Declining by Degrees

While it would be easy enough to raise an alarm about the declining quality of higher education in America by trotting out horrifying statistics and disturbing anecdotes, this book thankfully spends little time doing so. Instead, Hersh and Merrow have gathered essays focusing on the root causes of the decline as well as on a range of strategies for reversing it. In this, the varied backgrounds of the contributors, from journalists and policy researchers to university professors and administrators, serves the volume well. These pieces include, among other things, a comparison of how the media covers K-12 as opposed to colleges and universities, considerations of how marketplace models have shaped undergraduate education, and a variety of high-level, philosophical approaches to reimagining the place of higher education in our society. And while all the contributors have distinctive viewpoints on the problem, one thing becomes clear throughout: the state of American higher education is a product less of policy decisions, curriculum structure or student demographics than of the values and priorities of American society. To this end, the contributors do an excellent job sketching the larger cultural and economic forces-such as materialism, job specialization, the information explosion and the near-universal adoption of marketplace values-that they see as primarily responsible for the decline of America's colleges and universities. Because of its broad focus, the book will interest a wide range of readers, from educators and policy makers to parents concerned about their children's education.