Two New Books Harshly Criticize Universities

The debate over American higher education has been reignited recently, thanks to two critical new books.  HIGHER EDUCATION? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids–And What We Can Do About It (Times Books) by Andrew Hacker, a professor emeritus of political science at Queens College, and Claudia C. Dreifus, a journalist.  The other critical book is Mark C. Taylor’s CRISIS ON CAMPUS: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities (Knopf).

As David Kirp observed in his American Prospect review of Hacker and Dreifus said: “Not so long ago, colleges saw their students as young people whose preferences were to be formed, but in these market-driven times they regard students as consumers whose preferences are to be satisfied…Colleges spend scads of money to make their campuses as spiffy as suburbia.  The ratio of administrators to students has mushroomed…Most contentiously, Hacker and Dreifus contend that professors’ research gets in the way of education (by which they mean teaching).