The Failure of American Higher Education

Really? More standardized tests? Because those have made students entering college that much more college ready. I’m being sarcastic. Students are taught to the test at the expense of content. Do we really want higher ed to be that way? The basic skills that you talk about SHOULD have been learned in high school (summarizing? grammar? averages? Really? That’s what higher ed’s job has become?). And, these are students who are the result of the testing bonanza that is No Child Left Behind.

I just wrote collegereadywriting.blogspot.comm) about the difference between college professors and high school teachers. If anything, teachers need more content training in order to make the skills they are trying to teach more relevant to the students. But you seem to imply that content is irrelevant (A history major? Don’t need history to do the job. I want SKILLS!). Then lets just get rid of all liberal arts programs, keep the skilled degrees (medicine, engineering, etc), and we’ll all get degrees in tech and “critical thinking.” Never mind that we’ll have no idea how to apply them.

University is fundamentally about creating knowledge, not skill transfer. The skills you need to create knowledge used to come before higher ed, not during. And more testing is not the right solution.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost