EDITORIAL: We're paying for a university education, not a pretty campus
Statements on the condition of American higher education made by “Academically Adrift” researchers Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa Monday could have been specifically about Central Michigan University.
“The student today is a consumer and a client and you make sure through client surveys that they’re happy with the products you’re providing,” Arum said.
The presentations — one at Charles V. Park Library and the other at Warriner Hall’s Plachta Auditorium — focused on the researchers’ study, which concluded that standards at colleges have sharply declined in the last four decades.
Roksa and Arum also specifically referenced a similar study done by Jason Bentley, CMU’s director of First Year Experience, that found it lacking in academic self-efficacy, academic integration, advanced academic behavior and self assessments of various skills.
The education of people and preparing people to enter a valuable livelihood is not a business; it is a social imperative of the highest importance.
It is relatively unimportant to make sure students have a good time in their college experiences, whereas the real goal of a university education should be to produce successful and productive members of society.
A university’s measure of success should not be how well students rate professors after a semester ends or how much school spirit they feel. It should, instead, focus on how well alumni are performing five or 10 years after graduation in all aspects of their lives.
Some administrators might argue they are only doing their best to appeal to the greatest number of potential students, which is undoubtedly true. But this speaks to a need for a national re-evaluation of what people want from college and why.
A university education is supposed to be a beneficial and transformative experience of intellectual, social and moral standards, not a four-year resort.
We would demand much better service if we were paying to stay at Sandals Resort, Mount Pleasant.
A radical reform in education is needed to keep American graduates competitive internationally and there is no reason CMU cannot reprioritize and be at the forefront of such a change.
CMU officials repeatedly profess the goal of being on a higher level of recognition nationally, so now is the time to make effective education a priority above profit and expansion.
After all, Ivy League graduates aren’t highly sought after because their classroom buildings are really nice.
