Category: academia

I seem to be in the mood to blog about colleges this week. It must be the wonderful group of first-year students who have just arrived on campus.

In today's New York Times, we learn that there are some colleges with very low graduation rates. Here's the crux of the matter:

About 50 colleges across the country have a six-year graduation rate below 20 percent, according to the Education Trust, a nonprofit research group. Many of the institutions serve low-income and minority students.

Such numbers have prompted a fierce debate here — and in national education circles — about who is to blame for the results, whether they are acceptable for nontraditional students, and how universities should be held accountable if the vast majority of students do not graduate.

“If you’re accepting a child into your institution, don’t you have the responsibility to make sure they graduate?” asked Melissa Roderick, the co-director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, which produced the study.

That's an interesting question, right up there with "If you are going to use a singular noun (child), don't you have the responsibility to make sure you do not use a plural pronoun (they) to refer to it?" It is not a responsibility per se, but you may experience some negative reactions if you let it persist.

We do college students a disservice to refer to them as "children." They are young adults and they are expected to behave as such. That means they need to take responsibility for their progress through college and put forth the effort required.

The challenge in higher education is not to make sure that students graduate. The challenge in higher education is to make sure that the degree they receive when they graduate does in fact represent mastery of college-level academic material. I think it would be a bad move to penalize institutions for a low graduation rate without imposing an even larger material for watering down the standards for passing courses and graduating.

The low graduation rates do indicate a problem. I doubt that the problem is that the standards for performance are too high. I think the main problem is that some students arrive very poorly prepared. A secondary problem may be that some colleges do not do much to support students who need better preparation. The article goes on to note some better practices that some colleges are implementing in the latter respect.

Via Greg Mankiw, we are directed to the Harvard Crimson's article on Harvard's decision to drop early admission. Our eyes first catch this quote:

Two Harvard professors who co-authored “The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite” wrote in an e-mail that they were “quite surprised” at Harvard’s decision.

“Harvard has benefited greatly over the years from its early admissions policies,” Larsen Professor of Public Policy Christopher N. Avery ’88 and Ramsey Professor of Political Economy Richard J. Zeckhauser ’62 wrote. “This strongly suggests that this policy change is a selfless act, not some stratagem to outmaneuver its rivals.”

If it's a selfless act, then I am sure I won't be reading about it when Harvard next solicits me for money. I'll let you know.

But what would that mean if it were true? That Harvard has decided that it will sacrifice the academic quality of its own class by competing less hard for the students who might otherwise have gone to Harvard if they found out in the late fall rather than the early spring, and whose presence would be missed?

One certainly wouldn't get that impression from the other statements in the article. Consider:

The Corporation, which serves as the University’s executive board, decided to drop the program in large part because of concerns that early admission provides an unfair advantage to applicants from privileged backgrounds, Bok and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said in a joint interview yesterday.

Jettisoning early admission, Fitzsimmons said, is “certainly a win for students in the bottom quarter and bottom half of the income distribution.” Students from more affluent families often apply early to express special interest in a particular school, while students from lower socioeconomic levels frequently hold off for the regular admissions process in order to compare colleges’ financial aid offers.

I posted yesterday about how the financial aid remark does not apply to Harvard's case, but that's not the point. I would define an advantage in the admissions process as an increased probability of being accepted, conditional on the quality of the application, at the early deadline compared to the regular deadline. I don't know if there are any sensible reasons for giving such an advantage to any set of applicants. Maybe Harvard wants to make sure it fills a diversity quota early in the process. Maybe Harvard wants to make sure it fills a genius quota early in the process. But that's not the point either (particularly since in Harvard's system, the student is not obligated to attend if admitted early).

The point is that if there is such an advantage, and if that advantage is not desired by the University, then it is fully within the power of Fitzsimmons and his staff to remove it while keeping the early admissions arrangement. Just admit fewer of the weaker applicants from more affluent backgrounds at the early deadline. Done.

In light of this, I regard these public remarks as an acknowledgement by Harvard's officials that they are not getting much out of the early admissions program, cannot figure out a way to get much out of it, and have decided to get rid of it. It might be the right business decision, but it is hardly laudable or a general statement about what other colleges should do.

The New York Times reports today that Harvard will end its policy of early admission, in which students may receive a non-binding offer of admission early rather than late in their senior year, for the Class of 2012. The explanation:

Harvard University, breaking with a major trend in college admissions, says it will eliminate its early admissions program next year, with university officials arguing that such programs put low-income and minority applicants at a distinct disadvantage in the competition to get into selective universities.

[...]

“We think this will produce a fairer process, because the existing process has been shown to advantage those who are already advantaged,’’ Derek Bok, the interim president of Harvard, said yesterday in an interview.

[...]

Mr. Bok said students who were more affluent and sophisticated were the ones most likely to apply for early admission. More than a third of Harvard’s students are accepted through early admission. In addition, he said many early admissions programs require students to lock in without being able to compare financial aid offerings from various colleges.

Bok's statement is quite odd. If the existing process is unfair, then it can be fixed or scrapped. Is Bok saying that it would be impossible to fix? The problem--that there is a perceived advantage to applying early--would seem to be rectified by lowering the admit rate for the early pool and raising it for those applying at the regular deadline. Determining the financial aid awards at the same early deadline doesn't seem like an insurmountable burden to place on the admissions officers, either.

The statement is particularly odd in the context of Harvard's program, which really isn't unfair in the way being described at all:

Under Harvard’s early admissions program, which is known as early action, students do not have to decide until May 1 whether to accept an admission offer. Even so, many potential applicants did not understand the distinction between Harvard’s program and those that require an upfront commitment and were discouraged from applying, Mr. Bok said.

It seems like a prospective applicant who cannot fathom this distinction is a poor candidate for admission to one of the nation's most highly regarded institutions.

I have never really understood why colleges go through this early admission process. Students, I understand. They want to be relieved of this anxiety sooner rather than later. I presume that college admissions officers value the ability to select the members of each incoming class in multiple stages. The results of the first stage give them the opportunity to modify their selection rules for the remainder of the class to get the characteristics they want. I guess that Harvard's decision just indicates that they don't get much value out of this timing option.

Diana Jean Schemo wrote a fascinating story in Saturday's New York Times, "At 2-Year Colleges, Student Eager but Unready." The problem:

As the new school year begins, the nation’s 1,200 community colleges are being deluged with hundreds of thousands of students unprepared for college-level work.

Though higher education is now a near-universal aspiration, researchers suggest that close to half the students who enter college need remedial courses.

That's an astounding figure. What was high school if not the place to get the basic skills? The article continues:

Michael W. Kirst, a Stanford professor who was a co-author of a report on the gap between aspirations and college attainment, said that 73 percent of students entering community colleges hoped to earn four-year degrees, but that only 22 percent had done so after six years.

“You can get into school,” Professor Kirst said. “That’s not a problem. But you can’t succeed.’’

Nearly half the 14.7 million undergraduates at two- and four-year institutions never receive degrees. The deficiencies turn up not just in math, science and engineering, areas in which a growing chorus warns of difficulties in the face of global competition, but also in the basics of reading and writing.

I could understand the need for remedial work if I thought 4-year college admissions were extremely competitive. They certainly are at the most selective institutions, with Harvard, Yale, and Princeton all around 10 percent acceptance rates. But this is not universally true. A quick look at the US News rankings (here's a recent summary) shows that even the top public universities are likely to admit half or more of those who apply.

Low standards--and our high school graduates are still not meeting them. This is a crisis that should be getting more attention.

Yes, by all means, fire this man. Larry Summers concludes his presidency at Harvard with a bang, not a whimper:

Yes, I have these last years been a man in hurry. My urgency boils down to this: For an institution like ours to make the great contributions the world rightly expects of us, we cannot rest complacent on this, the more comfortable side of innovation; on this, the more familiar side of the lectern; or, even, on this, the reassuringly red brick side of the river.

Harvard must - we must - cross over:
Cross over from old disciplines to new;
Cross over from old structures of governance to new;
Cross over from outdated lectures to new active modes of learning,
Cross over from the confines of Harvard Square and put down new, ambitious stakes, in Allston and beyond.

We owe it to those who come after us to become for this city, this region, this nation and this world a center of human improvement.

Our long preeminence must become a spur, not a bar, to our constant transformation.

There is "tolerance" on Harvard's campus for every marginal point of view but apparently not enough for the idea that a university should constantly challenge itself to improve in its core mission.

On my trip through Cleveland, I learned that the cold and blustery weather from the Charles River has moved west to Lake Erie and has claimed yet another university president:

Dr. Edward Hundert may be leaving the president's office at Case Western Reserve University, but the many problems that led to his resignation remain.

Hundert, who resigned Wednesday night, will stay at his post until Sept. 1. That means he will have to address the university's $40 million budget deficit and deal with other issues that led to the faculty's no-confidence vote against him earlier this month.

Here's how it played out:

Lawrence Krauss, a physics professor who led the charge for the no-confidence vote, said he thought Hundert would eventually resign but was surprised by the timing of his decision.

[...]

Hundert came to Case in 2002 from the University of Rochester, where he was the dean of the medical-dental school. He immediately embarked on a quest to mold the university into "the world's most powerful learning environment."

The Vision Investment Plan was his blueprint for catapulting the university into the spotlight. The plan involved spending $181 million over five years with the understanding that the university would have to spend more than it took in. However, when research money and donations declined, the university started to take on more debt than projected.

Hundert's tenure started to unravel when Krauss - upset over the university's fiscal problems and emboldened by Summers' resignation - called on the Arts and Sciences faculty to take a no-confidence vote. He cited among his concerns the university's budget deficit, turnover in central administration, a downturn in fund-raising and the administration's lack of openness.

The March 2 vote went against Hundert 131-44. By a slimmer margin, 97-68, the same faculty expressed a lack of confidence in Provost John Anderson.

I have a bit more sympathy for the Case Western faculty, but there are some similarities in the two cases. Consider: University needs new leadership with bold ideas. University trustees hire someone with bold ideas to lead. President begins to implement vision, meeting with mixed success. Trustees look to stand by troubled president. Faculty seize upon some early setbacks to impeach with a vote of no-confidence.

I'll venture to guess that this pattern will repeat several more times outside the for-profit sector in the coming years.

Judging by the way the wind is blowing in Cambridge, February is officially "Not Larry Summers" month in the city on the Charles. After staying on as Harvard's president despite a no-confidence vote by its faculty last year, but in the face another such vote scheduled for next week, President Summers has resigned.

Last year, the Summers found himself in hot water over some widely misunderstood remarks he made at an academic conference regarding why differences in the variability of intrinsic aptitude across the sexes may lead to fewer women in elite university science departments. Some with better vantage points than I are saying that by now most people have moved on to some of his other offenses.

There is merit in that argument, but not to be underestimated is an impact of a change in norms. When it is not considered appropriate to criticize someone in a position of power, too few people do it. But once it becomes acceptable or even commendable to do so, the inertia shifts, and the new norm is to offer too much rather than too little criticism. Shifting norms become much more important at a place like a university, where there is very little relevance of the conventional "bottom line" that keeps for-profit institutions from straying too far afield.

What I find most interesting about the episode (apart from the fact that many Harvard faculty seem to be in need of a good elementary statistics class) is that there is a strong contingent of support for Summers among the undergraduates. The editorial page of The Harvard Crimson is eloquent today:

More importantly, the seeds sown for improvement in the undergraduate experience under Summers’ presidency are indicative of his larger willingness to press for change at an institution by nature resistant to it.

Summers unforgivingly, and often publicly, made known his prioritization of certain academic initiatives over others. Given the occasion to address a crowd, Summers rarely failed to mention his belief that this era would be defined by a revolution in the life sciences and by the quickening pace of globalization. His acting on these beliefs has led, for example, to the bolstering of the Broad Institute, the planning of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and the establishment of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health and a Chilean office of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. It was his brazen trumpeting of these priorities that increased his popularity with students and with a public uninterested in the more esoteric aspects of academia.

Through these and other initiatives, Summers hoped to fashion Harvard into a university that more directly served his conception of the public good. To this end, he has emphasized (and correspondingly obtained funding for) increased research in the life sciences and in expanding Harvard’s global footprint.

It is the prerogative of and, more, the duty of a university president to shift a university’s focus when the demands of the era require it. After all, Harvard, like most other schools founded in colonial days, was established primarily as a training institute for clergy. Reform has come only in battles against the wishes of the entrenched interests of the time. Harvard’s greatest leaps of progress have come when its presidents have fought to modernize the University and redefine its role in accordance with the progressive goals of their respective eras.

Ultimately, too many of today’s entrenched interests felt threatened—justified or not—by Summers’ vision, or by the manner in which he sought to bring his vision to fruition. That was his ultimate undoing.

Well put. As the title of the editorial makes clear, this truly is "Harvard's Loss."