Why Public Higher Education Should Be Free: How to Decrease Cost and Increase Quality at American Universities

Educating Students for a Multicultural Democracy

130 Currently, there are two major movements in education around the globe: increased stress on efficiency and standardized testing, and a growing focus on teaching the whole student and covering a large variety of subject matter. Driving much of the first movement is the idea that education ’s only purpose is to prepare a student for a future job in knowledge economy; the second movement is centered on helping students become better citizens and thinkers. In the case of higher education, extreme examples of these two movements can be found in for-profit online universities and non-profit honors colleges. Students at for-profits pay high fees, usually with the help of government grants, to receive an inferior education provided by an army of underpaid adjuncts. These high-paying students rarely graduate, and the few of them who do earn a degree or certificate typically have huge amounts of debt. Furthermore, even though their programs are usually centered on job training, most of the students are unable to find employment. In contrast, students at honors colleges at public universities take a wide variety of courses, which are usually taught in small seminars by expert teachers. The two extremes I have depicted here represent the central choice that we need to make as a multicultural democracy in a globalized economy. Although it is tempting to assess universities by looking at how their students do on standardized tests, Pasi Sahlberg argues that Finland was able to rise to the top in international tests by not stressing standardized tests in its educational system.1 Instead, Finland concentrated on making public 10 Educating Students for a multicultural Democracy EDUCAtIng StUDEntS FoR A mUltICUltURAl DEmoCRACy 131 education free and giving teachers the tools and respect they needed to be effective instructors. A key aspect of this type of education is the recognition that standardized tests not only affect what and how students learn but also what and how instructors teach. When they must teach to the test, educators are motivated to provide instruction in an uncritical and rote manner that makes them set aside their passion for teaching and limits their ability to teach the whole student. In contrast to this standardized system, Sahlberg argues that all educators must learn how to teach every student and prepare all of them for the new types of knowledge that are required in an everchanging and unpredictable knowledge economy.2 Thus, instead of making the students and the teachers unhappy by forcing them to concentrate on memorizing information, educators in Finland have committed themselves to an interactive and holistic model of instruction. A key aspect of the Finnish system is the idea that teachers need to be respected and given the freedom to teach to their strengths. However, if we look at teaching at American universities and colleges, we discover that the vast majority of the instructors are part-time faculty and graduate students who have neither academic freedom nor job security; thus, the system itself does not treat these educators with respect. Also, even the professors who are generally respected by society are rarely taught how to be effective teachers or how contemporary students learn. As Howard Gardner has argued, most schools concentrate on a single form of intelligence , and they fail to teach emotional or social intelligence.3 In other words, students should not only memorize facts and theories, but also learn about how they and others perceive the world on an emotional and social basis. Ironically, Sahlberg reveals that Finnish educators have learned from American education theorists how to teach in an effective manner by incorporating a more comprehensive understanding of student learning. A key aspect to this Finnish model is the use of empirical and theoretical studies to ground teaching in proven methods. Yet, as I have pointed out throughout this book, American professors rarely study the research on teaching and learning that their own institutions produce. And although most of the recent breakthroughs in neuroscience and cognitive science concerning how people learn and think have been developed at research universities, these important findings rarely make their way into the 132 WHy PUBlIC HIgHER EDUCAtIon SHoUlD BE FREE university classroom. Part of the problem here is that there has been an almost complete separation between undergraduate and graduate education . Large undergraduate classes are still using older models of teaching and thinking, even though small graduate courses often incorporate a more participatory model...