Higher Education at a Crossroads (review)

Paul R. Geisler, in Higher Education at a Crossroads, examines the current status and potential fate of higher education in America. Specifically, Geisler assesses the current role of higher education in America and the quality of education that students receive after entering these institutions. Although the text is intended for higher education scholars, it is not based on research or methodology that is typically favored for any "professional" or "scholarly" literature. With his professional background as an athletic trainer and professor, Geilser's perspective on higher education is certainly unique because it does not come from a traditional educational researcher or policy-centered individual. Having said that, the book's overall ideas add a distinct critique to the higher education literature that could help spark a discussion about the merits and status of higher education in America. Often, books such as these are very important because they articulate a viewpoint that cannot directly be addressed through the constraints of conducting research projects.

Using his scientific background, Geisler diagnoses higher education with medical-like terms throughout his text. Particularly, Geisler includes the prefix "dys," which means "abnormal or irregular" (Geisler 2006, p. 3). As a result, the various maladies affecting higher education—dysbulia, dysgnosia, dyserethesia, or dyslogia—result in a "Dysacademia" that signifies the current state of higher education as being in "a pathological condition replete with signs, symptoms, and complications" (Geisler 2006, p. 3).

From the beginning of this book, Geisler emphasizes that today's student body seeks personal economic gain through higher education and asserts that human capital-building is of prime importance in America. He posits that technologization of American society has a profound impact on the curriculum and overall quality of higher education institutions. Other symptoms that Geisler discusses to explain the Dysacademia in America revolve around accreditation bodies and their negative impacts on the teaching and learning process. Higher education institutions no longer teach students "how to do," but rather emphasize "what to do" by telling them the way to do things, instead of letting them explore and navigate their own paths. Higher education has lost its focus on the process and journey associated with teaching and learning and has replaced this with an emphasis on the ends or the final destination of this process, which is only knowledge of facts. Although this approach is very similar to John Dewey and his ideas of map-making, Geisler fails to acknowledge Dewey and his influence on such topics (Dewey, 2004).

After explaining how the current system of higher education in America represents a Dysacademia, Geisler spends the next few chapters articulating how the current status quo can be deconstructed and replaced with a more effective system that upholds the traditional ideals of education—education for education's sake. For the most part, researchers that criticize higher education fail to expand their ideas enough and do not articulate what specifically should be done to remedy these institutions. However, Paul Geisler, with his practitioner focus, articulates his remedies for higher education institutions. Specifically, Geisler asserts that his "3rd Curriculum"—which teaches what he refers to as the "3rd person" to learn in a more forward-looking navigating process where the learner takes an active role throughout the teaching and learning process—is essential for positive reform. Geisler centers his thoughts on an open systems theoretical approach coupled with chaos theory. With these approaches, students learn a wide array of information that helps them become better human beings and citizens through a seemingly disordered curriculum that is apparently pointless at first, but, through the process, becomes more lucid and clear. This postmodern open system theory (POST) creates the 3^rd Curriculum that needs to be implemented by higher education institutions to remedy the current ailment of Dysacademia that plagues the entire system. Only with this curriculum can the traditional goals of a liberal arts education be restored in American higher education.

In his concluding three chapters, Geisler's style becomes more readable and understandable; however, these chapters...