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Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence,
former Harvard President Derek Bok examines how much progress
college students actually make toward widely accepted goals
of undergraduate education. His conclusions are sobering.
Although most students make gains in many important respects,
they improve much less than they should in such important
areas as writing, critical thinking, quantitative skills,
and moral reasoning. Large majorities of college seniors
do not feel that they have made substantial progress in
speaking a foreign language, acquiring cultural and aesthetic
interests, or learning what they need to know to become
active and informed citizens. Overall, despite their vastly
increased resources, more powerful technology, and hundreds
of new courses, colleges cannot be confident that students
are learning more than they did fifty years ago.
Looking further, Bok finds that many important
college courses are left to the least experienced teachers
and that most professors continue to teach in ways that
have proven to be less effective than other available methods.
In reviewing their educational programs, however, faculties
typically ignore this evidence. Instead, they spend most
of their time discussing what courses to require,
although the lasting impact of college will almost certainly
depend much more on how the courses are taught.
In his final chapter, Bok describes the
changes that faculties and academic leaders can make to
help students accomplish more. Without ignoring the contributions
that America's colleges have made, Bok delivers a powerful
critique -- one that educators will ignore at their peril.
Derek Bok is President Emeritus and Research
Professor at Harvard University and the author of many major
books on higher education, including (with William Bowen)
The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering
Race in College and University Admissions and Universities
in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education
(both Princeton).
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