicians who fund us are calling for more vocational education? Students need to be motivated. I agree. What is the likelihood that we will reduce the number of students in American higher education, e.g. by half or so--to the number that are currently actually graduating? If we did have rigorous assessment, have the authors ever participated in a college program that asks all seniors to submit to a comprehensive examination? (I have had colleagues who have participated in such programs, at distinguished northeast liberal arts colleges, and they have told me that most student responses during their `orals' were laughable, that this became little more than a rite of passage; had it been a true examination, the vast majority would have flunked and failed to graduate. English universities have their students tested in this fashion, but they begin to specialize much earlier, they are far less vocational, they are far more selective, their curricula are far more coherent and all institutions are public--dependent on government support which is, to a considerable degree, performance-based.)
We can only hire the graduate students that are being graduated today. It is very unlikely that they could lead a discussion that would yield the kinds of results of which Keeling, Hersh and I dream. It is equally unlikely that a top-down, dictated system of higher education would be welcomed by a professoriate personally invested in a completely different system.
Of course, in many cases, this is not a problem. I believe, for example, that our physics students are having a wonderful experience. Read more ›
The thesis is that the vast majority of commentary on American higher education has missed the mark. The true problems have little to do with issues of efficiency and cost. The key problem is value. While commentators continue to talk about the need to run universities like businesses, reduce costs, streamline programs, enhance access, and so on, they miss the central point: students are simply not learning. Undergraduate learning per se is not even a priority in most institutions and many of the steps that have been taken to enhance efficiency have, in fact, further reduced the possibility for higher learning.
Those who have read my recent eBook on higher education will know that I support this argument and have made it myself. Keeling and Hersh's desire to press this issue and bring more attention to it should be applauded. The point was already hammered home by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, but others have also addressed the issue and additional voices are always welcome.
Keeling and Hersh's solutions to the problem are, unfortunately, not likely to bear a great deal of fruit. They argue, in very general terms, for learning experiences that are more intense, more coordinated, more developmental, more vertically and horizontally integrated, and so on. In other words, approximately half of the book consists of counsels of perfection of the sort that one is likely to hear at an academic conference or in a foundation report.
Problems: Messrs. Keeling and Hersh's backgrounds do not prepare them well for addressing these issues; one worked specifically in student affairs (actually student health) administration and the other in teacher training. The result is an overemphasis on the role of student services professionals (most with master's degrees at best, virtually none with specific instructional responsibilities) in the delivery of undergraduate education and a tendency to focus on `holistic' and other touchy/feely principles. This is a central point in the debate: should colleges attempt to inculcate learning of an intellectual nature or should they set themselves the task of taking responsibility for the full range of elements in a student's maturation? Are students adults who come to institutions of higher education for education or are they barely-out-of-adolescence children who need the nurturing hand of an army of student services professionals? The fact that the average age of American undergraduates is now approximately 29 and that the vast majority of students work (taking responsibility for their lives in ways that children do not) should be a part of this discussion.
Keeling and Hersh's key advice with regard to the problem is that we need a national discussion on the issue. The discussion must be led by universities. We have a problem. We need to talk about it. We really need to talk about it. We really, really need to talk about it.
Here is the problem: the vast majority of those in higher education who would lead the discussion have taken the current situation for reality throughout their academic careers. The faculty who studied twice as hard as current students when they were undergraduates have largely died or retired. The student-as-consumer, the student-as-customer evaluating faculty, e.g., emerged in the mid-to-late 1960's. This (rather than the student as apprentice, which Keeling and Hersh and I advocate) is simple reality to the faculty who took their degrees in the 1980's and 1990's. So too is grade inflation. So too is the radically reduced core curriculum. So too is the shunting off of general education requirements on graduate teaching assistants and contingent faculty. The charismatic teachers around whom colleges were built have been gone for generations. The norm for a top faculty member now is to be on leave whenever possible, have a small teaching load, largely confined to graduate students, not to teach a large number of students and represent, in a sense, the institution's signature. Current faculty, by and large, have no personal experience of such a world and they are inured to their administrators' continual polishing of the university `brand' rather than seeking to achieve a definable signature.
Keeling and Hersh are also naďve with regard to many of their proposals (though I have great sympathy for them). They understand that high-touch, high-expectation, intensive academic experiences are expensive. They point to Oxford tutorials, for example. I would love to see our students have such experiences, but it is simply not going to happen across American higher education. I have participated in that kind of instruction, taking students on tours, for example, that involve instruction, discussion, site visits, and so on. Where a drama class might now consist of the study of a half dozen plays, my students attended 10-12 in the 2 weeks of evenings following daily lectures, discussions and visits. It's all wonderful, but you cannot do it for more than 15 students at a time and you have to take them to London and house and feed them. Students with jobs and family responsibilities have a great deal of difficulty in participating in such experiences. That is why so many students pursue for-profit education; they can schedule their academic work around their lives.
There is another great risk, one that several commentators have now indicated. If we were to have a national discussion about education, why--given the current professoriate and given the fact that American higher education is now overwhelmingly vocational/'professional'--would we assume that that discussion would lead to higher expectations, more coherent curricula, more intensive learning experiences, and so on? What if it would lead to curricula that were more `expressive' than substantive? Curricula that focused on identity politics to an even greater degree than current ones? Curricula that further reduced requirements or further lowered expectations? Curricula that were more politically biased? Curricula that enabled faculty to pursue their own narrow interests to a greater degree than current ones? Note that the lowest grades awarded by the alumni/trustees group for coherent core curricula are usually received by the nation's `leading' institutions. These are the institutions that most colleges seek to emulate.
Keeling and Hersh argue for a common reading experience prior to matriculation. What if the book or books chosen are vapid? Unchallenging? Politically biased? They argue for a universal requirement of a freshman seminar, taught by tenure-track faculty. What if the faculty largely choose to teach narrow subjects related to their own research interests, without regard to student interest or need? (As an undergraduate I was required to take a great books Junior Seminar, taught by all members of the faculty--the kind of course that brings stars to the eyes of academic planners: the faculty and students, joined harmoniously in an academic community, learning together. My section was taught by a mathematician who knew very, very little about world literature, classical political thought and the history of ideas. He was a nice man but he taught us virtually nothing.)
They argue for rigorous assessment. At St. John's? Fine. At West Point? Fine. In a large public institution with dozens of colleges and schools, hundreds of majors, multiple `general studies' majors, majors with minimal requirements? I understand that their argument is that we need to totally change American higher education in order to provide true, `higher learning'. I agree. But what is the likelihood that we will close all professional schools at the undergraduate level, particularly when the parents and politicians who fund us are calling for more vocational education? Students need to be motivated. I agree. What is the likelihood that we will reduce the number of students in American higher education, e.g. by half or so--to the number that are currently actually graduating? If we did have rigorous assessment, have the authors ever participated in a college program that asks all seniors to submit to a comprehensive examination? (I have had colleagues who have participated in such programs, at distinguished northeast liberal arts colleges, and they have told me that most student responses during their `orals' were laughable, that this became little more than a rite of passage; had it been a true examination, the vast majority would have flunked and failed to graduate. English universities have their students tested in this fashion, but they begin to specialize much earlier, they are far less vocational, they are far more selective, their curricula are far more coherent and all institutions are public--dependent on government support which is, to a considerable degree, performance-based.)
We can only hire the graduate students that are being graduated today. It is very unlikely that they could lead a discussion that would yield the kinds of results of which Keeling, Hersh and I dream. It is equally unlikely that a top-down, dictated system of higher education would be welcomed by a professoriate personally invested in a completely different system.
Of course, in many cases, this is not a problem. I believe, for example, that our physics students are having a wonderful experience. Read more ›
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Reading this book was like therapy to me, but I did have the same realization as one of the previous reviewers that the missing piece of the puzzle is the ineptitude of the millennial generation. The entitled, "everyone deserves a blue ribbon" generation is becoming the biggest obstacle in higher education. Still, I think we need to keep the bar set high and not give into the pressures to dumb down standards. I really enjoyed the book and the emphasis on formative education and formative assessment. The millennial generation seems to respond positivity to the formative type of assessment that is based on continuous assessment, frequent feedback, clearly identified learning goals and earned praise. I'm sure there are books on the market that delve into the psyche of this new generation that are increasingly becoming more of a puzzle those of us who teach in colleges. This book focused on the higher education system, how it is flawed and how to fix the current state so that the new generation will adapt and hopefully embrace the changes.
I also enjoyed the author's honesty regarding the current state of the tenure system and how it distracts from the culture of teaching and learning. A system designed to keep senior faculty out of entry-level courses, and out of the classroom in general, will never produce the graduates we need for the future - graduates who have truly experienced higher learning and real transformation.
I also enjoyed the author's honesty regarding the current state of the tenure system and how it distracts from the culture of teaching and learning. A system designed to keep senior faculty out of entry-level courses, and out of the classroom in general, will never produce the graduates we need for the future - graduates who have truly experienced higher learning and real transformation.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By Dr. E
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
After hearing an interview with the author, I looked for more specfic direction from the text; nonetheless the impetus is accurate. However, I'm not at all sure the author really undestands the complexity of the solution. And he doesn't totally comprehend the role of inept, uncaring, and unprepared students. They are certainly not mere bystanders but an expression of the entire culture. How do we turn around the "party central" aspect of college he describes? Professors alone can't change that direction. They need to stay employed in an academic atmosphere charged with "retention" at all costs. It is everyone's problem at all educational levels, a cultural issue. Solutions are beginning to emerge, but changing things won't happen easily. Writing from 30,000 feet is not the same as working for intelligent change from within. And although assessment of student learning is certainly the answer, evolving the modes of identifying actual success is a huge problem. The human mind and what the author calls "development" of each of those student minds is far more difficult than putting man on Mars! And I do applaud his awareness of how challening, creative, and difficult great teaching really is . . . and its correlation as the key to all great work. I am terribly interested in his call for apprenticeship and a return to lust for things acaemic and appreciation for the life of the mind. There is much sound reasoning here. But perhaps it remains for others to work out the itinerary for actually getting there.
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