It is these GPAs that enable us to compare student opinions from college to college, and to gauge which aspects of the complete experience at each college rate highest and lowest according to the institution’s own students. [The GPAs also generate the top-twenty lists in various categories.]
—The Princeton Review
The Princeton surveys do not specifically explore the different student subcultures at schools; nonetheless, their results often indicate which subculture dominates undergraduate life at a particular institution. Many universities in the top twenty of the “Jock schools” category finish high on the “Students pack the stadiums” and “Party schools” lists, signifying institutions with strong collegiate subcultures. In fact, the Princeton Review explains its criteria for the “Party schools” ranking as “Based on a combination of survey questions on the use of alcohol and drugs, hours of study each day, and the popularity of the Greek system.”
The “Party schools” list for 2000 resembles the polls of top NCAA football and basketball teams. Princeton’s first five are Florida State, University of Florida, Michigan State University, Seton Hall University, and University of Mississippi, trailed by such traditional sports powers as Alabama, Georgia, and Arkansas, as well as such college sports hopefuls as Washington State and Ohio University in Athens. High on the “Party school” list in previous years—and almost certain to reappear in future—were Arizona, Auburn, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana State, Miami (Florida), Ohio State, Oregon, Syracuse, Texas (Austin), Tulane, West Virginia, and Wisconsin (Madison).
Similarly, in the late 1990s and 2000, schools with strong rebel subcultures turn up on the “Most politically active,” “Students most nostalgic for George McGovern,” and “Students ignore God on a regular basis” lists (Wesleyan, Simon’s Rock College of Bard, and College of the Atlantic rated very high in these categories), and these colleges and similar ones (particularly Reed, Bennington, and Marlboro) appeared on Princeton’s “Alternative Lifestyle” lists: “Gay community accepted,” “Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging, clove-smoking vegetarians,” and “Aesthete schools.”
Colleges with a strong academic ethos also cluster on various Princeton lists (see below). Only the vocational subculture is less visible, in part because so many undergraduates belonging to other subcultures also hold part-time jobs and vocational attitudes, thus merging this subculture into others, particularly on residential campuses. Nonetheless, one list—“Least happy students”—contained a majority of schools with large numbers of traditional vocational students, that is, those also working full-time jobs or supporting families. In the late 1990s and 2000, most institutions in this category were urban—for example, Temple, Loyola of Chicago, Hofstra, Queens College (CUNY), Hunter College (CUNY)—and, undoubtedly, the hectic, overcommitted, and often unhappy lives of large numbers of their vocational students contributed to these schools’ high ranking in this category. The University of Buffalo also finished very high on this list in the late 1990s and 2000, probably in part because of its sizable contingent of vocational students, as well as its academic problems (see Chapter 6).
After the “Least happy students” category, turning to the schools on Princeton’s “Best overall academic experience for undergraduates” is a more pleasant experience. Rice University has frequently made the top ten on this list, including in 2000. According to the Princeton Review:
Rice has a varied and challenging academic program without some of the intense competition that often accompanies such stature … . Getting the classes you want is easy for freshmen and seniors alike … . [Most classes are small and] “You can take a test in the morning and then eat lunch with the professor afterwards,” explains a junior majoring in biology.
In the “Best overall academic experience for undergraduates” category, the predictable candidates appear—Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams, and other schools providing a quality undergraduate education. In this category in every Princeton Review edition in the 1990s and for 2000, only one institution played in NCAA Division I-A, Rice University—the exception that proves the “Best overall academic” rule. Rice made the list every year, but, with only twenty-six hundred undergraduates, it is the smallest institution in I-A, and its athletes are much less vocational than at other I-A schools. Predictably, its football and basketball teams frequently lose, and they never receive much media or fan attention. (Long ago, when Rice was a less academic institution, the Owls were a power in the old Southwest football conference; as a result, Rice entered NCAA Division I-A when that grouping began and never bothered to drop out afterward.)
In addition to low-key intercollegiate athletics, Rice neither permits fraternities and sororities nor encourages a non-Greek collegiate scene. Instead of placing students in huge, soulless dorms like Big-time U’s frequently do, it houses them in human-sized “Colleges,” patterned after the Oxbridge model, with a faculty member and his or her family living in an apartment in each College. In these ways, the school consciously stunts the growth of the collegiate subculture.
As important, Rice promotes the academic subculture by emphasizing undergraduate education, hiring faculty committed to that endeavor, and enabling them to teach small classes. This system closes the gap between professors and undergraduates, and prompts Rice students to rate their “academic experience” as “outstanding.” (Crucial to Rice’s success is its large endowment, much of it from Texas oil money. Nevertheless, the school uses its money wisely and resists the temptation to squander it in an attempt to become a big-time research university with a panoply of graduate programs and TAs, drifting upward and away from undergraduate education.)
Similar to Rice, in the Princeton categories “Professors bring material to life,” “Professors make themselves accessible,” and “Class discussion encouraged,” colleges with faculty committed to teaching undergraduates always score very high, for example, Carleton, the Claremont (California) colleges, Reed, Rhodes, Sarah Lawrence, and St. John’s (Maryland) on the late 1990s and 2000 lists. A recent history of American higher education explained their formula for success: these schools believe that “students do not need to be talked ‘at’ [in lectures], but ‘conversed with,’ preferably in small seminars and colloquia, recognizing that meaningful learning is inherently ‘labor intensive,’ and cannot be conducted on a large-scale, assembly-line basis.”
Furthermore, the Princeton categories “Professors suck all life from material,” “Professors make themselves scarce,” and “Class discussion rare” turn up many of the usual suspects—research universities in big-time college sports, including those often high in the NCAA football and men’s basketball polls: Arizona, Arizona State, Arkansas, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Michigan, Michigan State, Maryland (College Park), Minnesota (Twin Cities), Missouri (Columbia), Ohio State, Oklahoma, Penn State, Pitt, Rutgers, Buffalo, Texas A & M, UCLA, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia.
This guidebook also includes a category “Teaching assistants teach too many upper-level courses,” and, in addition to many schools listed in the previous paragraph, Alabama, Boston College, Florida, Florida State, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina (Chapel Hill), New Mexico, Purdue, Rhode Island, and Seton Hall score high here. Princeton Review does not include a “Worst overall academic experience for undergraduates” list, but it is easy to find candidates. Indeed, the school that ranked at or near the top of almost all of the negative academic categories in 1999 and 2000 was the University of Buffalo (see Chapter 6).
The Princeton Review’s methodology is not perfect—and universities earning negative ratings sometimes dispute its procedures—but because this guidebook bases its rankings on an enormous number of questionnaires, its results do not vary greatly from year to year. The schools committed to providing a quality undergraduate education for all of their students continually score high, and the large, public research universities, particularly the big-time college sports factories, consistently rate poorly in the academic categories. Considering the size
of the Princeton Review’s poll, its results indicate important truths about the institutions that it examines annually.
The bottom line in terms of beer-and-circus-the party scene accompanying big-time college sports—is this: A majority of schools earning very negative ratings in academic categories feature beer-and-circus; on the other hand, almost every institution achieving high positive rankings in academic categories is not involved in major intercollegiate athletics and none are on the “Party schools” list.
11
THE FACULTY/STUDENT NONAGGRESSION PACT
Guidebooks like the Princeton Review present evidence of the deplorable state of general undergraduate education at large, public research universities. For specific information on how these schools neglect this crucial enterprise—ironically, their most dependable source of income—it is necessary to examine what happens, or fails to occur, in undergraduate classes at these institutions. This chapter provides this information, as well as an inquiry into why many undergraduates accept beer-and-circus as a substitute for a meaningful education.
A mutual nonaggression pact develops between lazy students and lazier professors: “I won’t bother you if you don’t bother me.”
—Anne Matthews, higher education writer
We encountered colleges where there was a general agreement that academics were weak, and faculty and students had a tacit agreement not to burden one another.
—Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University
I think it’s really sad that my friends and I didn’t go to class much. I mean, we all go down there [to the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana] to get an education, and then we don’t go to class. But you can get a good grade without going, so it’s tempting not to go.
—Dorothy Puch, University of Illinois student
Big-time U’s handle their undergraduate education problem by establishing a truce between faculty who want to spend a minimum amount of time on undergraduate teaching and students who want to obtain a degree as easily as possible. Sadly, this truce short-circuits students’ natural curiosity and desire to learn. Many studies reveal that even the most collegiate or vocationally inclined students enter universities hoping to acquire an education. Often their wishes are inchoate, but, in a supportive academic environment, some of these men and women would fulfill their hopes and talents. However, no one ever accused a Big-time U of being supportive and nurturing: “impersonal” and “mean” are the adjectives that undergraduates most often use to describe these schools.
As detailed in chapter 7, because Big-time U’s reward faculty primarily for research, not teaching, they assign professors to teach massive undergraduate lecture courses, and these classes severely restrict student learning. For example, in all parts of the country, introductory courses in psychology, an inherently fascinating subject for undergraduates trying to establish adult personalities, consist mainly of huge lecture classes. Indeed, at some universities with high-powered research departments in this discipline, administrators increase the size of basic psych courses to many hundreds of students to generate more money for research programs, and to provide employment for large numbers of graduate students—they work as teaching assistants in these mammoth courses. However, for most undergraduates, exploring one’s identity along with hundreds of other people in the same room is not a learning experience—indeed, it turns the vast majority of students away from this field. But as one psych professor remarked, “That’s the whole idea. Who wants a lot of undergrad psychology majors hanging around a research department?”
Across the curriculum, many introductory courses, including in such foundation subjects as math and English, are frequently taught in large lecture courses. If the lectures also contain a discussion section component, or the courses enroll only a moderate number of students, usually an inexperienced TA or underpaid part-timer is in charge of the smaller group (see Chapter 7). The recent Boyer Commission study noted that, “ironically, the first years of university studies … the most formative years [for students], are usually the least satisfactory.” Professors dislike teaching introductory courses because the material is so far from their research, and TA’s “rarely come armed with serious training in pedagogy” (nor do most faculty, for that matter). “As a result, freshmen—the students who need the very best teaching—may actually receive the worst.”
Another view of this situation suggests that because of the finances of the research university, and its pursuit of the “nonaggression pact” between faculty and undergraduates, Big-time U’s try to persuade entering students to accept inferior education as the norm. The mammoth lecture classes during freshmen year help accomplish this task, reducing students to passive and cynical attitudes about these courses and, soon, their entire undergraduate education.
It is important to note that some regular undergraduates at research universities fight the system and gain meaningful educations—a testament to their extraordinary determination. Similarly, some faculty members at these schools teach their undergraduate courses conscientiously, spending long hours on this activity—an indication of their idealism and career fool-hardiness. In addition, one other group avoids the nonaggression, nonlearning trap: honors students. However, when large, public research universities siphon off their best students and substantial resources for special honors programs and colleges, they confirm and even increase the woeful conditions of general undergraduate education. (See chapter 13.)
Despite Big-time U’s shabby treatment of regular undergraduates in the classroom, they need their tuition dollars and often offer a substitute for genuine learning: a diploma, plus a “fun experience,” including beer-and-circus. Because many students arrive on campus predisposed to the collegiate subculture or immediately become immersed in it, they accept the university’s deal. A University of Missouri (Columbia) undergraduate explained:
Most students here, except for the journalism majors, feel they don’t need to try hard [in classes] and they can get by and get their degree. You find that out when you walk into your first class here … . Most Mizzou students are satisfied with easy schoolwork because other things are much more important to them, mostly partying and following the Tigers.
The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges confirmed these comments in its review of Missouri:
Like many large state schools, the University of Missouri is defined by an active frat life and a relatively loose attitude toward academic life … . Academics are not a great source of stress for many Mizzou students … . [However,] athletics plays a big role in Mizzou life. There is a lot of spirit behind the Tigers … .
What should be the campus mascot? The drunken frat boy.
The need for as many undergraduate tuition dollars as possible—Missouri accepts 90 percent of its applicants—as well as Upward Drift and empire-building propel schools to what one critic calls “gigantism—the sheer size and complexity of the modern university,” which “militates against … closeness and intimacy” and a student-centered approach to education. Indeed, even before entering a classroom, the size and impersonality of a Big-time U intimidates and turns off many incoming freshmen, as do the indifferent advising system and the mammoth high-rise dormitories and research buildings. One student told Anne Matthews, “This school is the anti-‘Cheers,’ where nobody knows your name.”
On the questionnaire for this book, an Ohio State female freshman wrote:
I feel like just another number at a large state school. I have to use my social security number for everything here. Many of my friends here and at other state schools say the same thing. Also academics is not at the top of my priority list anymore, although it was when I came here, and I’ve started to live for the weekend parties and Buckeye Fever [rooting for the school’s football and basketball teams] … . For me and my friends here, our courses would be lucky to make the middle of our priority lists.
A comprehensive survey of student attitudes at Indiana University, conducted by tha
t school’s administration, confirmed the anti-academic and alienated feelings of undergraduates. In response to the statement “Students come first” at this school, only 14 percent strongly agreed; and the same small percentage affirmed the statement “Students are intellectually engaged in their academic work” here.
In a more graphic manner, a columnist in this school’s student newspaper discussed the common undergraduate problem of staying awake in class: “I’ve seen people bring Big Gulps of [caffeine-laden] Mountain Dew, liters of Jolt and mugs of coffee as thick as milkshakes to class,” then consume them, “only to slip into unconsciousness as soon as the overhead projector lights up” and the prof starts talking. This writer admitted that the “typical college student’s lifestyle (pizza at 11 P.M.),” and so on, influenced class alertness, but finally the lack of engagement with undergraduate education was the main culprit.
A folklorist studying college life noticed that the comments students carved into desktops in all parts of the country mainly “express boredom or frustration” during classes. One of the most common inscriptions—a cry for total escape—was the line from the TV show Star Trek: “Beam me up, Scotty!” Yet these sentiments seem old-fashioned-recalling the historic hostility between most undergraduates and their professors—compared to contemporary student comments on the new “mutual nonaggression pact.”
Beer and Circus Page 15