| Since this chapter is
more about the official purposes of
higher education than many of the
preceding chapters have been, its
contents are likely to be particularly sensitive, perhaps even more
sensitive than the material in chapters 5 and 6. My overall feeling is
that educationally Rutgers is not
doing all that badly by its undergraduates. This judgment is only
possible, however, if one cuts away
much of the customary rhetoric
about higher education and looks
at the actual social structure of
American public universities in the
late twentieth century--and at
the larger American culture (and
economy, and polity) in which
colleges and universities are
embedded--more realistically.
Though the undergraduates' point
of view on this subject may come
as a shock to some readers, this is
what I am trying to do in this
chapter. It would be a valuable outcome, on the other hand, if some of the lowdown on higher education from the students' point of view emphasized here made a difference in contemporary undergraduate teaching. But it would be a mistake to use this chapter as a stick to beat only Rutgers with. For, as indicated in passing here and elsewhere in this book, there is every reason to believe that Rutgers is typical of American higher education in the late twentieth century--when it comes to the nature of its current trade-off between research and teaching and when it comes to the often only marginally intellectual mentality of many of its students (but see also appendix 2 on the typicality of Rutgers). Meaningful institutional reforms, if considered necessary, must therefore be aimed more at all of American higher education than at one college and university open-minded enough to allow an anthropologist to poke around in it freely for a number of years. As the recent Carnegie Report suggests, new national agendas on undergraduate education may be necessary: more money and social prestige for undergraduate teaching, revised institutional relationships between research and the rest of college in all or most American colleges and universities, and tougher-minded stratifications of research-oriented and teaching- oriented institutions and professors (see Boyer 1987). These reforms would have to affect higher education and the academic professions at a national level in order to be effective in any particular college or university. If |
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Coming of Age in New Jersey:College and American Culture.
Contributors: Michael Moffatt - Author.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press.
Place of publication: New Brunswick.
Publication year: 1989.
Page number: 310.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
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