Higher Education and the American Dream: Success and Its Discontents

CHAPTER 7. Why is higher education so hard to reform?

CHAPTER 7 Why is higher education so hard to reform? I can’t get no satisfaction. And I try. (The Rolling Stones) Americans’ faith in the power of education to cure everything is all-encompassing. This gospel of education asserts that social, economic , political, and ethical problems can be solved through schooling . Whatever the difficulties and the aspirations—economic development and individual economic success, social instability and social security, global competition and national identity, intolerance and tolerance, religious and secular values, economic productivity and satisfaction at work, the list could go on and on—the Education Gospel assumes that schooling can solve the problem and meet the goals. The essential message connected to such terms as ‘knowledge society’, ‘information society’, and high-tech revolution’ is that life in the 21st century will require people with skills associated with knowledge and information, and that these can best be learned in schools, especially the skills that come with college education and beyond. In the face of intense global competition, the need to make decisions about complex problems, to preserve democracy, and to bring ethical behavior and tolerance into a world that often seems to reward the opposite, as well as enhancing each individual’s chances at professional status, economic success, and social security, mass schooling is absolutely necessary. It assures economic growth and democracy. In the United States, the gospel of education has produced remarkable results. America has provided more schooling for more people sooner and for longer periods of time than any other country . Millions of immigrants and their families, millions of poor and high 4 to?rdelt:Whats minta 1 4/8/10 10:16 AM Page 187 working class, millions of previously discriminated against can attest to the remarkable openness and opportunities available through education. Faith in the Education Gospel lies at the heart of America ’s belief in itself. It is one of the givens of the American Dream. The problem with the Gospel is not the faith itself, but rather its exaggeration, its tendency to deny the importance of so many other aspects of global, national, and individual existence. Schools are not always the best places to learn about life, and certainly not the exclusive places to learn about work. And, because the Gospel has in the last decades become so closely attached to economic success for the nation and for individuals, it has become a distorting lens through which education is seen primarily—often exclusively—as a transmission belt. One goes to school in order to get to the next level of schooling. Schooling’s value lies in its payoffs; the more schooling, the larger expected payoffs. This exaggerated faith leads to a continuing condition of dissatisfaction , since schools simply cannot accomplish all that Americans expect of it, and certainly not for all the people who spend time in school. At best, the expectations can only be partially realized, leading to an environment in which proposals to change, reform, or punish schools are a way of life, leading to constant tampering with education , with the misguided hope that there is a right recipe that just has to be put in place. The tampering is almost always initiated from outside schools at every level, from kindergarten through graduate education. Constantly badgered by yet another attempt at reform or more accurately, by multiple reforms simultaneously, those within schools—teachers, professors, administrators—more often than not hold the line. They both believe in what they are doing and they understand that in a short period of time yet another set of reforms will be on the agenda. The first step, then, in improving education is to see it as one of many institutions and policy options available for economic growth, social progress, and individual success. Education is important—very important—but there are so many other things that have to be improved if education is to come closer to achieving its aspirations. 188 Higher Education and the American Dream high 4 to?rdelt:Whats minta 1 4/8/10 10:16 AM Page 188 7.1 Money matters—if used correctly Higher education’s success has been built on its ability to gain a near monopoly on access to the American Dream. The monopoly is not total; the media provides the occasional story about the self-made individual who made it without much schooling, but the occasions are rare. Colleges and universities have taken over the preparation...