American Universities used to be (and to a great extent still are) seen as the pinnacle of higher education in the world. But that is changing, and changing fast. I see faculty at every University I visit "dumbing down" courses for American students who do not want to do the kind of studying those of us in the Boomer generation took for granted. When we were in school, for a 3 credit course, we expected to study about 6-9 hours outside of class for an undergrad course, and about 9-12 hours outside of class for a graduate course. A typical undergraduate credit hour load of 15 credits meant that the student was in class for 15 hours a week, and studying for about 30 hours a week to get an A or B in the course.
Today, students expect to study only 2-3 hours a week per course, and to not only to pass, but to get "A's" regardless of the quality of their work or whether or not they studied for the course. And students have learned the power of group pressure. A teacher who sets and maintains the kind of standards he/she should in college quickly discoveres that there is a high penalty to pay for setting standards. In some cases, the students go as a group to the Dean to complain about the "unreasonable expectations" of the teacher. In others, the students make sure the teacher's course evaluations come out very low. Students evaluate the course FIRST on whether or not they got their "A". If they know they are not getting an "A", they give the course all zero's on the course evaluation instrument. If they know they are getting "As", then they will generally rate the course highly.
It must be understood that tenure and promotion, not to mention annual merit raises, are in many schools, highly dependent on student course evaluations. In fact, for lots of schools, student evaluations are the only way a college instructor's teaching is evaluated.
University teachers, like everybody who has to support themselves and a family, want to get merit raises and job tenure. So, after their first or second semester of teaching, they quickly learn to stop grading according to performance and to give virtually every student top grades. As a result, grades mean virtually nothing. Quality, for the most part, is not a part of the grading scale anymore.
Today, a huge number of students now graduate with grade point averages (GPAs) of 3.8 or higher. It is not unusual for 50% to 60% of a graduating class to have a 4.0 (straight A's) GPA. An "A" is supposed to mean outstanding achievement in the course. Today, it often means that the student did at least minimally acceptable work. This is called, "grade inflation" and it means that grades have inflated upwards to the point that a B today is given for work that would have earned a C or D in the 1970s.
As to teacher and course evaluations: The students rate courses anonymously, so they have no accountability for what they say about the course or the instructor. Yet, their evaluations count hugely toward the instructor's annual raise and toward whether or not that teacher is given tenure. (In most universities, if you don't make tenure within 7 years, you are terminated). Can you imagine any Union that would allow an employee to be evaluated anonymously by someone who does not have to prove accusations of poor quality work? Yet, university teachers face this unfair evaluation system every semester. So, this means that the teacher, rather than the student, bears the consequences of the student's failure to perform.
I have heard this incredibly stupid system justified by a variety of people who say they care about educational quality. Often, these people sell their version of course evaluations, and argue most vehemently that students do not evaluate a course based on their own course grade. That argument is patently stupid, and every new college teacher who gives fair grades their first two semesters of teaching quickly learns that giving grades of B or C (not to mention Ds or Fs), will get them nothing but horrible course evaluations. It will then get them a poor evaluation on their teaching from the department manager. That in turn, will get them a low annual job evaluation and a poor merit raise. And of course, they will be counseled that if their teaching doesn't "improve" (as measured by student evaluations), they will never get tenure and worse, their contract may not be renewed after next year.
Being relatively bright, new PhDs have already noticed that the number of good student evaluations roughly matches the number of "A"s they gave while the number of bad evaluations roughly matches the number of grades lower than an A they gave. So, they radically lower their grading standards (which in turn, lowers the amount a student has to learn to get an "A"). And the degradation of American education is extended to yet another teacher.
We all know there are schools out there that will give bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees for little or no work. These schools are called diploma mills and everybody knows that their degrees are backed with no knowledge. This system of grading teaching quality entirely on the basis of student evaluations is slowly turning our best Universities into little more than diploma mills.
Some employers don't bother to check out the school from which an applicant's degree comes. So, having a "diploma", regardless of how bogus, can get the owner a much higher paying job than the person could otherwise get. Of course, the employer soon learns that the employee is worthless and if it is a private company, fires him/her. If it is a state or federal employer, often the employer is stuck with the inadequate employee. Fortunately, lots of employers do care about the quality of the university from which a prosepctive employee graduated. And they do not hire somebody with a degree from a diploma mill.
There have been diploma mills for a long time, and most employers have become savy to the fact that some degrees aren't worth the paper they are written on. In the past, employers could rely on the quality of the education if the student's degree was from a University that was accredited by one of the 4 or 5 big, credible, accreditation bodies. (To most employers and academics, this means the University is accredited by North Central for the states in the middle of the country, by the Western Association of Colleges in the western part of the U.S., by the Middle States Association of Colleges for the North East or by the Southern Association of Colleges and Universities in the South East). Today, employers are finding it less and less reliable that a student graduated with high grades from a good university will be at least an adequate, if not outstanding employee.
To all too many students today, a diploma is little more than a piece of paper to hang on their wall and to use as a ticket to get a better job. They neither understand nor value the fact that a university degree is supposed to be granted only after the student has undergone a rigorous course of study in which they proved that they had learned the course material. But what are employers to do when even the best universities continually lower their standards to the point that getting admitted means graduation with a high GPA, regardless of amount learned?
Sadly, I'm seeing a LOT of students today who look at school as a way to obtain their "piece of paper". The diploma is all that matters, and the students are less than interested in gaining a sound and deep knowledge base to back up that diploma. They don't seem to realize (or don't care about) the fact that their college diploma is supposed to represent a set of skills and a body of knowledge that future employers can rely on as a guarantee of the student's ability to function as a valuable and productive member of the work team. Unfortunately, too many students are now looking at it as a ticket of entry into high paying jobs; a ticket that can be bought for money rather than with much hard work.
This view of education is reducing the value of a college degree, and degrading American higher education.
If America fails, then it will be because that view prevails, not because of somebody's lack of belief in fundamentalist religion precepts. Some 3rd world countries have sent a lot of their young people to America to get educated. Many of those highly educated people have gone back to their native countries to upgrade the quality of their universities. Is it going to come to the point where if an American wants a really good education, he or she has to go to India or Saudi Arabia? Or are the people in this country going to do something about the grade inflation and quality degredation of American education?
