In a response to the William Deresiewicz article that we read last night ("The Neoliberal Arts: How College Sold Its Soul to the Market,"), Brian Rosenberg, the president of Macalester College took the author to task for, well, let's let Rosenberg say it himself: "The only things missing from Deresiewicz’s argument are an awareness of history, an accumulation of evidence, and a clear strand of logic." Other than that, all is well. He sums up Deresiewicz's argument (fairly accurately, I think) as lamenting that higher education has "sold its soul" to neoliberalism. I'm OK with locating "neoliberalsm" as a category that must be examined as a context in which to understand contemporary problems in higher education, but I often wonder about the character of the "soul" of higher education that was present prior to the neoliberal epoch, say, the 1970s, when the Fordist economy was still in place.
Andrew Delbanco, our second author, is much less sanguine about the idea that there ever really was a golden age of higher education in the United States, a least one that brought in more than a tiny fraction of the potential population and in which "all" students and professors did what they were "supposed" to do. His comments are delightfully drawn from past examples of students who were (then as, perhaps now) more interested in drinking and carousing than in "cracking the books." What he worries about (and I would share this) is that colleges, particularly those with the greatest resources, fail to "fulfill their obligations" to either offer students a "coherent view of the point of a college education" or any help in thinking about their (the students) purpose in life.
I agree, but (as with my concern with Deresiewicz), was that ever a task taken to heart by colleges and universities? What do you think?
Andrew Delbanco, our second author, is much less sanguine about the idea that there ever really was a golden age of higher education in the United States, a least one that brought in more than a tiny fraction of the potential population and in which "all" students and professors did what they were "supposed" to do. His comments are delightfully drawn from past examples of students who were (then as, perhaps now) more interested in drinking and carousing than in "cracking the books." What he worries about (and I would share this) is that colleges, particularly those with the greatest resources, fail to "fulfill their obligations" to either offer students a "coherent view of the point of a college education" or any help in thinking about their (the students) purpose in life.
I agree, but (as with my concern with Deresiewicz), was that ever a task taken to heart by colleges and universities? What do you think?