Why higher education is neither - includes related article

Washington Monthly, Oct, 1989 by Jason DeParle, Liza Mundy, John Heilemann

Why Higher Education is Neither

There must have been 20 of them that first morning. Hand-written, hastily scrawled nots on pink and yellow pages; most folded neatly, nearly all dated with the precise time--each seeking a place on the waiting list for a course in Contemporary Literature. Nothing could have been more heartening to the anxiety-ridden graduate student teaching it than such a sight, distracting her as it did from her feelings of woeful incompetence and lack of training as a teacher.

Some of the notes came adorned with smiling little happy faces; others were peppered with exclamation marks; yet others addressed her formally, deferentially. Their authors were evidently desperate for--were, in fact, living for--a chance to take the course, which incidentally happened to fulfill the second writing requirement at the University of Virginia's School of Arts and Sciences.

Dear Ms. Mundy (thenotes typically ran, though a few presumed a first-name basis right away);

I would like to enroll in your Contemporary Literature course but was not admitted in registration. Please put me on your waiting list. I am thinking about majoring in English, and your course will make or break the decision for me. The reading list looks really interesting. I'll see you in class on Thursday. Thank you. Yours Truly, A. Undergrad 228-91-6855

The graduate student didn't know what to do. Nowhere is it written that if undergraduates didn't get admitted into a course by U.Va.'s computer registration, they should leave the instructor a note and show up in class on the first day; but somehow, mysteriously, some just knew to do it. Heartened to imagine that her course was considered so essential, the graduate student collected the notes and agonized over fair ways to rank them. Pull them from a hat? Number them as they came in?

In the end, half didn't show up at all. At U.Va., it turns out that the prudent student writes 10 desperate notes to 10 different instructors and simply enrolls in the first course that opens. Instead of satisfying the writing requirement with Contemporary Literature, she can knock it off with Physics 383: "Descriptive and Synoptic Meteorology." Or European History 542: "Popular Religion." Or Astronomy 313, "Observational Astronomy." Or--hard to believe as it may be--if those courses are closed the student can try "Seminar in Japanese Buddhism," "The German World After 1918," or "Australian History." In fact, any one of exactly 82 courses will satisfy the writing requirement.

The note-writing and other game-playing that begin the semester at U.Va. and most American universities raise a series of pointed questions to which higher education has no good answers--and which lead us, in fact, to suspect that what passes as higher education quite often is neither. The questions: If this overbooked course is deemed so important that it inspires desperate competition to get in, why is it being taught by a mere graduate student? If the knowledge being conveyed by the course is so fundamental, why are so many students getting shut out? And given the supposedly essential nature of the course, why are students permitted to take any number of scattered, often weak alternatives?

B.U. lets U.B.U.

The answers point to the bane of higher education: a con-job known as distribution requirements. Falsely advertised as a university's way of guaranteeing educational coherence, distribution requirements are in fact no more than a smoke-and-mirrors curricular trick. Listen to the way the U.Va. course book touts its rules: "The requirements for this degree are intended to introduce students to a broad spectrum of knowledge and to develop in them the skills and habits of learning." Such language is grand. Such language is also conveniently vague--just right for reassuring gullible parents that their sons and daughters are mastering the basics of history, literature, art, and science.

What most universities aren't saying is that they couldn't care less what kind of history, art, or science the student tackles. The laxity takes two forms. One is the old-fashioned "gut" course, the class of little substance that promises an easy grade. At Berkeley, the student can meet fully half the natural science requirement with "The Age of Dinosaurs," whose main required reading is a set or prepared class notes sold in the university book store. Students at UCLA last year could meet half of their science requirements with "Geology 150: The History of Los Angeles," once voted one of the country's 10 easiest courses.

The second, and perhaps more pervasive, problem isn't the course's ease but its narrow scope. At Boston University, students can satisfy full half of their humanities requirement with a course on "The New England Poets." It's easy to imagine such a course being rigorous indeed. And worthy--Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau are all on the reading list. But by combining New England Poets with another equally narrow course (for instance, "Whitman and Dickinson") the B.U. student can satisfy the entire humanities distribution requirement without ever hearing a symphony, reading a philosopher, or looking at a painting; without, in fact, knowing anything about literature other than that produced by a handful of American poets. Solemn coursebook promises aside, distribution requirements ensure nothing "broad" at all but instead promote the opposite, a here-and-there dabbling as course openings and convenience permit. In the end, even the brightest students have transcripts with more holes in them than an Ollie North alibi.