I recently ran across an interesting interview in The Atlantic online, “What’s Wrong with the American University System,” by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz. Ms. Gritz interviews Dr. Andrew Hacker, Professor Emeritus of Queens College (NY), who has recently published the book Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids---and What We Can Do About It.
Dr. Hacker, apparently, is a advocate of both liberal arts and practical training (e.g., engineering), and he’s not a terribly big fan of the Ivy League. Ms. Gritz asks him some very pointed questions about the merits of an elite school education. Dr. Hacker gives pointed responses. The interview is worth the read. I don’t know if I’d buy the book, but I might get it from the library…
One choice little nugget is about Division I athletics, in which Dr. Hacker takes a dig at Ohio State that is guaranteed to decrease demand for his book in the Buckeye state and find itself on posters in Ann Arbor:
At a college like Ohio State, the team makes money. The undergraduates pour into the stadium for the big Ohio-Michigan game. They paint their faces red and blue and all the rest. But what are they cheering for? Victory in a football game. Michigan is actually a much better university than Ohio State—its reputation, its medical school, its law school, and so on. It makes you wonder whether Ohio is putting so much into its sports teams because its academics really aren't so great.
Here's what my wife says to all this!
3 comments:
And here's what Hacker's says of the comment: we have a feeling that both of you are likely smart enough not to be basing your support of a university on how the team is doing.
We hope you'll find the book interesting, where ever you read it.
Claudia Dreifus, Andrew Hacker's life and writing partner.
And here's what Hacker's says of the comment: we have a feeling that both of you are likely smart enough not to be basing your support of a university on how the team is doing.
We hope you'll find the book interesting, where ever you read it.
Claudia Dreifus, Andrew Hacker's life and writing partner.
Thanks, Claudia, for your reply. My wife and mother are Michigan grads, so I like to poke my Ohio friends when I can (I served a lovely parish there for almost seven years.) I laughed when I read Dr. Hacker's quotation because it was my frequent reply to parishioners and friends when, year-after-year (lately) the Michigan football team was defeated by Ohio State. It made for (I believe) good, fun banter.
Our support of the my wife's alma mater has very little do with the status of the football team. I will not say "absolutely nothing" because we are football fans. :) Certainly, the choice of university by our children, barring the highly unlikely athletic scholarship, will have nothing to do with football and everything to do with the issues that were raised in Dr. Hacker's interview.
I, myself, am the graduate of a small liberal arts school (Kalamazoo College), so the issues that Dr. Hacker raised resonate deeply with me. Many of my classmates are now professionals and benefit greatly from the liberal arts education. Upon graduation we were, I believe, more well-rounded people than many of our contemporaries. I am particularly thankful for the foreign study that most of us undertook. The lessons I learned on my internships and foreign study, in hindsight, are the real abiding value of what was otherwise an exceedingly expensive undergraduate education.
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