The historic relationship of  universities with  churches where the moral principles setting forth life’s meaning have been vested, signified that faculties were expected to teach this meaning. It continued for centuries and was carried into college curriculums in America. Nineteenth century state land grant universities were subject to this influence. But beginning in Germany early in the nineteenth century the rise of scholarly research as a basic function of faculties, competed with the importance of  teaching as a primary purpose. It was adopted by many American universities which usually were referred to as research universities. The emphasis on research work, primarily in the natural and physical sciences and subsequently expanded to include the social sciences which included economics, sociology, political science among other developing disciplines. The research generated an avalanche (which continues) of new knowledge, often  arrived at by mean of  applying a scientific skepticism to what was previously represented as being true. In the process of disproving  older “truth” new truth was uncovered. Although he did not represent a university, Charles Darwin’s conclusions resulting in evolutionary theory derived from his investigations into fossils and animal and bird life, are a crowning example

Faculty members who conduct research in the natural, engineering, and social sciences seek to uncover new knowledge in these fields. Research in the sciences does not focus specifically upon life’s meaning for the individual. Rather, facts must be totally objective; they cannot be adjusted to suit the wishes of the researcher. But, teachers who  prepare themselves to help students identify meaning as it relates to their lives, cannot avoid inserting their own value judgments. In this way the search for life’s meaning remains different from objective research in the various disciplines. The endeavor has essentially been within the purview of humanities faculties, with the means to accomplish it being study of the writings encompassed in the corpus called “Great Books.” These bodies of works, in the main from Western Civilization, usually starting with Homeric epics certainly can include representative works from outside the West such as the venerable Hindu Vedas and Upanashads written in sanscrit well before the time of Homer. The word Veda comes from the root vid, to know.  In these works theories of cosmology and the concept of a single underlying reality relating to life can be found as  central themes.

As long as campuses were inseparable from or closely associated with churches, faculties dealt with problems related to life’s meaning. After all, answers to these questions came from  sanctuaries housing the authority of the church worldwide. There are over 5,000 different religions, ranging from the Vatican to Midwest Evangelical Christianity to cult beliefs of small villagers in tropical New Guinea. Slaughter and carnage arising from church authority disputing faiths elsewhere, as for example the Crusades or Spanish incursions in Central America have been principle causes of wars and vicious cruelty

In early America and continuing until World War II, students came mostly from families of privilege. This was essentially true even at public, land grant campuses founded on the grants of federal land to establish colleges under the terms of the Morrill Act of 1862. In those days higher education was in no way egalitarian nor was admissions democratized. Essentially, the term elitism would describe collegiate studies. The majority of students had the family heritage which provided the leisure for going to college that was supposed to point the way to finding life’s meaning and good citizenship. From early days curriculums identified this lofty purpose. In American church related institutions students were taught principles of “upright” living with their behavior on campus being monitored. At what we now call private institutions, and later at public universities classical studies along with Great Books provided the basis for the undergraduate program leading to the bachelor’s degree. The founding fathers of our nation, especially those identified with the crafting of the Constitution, were for the most part men who had minds that showed the depth of knowledge derived from studying these works.

 A modifying circumstance existed in state-supported normal schools to train elementary school teachers, the first having been established in Massachusetts in 1839. For women, who were excluded from men’s preparatory schools and colleges, normal schools provided the only opportunity to be educated beyond elementary and secondary schools. Normal schools proliferated, subsequently turning into degree granting teachers colleges, which evolved into the vast array of regional state colleges upon which legislatures ultimately bestowed the title universities. They now  enroll millions of students. During the colonial period and well into the nineteenth century, teachers in the lower schools required minimal education, netted poor pay, and carried low prestige. But such teaching represented about the only jobs, other than domestic servitude, available to women.  As normal schools grew and later became teachers colleges opportunities for continued education became more available to women and to the less privileged component of the citizenry. The impact of the G. I. Bill  following World War II made higher education available across the social spectrum. It democratized U.S. higher education once and for all. While this higher education evolution was taking place the elite schools, secure in their place in the sun, did not pay that much attention and tended to dismiss normal schools and teachers colleges now universities as third rate institutions.

As the nineteenth century progressed and turned into the twentieth, scientific research exerted an inevitable impact on the professional interests of faculty members. In their campus lives it introduced a powerful factor that competed with what had heretofore been time and effort devoted to teaching and counseling students. From land grant institutions across the nation agricultural research resulted in producing tens of thousands of fields of grain and splendid stands of corn to match. The United States became the breadbasket of the world. As diversified research forces spread throughout academe there entered into faculty thinking a scrutinizing attitude about the nature of things, often with a skepticism present as, in their teaching, they confronted meaning in life. This change of attitude, involving skepticism weakened religious faith as a cohering force on campuses. Concurrently the ties between churches and universities became looser. This did not necessarily mean that faculties abandoned a concern for life’s meaning in their teaching, but religious faith slowly decreased, as other ways of looking for meaning emerged. It did not happen overnight.

            Humanities faculties found themselves in an environment dominated by science and social science faculties, where the techniques of research  run counter to the kinds of study needed for seeking life’s meaning. The scientists and social scientists sensed that they were in tune with the times and exuded confidence not apparent in the humanities where uncertainty continued. The academic job market exacerbated the problem. For example, professorships such as those  involving computer technology, accounting, or engineering paid well and dominated the scene while philosophy, and literature lagged.

Relatively few U.S. campuses  enjoy recognition as being  elite, which term does not possess a  precise definition, but like  Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who, while eschewing a  definition of pornography, said “I know it when I see it.” So, in like manner we know elitism in higher education when we see it.  Out of 4,400 probably not more than 60 or so are truly elite, with a concentric ring of campuses that like to think of themselves as being, but in fact are not, elite. Campuses that are elite tend to have long histories, have rich endowment resources, and together produce a large and disproportionate number of the Nation’s leaders in business, politics, and the academy.  Faculty members from these campuses in like manner win a disproportionate number of Pulitzers, Nobel prizes and research grants. Taken as a whole the quality of education and research is recognizably higher on elite campuses, mostly private but not totally, than in the institutions making up the mass market. Students enrolled in selective admissions, elite institutions are the most fitted to promulgate the search for meaning in life. It is self evident that they have the educational background for it. But the point is, do they have the interest and motivation. It is happening in a  very few of these institutions where it cannot be separated from the humanities.

In the gargantuan realm of mass-market, open admission public institutions which enroll the millions comprising the majority of U.S. college students, faculty concern for the kind of teaching that leads to an understanding of life’s meaning is essentially nonexistent. Overwhelmingly the students want training to fit them for jobs to assure a decent living for them and their families. American public higher education in the second half of the twentieth century has made this training available to its citizens that heretofore would not have had a glimmer of a chance to go to college.

In no nation throughout world history, have citizens been afforded this opportunity. It still exists here, but in the larger field of education in America including kindergarten through high school dark clouds continue to gather on the horizon. In 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in Education appointed by Secretary of Education Terrel M. Bell released a report that has become a classic, entitled A Nation at Risk. In ringing phrases it said that the “intellectual, moral, and spiritual strengths of our people” are at risk. There has developed  a “rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”  Since 1983 this tide has continued to rise, identified and attested to by hundreds of assessments and national reports by a variety of educational organizations. Mass market higher education which includes regional public universities and community colleges partakes of this “rising tide.” Comparison of what is going on in education in the U.S. with what is taking place overseas places the U.S. in a poor light.

 Now, in the United States which has always been a land of opportunity and still is, we need to recognize and acknowledge the threats to mass market higher education and gird our loins to do something about it.

Being quietly unselfish usually involves helping out another person, which involves a forfeiture of privilege or resource of some sort  by the person who offers help. The grandmother might cancel a long-anticipated vacation trip to Florida  in order that a granddaughter’s college tuition be paid. The teacher might regularly delay her commute home so she might interact with her students beset with problems. Unselfish  patterns of behavior are shared by millions of persons across the globe. But there is also an opposite characteristic of selfishness where the legitimate interests of one person are thwarted  by another who substitutes his or her own personal wishes and desires.  These negative characteristics are also widely spread across the globe. In our nation they add up to  forces that get in the way of reasonable, personal interactions between individuals..

Today’s United States comprises a mass of  somewhat more than three hundred million people, which is estimated to reach three hundred fifteen to twenty million at the next census. For acts of governance it is necessary that orderliness be present. The collective character of we who make up the populace cannot be separated from maintaining this orderliness. Obviously the levels of quality of this collective character determine the quality of the nation . . . .  but it is equally obvious that the extent to which citizens possess or do not possess character cannot be measured.

Herein lies the rub.

The government does not instill character in individuals despite our leaders who speechify as if they were on moral stilts. Young people develop it within families, neighborhoods and communities. The venerable utterance that it takes a village to raise a child springs from a well of truth. In earlier days before the rise of massive population centers surrounded by rings of suburbs, U.S. population distribution lent itself to the thousands of family and neighborhood enclaves spread across the land. A significant percentage of young people grew up in these enclaves and absorbed the values within them. Technology making possible extensive communication and inexpensive travel had not yet developed. People tended to remain in the same area where they were born and reared, which produced continuity in their perceptions of human values, but also, in retrospect sometimes became rigid.

In today’s communities a common approach to human values is not present. Higher education illustrates this. For example, in colleges during the nineteenth century it was expected that at Sunday evening chapel services (attendance required) the president or a faculty member would  admonish the students (young men, no women) to practice the values requisite to becoming an upright person in the eyes of God and man. Today’s faculty stays away from this role. Most professors simply say that,  “My job is to teach my subject.”  If a president or dean were to venture into realms of exhortation spelling out  specific individual behaviors for students to develop in order that their characters might be improved. some officer or some organization out there  would probably attack the beleaguered dean or president citing a civil rights violation for proscribing the individual initiatives of students. In the context of the conflicting perceptions of values held by the citizens of today we have not figured out how to teach those  values that  lead to developing character. An example would be seminars that enquire into the meaning of life. This has left a gaping void in the curricula of higher education.

            A coherent set of values perceived and accepted as basic to the unity of the nation does not exist  today, or at least it not to the extent that it did in the past when people were clustered in smaller neighborhoods and towns with a human scale. The great twentieth century Greek architect Constantinos Doxiades (died 1975)  said that no town should be bigger than one where a person could walk from border to border in twenty minutes. Clearly he separated this livable town from centers for commerce, business,  banking and  the U.S. interstate highway system.  

The lack of coherence is felt in many ways. At one extreme it might consist of bland, uninvolved citizens who would select whatever values they are attracted to from a virtual smorgasbord, or none at all leaving, a wishy washy state of affairs. But another set of conditions has arisen over the years in the inner cities where the population is almost exclusively minority. Within these urban borders family life is essentially non-existent. Fatherless households are the norm. The drug culture, knives, guns, violence, and murder rates usurp  any semblance of a civil community. Statistics that set forth what life is like send shivers up the spine. For example, seventy percent of  young male minorities who are high school dropouts can expect to be sent to prison during their lifetimes. These citizens exist outside the mainstream of the nation. They have no connection to the values that made the nation great.   Estimates of their numbers have now reached 20 percent of the population . . . .  namely that one fifth of the nation’s citizens do not partake of the values that made America what it is. To say that this poses one of the most serious national problems encountered today stands as an understatement. Politicians do not like to talk about it, and it is not being confronted in ways consistent with the dimensions of the problem.

So what does the future hold? A mixed bag at best.  Looking at the total U.S. population, a current majority continues to believe in traditional values although the size of that majority diminishes, with trends that continue its decrease. Moral relativism grows as for example, citizens seem to pay less attention to the meaning of the words in the  Declaration of Independence . . . “We hold these truths to be self evident.”. If  these negative trends continue it will not be too long before the percentage of the citizenry that hews to traditional American values will cease to  be a majority but will recede  into being a minority. The implications are staggering.

Beginning with today can it be reversed? Yes it can.  How?  By recourse to simple and straightforward probity in how we interact and work with our younger people. What is needed is the interest in human terms for  the young individual. It is not  a new idea. It was perhaps best exemplified by the schoolmarm in the one  room school house.  She taught not only the three R’s, but she taught the young persons themselves in terms of the life that lay ahead of them. Perhaps our distinguished full professors might consider the values these schoolmarms displayed, learn from them, and adjust their teaching skills accordingly.

            The historic relationship of  universities with  churches where  principles of morality setting forth life’s meaning have been vested, signified that faculties were expected to teach this meaning. The relationahip continued for centuries and was carried

into college curriculums in America. Nineteenth century secular state land grant universities were subject to this influence. But beginning in Germany early in the nineteenth century the rise of scholarly research as a basic function of faculties, competed with the importance of teaching. It was adopted by many American universities which usually were referred to as research universities. An emphasis on research work emerged, primarily in the natural and physical sciences which subsequently expanded to include the social sciences of economics, sociology, and political science among other developing disciplines. The research generated an avalanche (which continues) of new knowledge, often  arrived at by mean of  applying a scientific skepticism to what was previously represented as being true. In the process of disproving  older “truth” new truth was uncovered. Although he did not represent a university, Charles Darwin’s conclusions resulting in evolutionary theory derived from his investigations into fossils and animal and bird life, are a crowning example

Faculty members who conduct research in the natural, engineering, and social sciences seek to uncover new knowledge in these fields. Research in the sciences does not focus specifically upon life’s meaning for the individual. Rather, facts must be totally objective; they cannot be adjusted to suit the wishes of the researcher. But, teachers who  prepare themselves to help students identify meaning as it relates to their lives, cannot avoid inserting their own value judgments. In this way the search for life’s meaning remains different from objective research in the various disciplines. The endeavor has essentially been within the purview of humanities faculties, with the means to accomplish it being study of the writings encompassed in the corpus called “Great Books.” These bodies of works, in the main from Western Civilization, usually starting with Homeric epics certainly can include representative works from outside the West such as the venerable Hindu Vedas and Upanashads written in sanscrit well before the time of Homer. The word Veda comes from the root vid, to know But throughout history religions have not been so edifying. There are over 5,000 different religions worldwide. Slaughter and carnage arising from religious disputes and conquests, as for example the Crusades or Spanish incursions in Central America have been principle causes of wars and vicious cruelty

In early America and continuing until World War II, students came mostly from families of privilege. This was essentially true even at public, land grant campuses founded on the grants of federal land to establish colleges under the terms of the Morrill Act of 1862.  Their heritage provided the leisure for going to college that was supposed to point the way to finding life’s meaning to say nothing of good citizenship.  In American church related institutions students were taught principles of “upright” living with their behavior on campus being monitored. Great Books provided the basis for the undergraduate program leading to the bachelor’s degree. 

A modifying circumstance existed in state-supported normal schools to train elementary school teachers, the first having been established in Massachusetts in 1839. Women were excluded from men’s preparatory schools and colleges, Normal schools provided the only opportunity for them to be educated beyond elementary and secondary schools. These normal schools proliferated, subsequently turning into degree granting teachers colleges, which evolved into the vast array of regional state colleges upon which legislatures ultimately bestowed the title universities. They now  enroll millions of students. During the colonial period and well into the nineteenth century, teachers in the lower schools required minimal education, netted poor pay, and carried low prestige. But such teaching represented about the only jobs, other than domestic servitude, available to women.  As normal schools later became teachers colleges opportunities for continued education became more available to women and to the less privileged component of the citizenry. The impact of the G. I. Bill  following World War II made higher education available across the social spectrum. It democratized U.S. higher education once and for all. While this higher education evolution was taking place the elite schools, secure in their place in the sun, did not pay that much attention and tended to dismiss normal schools and teachers colleges now universities as third rate institutions.

As the nineteenth century progressed and turned into the twentieth, scientific research exerted an inevitable impact on the professional interests of faculty members. In their campus lives it introduced a powerful factor that competed with what had heretofore been time and effort devoted to teaching and counseling students. From land grant institutions across the nation agricultural research resulted in producing tens of thousands of fields of grain and splendid stands of corn to match. The United States became the breadbasket of the world. As diversified research forces spread throughout academe there entered into faculty thinking a scrutinizing attitude about the nature of things, often with a skepticism present as, in their teaching, they confronted meaning in life. This change of attitude, involving skepticism weakened religious faith as a cohering force on campuses. Concurrently the ties between churches and universities became looser. This did not necessarily mean that faculties abandoned a concern for life’s meaning in their teaching, but religious faith slowly decreased, as other ways of looking for meaning emerged. It did not happen overnight.

            Humanities faculties found themselves in an environment dominated by science and social science faculties, where the techniques of research  run counter to the kinds of study needed for seeking life’s meaning. Scientists and social  scientists exuded confidence not apparent in the humanities where uncertainty continued. The academic job market exacerbated the problem. Professorships in computer technology, accounting, or engineering paid well and dominated the scene while philosophy, and literature lagged.

Relatively few U.S. campuses  enjoy recognition as being  elite, which term does not possess a  precise definition, but like  Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who, while eschewing a  definition of pornography, said “I know it when I see it.” So, in like manner we know elitism in higher education when we see it.  Out of 4,400 probably not more than 60 or so are truly elite, with an outer ring of campuses that like to think of themselves as being, but in fact are not. Campuses that are elite tend to have long histories, have rich endowment resources, and together produce a large and disproportionate number of the Nation’s leaders in business, politics, and the academy.  Faculty members from these campuses in like manner win a disproportionate number of Pulitzers, Nobel prizes and research grants. Taken as a whole the quality of education and research is recognizably higher on elite campuses, mostly private, than in the institutions making up the mass market. It is self evident that students in elite schools have the educational background for study in life’s meaning,. but the point is, do they have the interest and motivation. It is happening in a  very few of these institutions where it cannot be separated from the humanities.

In the gargantuan realm of mass-market, open admission public institutions which enroll the millions comprising the majority of U.S. college students, faculty concern for the kind of teaching that leads to an understanding of life’s meaning is essentially nonexistent. Overwhelmingly the students want training to fit them for jobs to assure a decent living for them and their families. American public higher education in the second half of the twentieth century has made this training available to its citizens that heretofore would not have had a glimmer of a chance to go to college.

In no nation throughout world history, have citizens been afforded this opportunity. It still exists here, but in the larger field of education in America including kindergarten through high school dark clouds continue to gather on the horizon. In 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in Education appointed by Secretary of Education Terrel M. Bell released a report that has become a classic, entitled A Nation at Risk. In ringing phrases it said that the “intellectual, moral, and spiritual strengths of our people” are at risk. There has developed  a “rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”  Since 1983 this tide has continued to rise, identified and attested to by hundreds of assessments and national reports by a variety of educational organizations. Mass market higher education which includes regional public universities and community colleges partakes of this “rising tide.” Comparison of what is going on in education in the U.S. with what is taking place overseas places the U.S. in a poor light.

 Now, in the United States which has always been a land of opportunity and still is, we need to recognize and acknowledge the threats to mass market higher education and gird our loins to do something about it.

of elite schools.

There are many measures regarding elite universities such as far greater faculty research productivity and significantly greater influence of their faculties and graduates in affairs of government and business that demonstrate this. And yet it is the mass market  institutions that provide higher education for the vast majority of U.S. college students. For this reason every effort should be made to improve the educational quality of mass market higher education in America. But despite evidence that mass market campuses have not reached the qualitative level of elite campuses, there is significance embodied in the broad reach of mass market campuses. It can be taken as truth, that the higher the level of education citizens reach, and the more broadly it is spread, the greater will be the potential for the populace in general to serve as useful citizens. Throughout the civilized world higher education had been the province of the elite slice of the populace. The common people (what we refer to as working classes in America) were not included. But beginning the late 1940s, as a result of the G. Bill and other initiatives in all of the states, higher education was emphasized as being available to all categories of citizens, not just those who happened to be able to afford it. There can be no contradicting the reality that America became the dominant economic and producing power in the world because of its emphasis on providing education, particularly higher education, to the mass of citizens that had previously been denied. This provided an educated workforce second to none.

Today things are changing.

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education released a study December 3, 2008 about college access in the U.S. In covering it the Washington Post under the heading “U.S. Lags in in Providing College Access , Study Finds,”  wrote that

“Other countries are outpacing the United States in providing access to college, ending an educational advantage the nation as enjoyed for decades . . . If left unaddressed, the development will harm U.S. competitiveness in the near future.” This study reinforced what a federal commission said a quarter of a century ago in a document entitled A Nation at Risk, that U.S. prosperity and status in the world is threatened by “A rising tide of mediocrity in education.”

            After World War II The G. I. Bill forever altered higher education in America. It changed college attendance from being predominantly elitist to an egalitarian pursuit, although at the time of its passage the worthy personages from the U.S. House and Senate did not quite have enlightenment in mind. They were fearful that the return of so many servicemen in a short period of time would be more than the economy could absorb. Providing college opportunities subsidized by the government would keep hundreds of thousands off the streets.

The issue of political correctness, is a deep seated phenomenon that has few if any direct parallels in the Nation’s history. Without fear of contradiction, political correctness can be said to deform language with its malapropisms. But in some examples it does have merit, such as adjusting or eliminating utterances so that they are non offensive particularly to persons who are on the weakened side of power structures, or who, for some reason might be susceptible to derogation. To accomplish the aim of unprejudiced language speech codes were crafted in hundreds of academic institutions. All too often they were dreadful documents that prohibited speech clearly protected by the First Amendment. It was an appalling contradiction of what campus communities should be about in fostering the clear exchange of competing ideas through student and faculty forums. Some speech codes threw down the gauntlet in their declarations of war on freedom of speech. By means of court challenges to the constitutionality of restrictive speech codes, litigation struck them down, even at such famous campuses as Michigan and Wisconsin. At Wisconsin for example the speech code prohibited the creation of a hostile environment or telling racist jokes, which a federal judge declared unconstitutional. Today speech codes are less and less an issue. Even though hundreds still remain on the books, no one invokes them. The waves of political correctness seem to be abating, in part perhaps because so many people poked so much fun at the inexplicable word constructions, e.g., “you can’t call a man short because he lacks height but must refer to him as ‘vertically challenged.’ ”

There are over 4,400 colleges and universities recognized by the U.S. Secretary of  Education as qualified to receive grants and subsidies from  tax dollar funds ranging from massive, flagship state universities to tiny colleges in bucolic settings. They  serve over 17,000,000 students.  These institutions display a sweeping range of differences in their institutional cultures, educational achievement, socio-economic status plus a myriad of others aspects. The contrast in environments on different campuses is, in like manner, dramatic – - – from back country bucolic to urban highrise and from inner city store front to monumentally grand gothic. The class system from, elitism to being down and out, designates their ineffable differences. For example, the glories of the Yale campus in contrast to the minimalisms of  new institutions serving the mass market of students,  might be compared to driving a Bentley in contrast to a much used Honda Civic. Mass market institutions which serve from ninety to ninety five percent of U.S. college students usually cater to their needs. Students from middle class and lower middle class backgrounds want training so they can get jobs, and after that more training so they can get better jobs leading to better careers. Those few enrolled kids that come from inner city streets of crime, guns and drugs simply yearn to escape into a better, more secure life.

 This is not to say that mass market campuses, especially regional state universities, are without quality. There are sectors where individual faculty members possess qualities to match those of elite faculties. But dismally, there are sectors where quality simply is not present. Reasons for the vexing circumstance can be found in the unprecedented growth of faculties necessary to accommodate the equally unprecedented growth in numbers of students in the second half of the twentieth century, millions of whom were the first members of their families ever to attend college, some with illiterate parents. For example, in 1970 enrollments in degree granting institutions numbered 8,581,000. By the year 2,000 the number had grown to 14,979,000. Today it is beyond 17,000,000. The necessary rapid expansion of campuses and faculties, mostly in the public sector, far outpaced checks and balances critical to achieving and maintaining academic quality. Private, elite campuses did not expand in commensurate measure. In the public sector where the expansion had to take place, the result was the appointment of large numbers of persons that were minimally equipped to be faculty members. In due time, given the laxness of granting tenure characteristic of the public sector, the appointees with thin qualifications became fixed in place for the long haul. Clearly, the problems related to academic quality throughout the mass market, public sector derived from the faculty appointments that had to be made from the pool of candidates lacking in necessary academic fitness. There was no other choice.

Today, these faculty members whose competency is minimal or less, are getting ready for retirement. The younger persons prepared to take their places show different qualities and attitudes. They are in fact ready to be regular faculty members. Those that have entered the profession are already changing it for the better. They have been vetted, they know what quality is, and they strive to achieve it. The threatening cloud on the horizon relates to funding. Regularly appointed faculty members are by far the most expensive component of the operational budget of universities. Given the increased pressure on budgets during the past twenty five years University budget officers constantly search for ways to cut costs. They have discovered that the cost of maintaining one fulltime faculty member would support the appointment of three part time teachers. These part time teachers neither partake of nor contribute to the larger role of being a regular faculty member. Oftentimes their skill in a specialized part of a given subject is unique, but they are unable to be a part of the larger campus community. Their numbers are growing. The more these numbers grow, the fewer will be the opportunities

to appoint energetic and potentially contributive young faculty members. The American Association of University Professors provided the following national figures about trends in appointing part time faculty in relationship to tenure and tenure track positions.

In 1975 the percentage of fulltime tenured and tenure track positions was 56.8 percent and part time positions was 30.2 percent. In 1989 the percentage of fulltime tenured and tenure track positions had dropped to 46.8 percent and part time had risen to 36. 4 percent. In 2003 the percentages of tenured and tenure track, and part time were 35.1 percent and 46.3 percent. The remaining percentages comprised fulltime non tenured appointees on a contract basis.

These figures present an aspect of danger which tends to embody higher education as product development rather than a way of life. They point to a future that presages ill to the vitality and meaning of higher education in America. 

 On April 26, 1983, The National Commission on Excellence in Education appointed by then Secretary of Education Terrel M. Bell, released a report entitled A Nation at Risk. It was concerned essentially with public education from elementary through high school but with meaning for the totality of U.S. education. The commission warned, in words that were incandescent, that “a rising tide of mediocrity” threatened the “intellectual, moral and spiritual strengths of our people.” Now, more than twenty five years later, these words carry more significant meaning. The malaise in public elementary and high school education has extended and deepened. Public higher education in the community colleges and regional public universities partakes of the faults and flaws

of elite schools.

There are many measures regarding elite universities such as far greater faculty research productivity and significantly greater influence of their faculties and graduates in affairs of government and business that demonstrate this. And yet it is the mass market  institutions that provide higher education for the vast majority of U.S. college students. For this reason every effort should be made to improve the educational quality of mass market higher education in America. But despite evidence that mass market campuses have not reached the qualitative level of elite campuses, there is significance embodied in the broad reach of mass market campuses. It can be taken as truth, that the higher the level of education citizens reach, and the more broadly it is spread, the greater will be the potential for the populace in general to serve as useful citizens. Throughout the civilized world higher education had been the province of the elite slice of the populace. The common people (what we refer to as working classes in America) were not included. But beginning the late 1940s, as a result of the G. Bill and other initiatives in all of the states, higher education was emphasized as being available to all categories of citizens, not just those who happened to be able to afford it. There can be no contradicting the reality that America became the dominant economic and producing power in the world because of its emphasis on providing education, particularly higher education, to the mass of citizens that had previously been denied. This provided an educated workforce second to none.

Today things are changing.

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education released a study December 3, 2008 about college access in the U.S. In covering it the Washington Post under the heading “U.S. Lags in in Providing College Access , Study Finds,”  wrote that

“Other countries are outpacing the United States in providing access to college, ending an educational advantage the nation as enjoyed for decades . . . If left unaddressed, the development will harm U.S. competitiveness in the near future.” This study reinforced what a federal commission said a quarter of a century ago in a document entitled A Nation at Risk, that U.S. prosperity and status in the world is threatened by “A rising tide of mediocrity in education.”

            After World War II The G. I. Bill forever altered higher education in America. It changed college attendance from being predominantly elitist to an egalitarian pursuit, although at the time of its passage the worthy personages from the U.S. House and Senate did not quite have enlightenment in mind. They were fearful that the return of so many servicemen in a short period of time would be more than the economy could absorb. Providing college opportunities subsidized by the government would keep hundreds of thousands off the streets.

The issue of political correctness, is a deep seated phenomenon that has few if any direct parallels in the Nation’s history. Without fear of contradiction, political correctness can be said to deform language with its malapropisms. But in some examples it does have merit, such as adjusting or eliminating utterances so that they are non offensive particularly to persons who are on the weakened side of power structures, or who, for some reason might be susceptible to derogation. To accomplish the aim of unprejudiced language speech codes were crafted in hundreds of academic institutions. All too often they were dreadful documents that prohibited speech clearly protected by the First Amendment. It was an appalling contradiction of what campus communities should be about in fostering the clear exchange of competing ideas through student and faculty forums. Some speech codes threw down the gauntlet in their declarations of war on freedom of speech. By means of court challenges to the constitutionality of restrictive speech codes, litigation struck them down, even at such famous campuses as Michigan and Wisconsin. At Wisconsin for example the speech code prohibited the creation of a hostile environment or telling racist jokes, which a federal judge declared unconstitutional. Today speech codes are less and less an issue. Even though hundreds still remain on the books, no one invokes them. The waves of political correctness seem to be abating, in part perhaps because so many people poked so much fun at the inexplicable word constructions, e.g., “you can’t call a man short because he lacks height but must refer to him as ‘vertically challenged.’ ”

There are over 4,400 colleges and universities recognized by the U.S. Secretary of  Education as qualified to receive grants and subsidies from  tax dollar funds ranging from massive, flagship state universities to tiny colleges in bucolic settings. They  serve over 17,000,000 students.  These institutions display a sweeping range of differences in their institutional cultures, educational achievement, socio-economic status plus a myriad of others aspects. The contrast in environments on different campuses is, in like manner, dramatic – - – from back country bucolic to urban highrise and from inner city store front to monumentally grand gothic. The class system from, elitism to being down and out, designates their ineffable differences. For example, the glories of the Yale campus in contrast to the minimalisms of  new institutions serving the mass market of students,  might be compared to driving a Bentley in contrast to a much used Honda Civic. Mass market institutions which serve from ninety to ninety five percent of U.S. college students usually cater to their needs. Students from middle class and lower middle class backgrounds want training so they can get jobs, and after that more training so they can get better jobs leading to better careers. Those few enrolled kids that come from inner city streets of crime, guns and drugs simply yearn to escape into a better, more secure life.

 This is not to say that mass market campuses, especially regional state universities, are without quality. There are sectors where individual faculty members possess qualities to match those of elite faculties. But dismally, there are sectors where quality simply is not present. Reasons for the vexing circumstance can be found in the unprecedented growth of faculties necessary to accommodate the equally unprecedented growth in numbers of students in the second half of the twentieth century, millions of whom were the first members of their families ever to attend college, some with illiterate parents. For example, in 1970 enrollments in degree granting institutions numbered 8,581,000. By the year 2,000 the number had grown to 14,979,000. Today it is beyond 17,000,000. The necessary rapid expansion of campuses and faculties, mostly in the public sector, far outpaced checks and balances critical to achieving and maintaining academic quality. Private, elite campuses did not expand in commensurate measure. In the public sector where the expansion had to take place, the result was the appointment of large numbers of persons that were minimally equipped to be faculty members. In due time, given the laxness of granting tenure characteristic of the public sector, the appointees with thin qualifications became fixed in place for the long haul. Clearly, the problems related to academic quality throughout the mass market, public sector derived from the faculty appointments that had to be made from the pool of candidates lacking in necessary academic fitness. There was no other choice.

Today, these faculty members whose competency is minimal or less, are getting ready for retirement. The younger persons prepared to take their places show different qualities and attitudes. They are in fact ready to be regular faculty members. Those that have entered the profession are already changing it for the better. They have been vetted, they know what quality is, and they strive to achieve it. The threatening cloud on the horizon relates to funding. Regularly appointed faculty members are by far the most expensive component of the operational budget of universities. Given the increased pressure on budgets during the past twenty five years University budget officers constantly search for ways to cut costs. They have discovered that the cost of maintaining one fulltime faculty member would support the appointment of three part time teachers. These part time teachers neither partake of nor contribute to the larger role of being a regular faculty member. Oftentimes their skill in a specialized part of a given subject is unique, but they are unable to be a part of the larger campus community. Their numbers are growing. The more these numbers grow, the fewer will be the opportunities

to appoint energetic and potentially contributive young faculty members. The American Association of University Professors provided the following national figures about trends in appointing part time faculty in relationship to tenure and tenure track positions.

In 1975 the percentage of fulltime tenured and tenure track positions was 56.8 percent and part time positions was 30.2 percent. In 1989 the percentage of fulltime tenured and tenure track positions had dropped to 46.8 percent and part time had risen to 36. 4 percent. In 2003 the percentages of tenured and tenure track, and part time were 35.1 percent and 46.3 percent. The remaining percentages comprised fulltime non tenured appointees on a contract basis.

These figures present an aspect of danger which tends to embody higher education as product development rather than a way of life. They point to a future that presages ill to the vitality and meaning of higher education in America.

            It is hard to imagine a more polyglot accumulation of establishments than American colleges and universities. Of the more than 4,400 colleges in America, differences in their nature and character  overwhelm the observer. Today, change has become the watchword. Some of the change as it has evolved is good, particularly the broader inclusion of all classes of citizens as students. But negative forces exists such as exhorbitantly rising fees and the reduction of instruction in the  humanities by substituting vocational courses. These exert an uneven effect upon diverse institutions. The campuses that possess good endowments and facilities have an enhanced ability to manage them. They also  have well established, contributing faculties. For the most part they are elite and private but include a few public, research universities. Together these selective colleges and universities educate less than ten percent of today’s students. This relatively small number develops a higher and disproportionate percentage of future leaders in business, politics, and the world of letter and the arts.  These excellent campuses will weather the storm of today’s forces and continue on their way mostly unscathed.

Bewilderment is produced by the other component of institutions simply because of  their dissimilarities and the largeness of their number. When two-year community colleges and the burgeoning “for-profit” institutions are included, this group in America consists of more than forty two hundred college-level institutions. It is the faculties at these institutions that imbue quality or the lack of it in the curriculum listed in their catalogues.  They . . .  not scrupulously selected scholars in the elite group,  most of whom mass market institutions cannot afford to hire . . .   are the ones who provide  higher education and training for the vast majority of America’s college students. How they teach establishes the standards for the egalitarianized throngs of students. As professors in the mass market they are the foot soldiers. The many hundreds of regional state universities and non-selective liberal arts colleges form the regiments of these higher education armies. It is they who are most threatened by today’s negative forces. Colleges across the land have suffered  from declines in the value of their assets. In addition, public institutions in most states face declines in public tax assistance. This has created college budget deficits necessitating drastic expense reductions . But that does not tell all the story.

 In the April 10, 2009 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education reporter Goldie Blumenstyk writes that  “Colleges borrowed tens of billions of dollars over the past decade to improve facilities, in some cases stretching themselves to the limit and beyond.  Now the financial crisis threatens to turn that debt into a ticking bomb. The complex problem arises from a simple scenario: The debt load  has gone up, but the value of the assets plunged.”  It is comparable to the drop in value of a home resulting in the mortgage being higher than the worth of the home. This means that compared to percent of assets, the percent of debt exceeds the amount allowed by financial institutions as a condition for lending money. When this happens it can induce bond holders and lenders  to impose sanctions  which could include a legal call for the debt to be summarily repaid.  Government regulations administered by the Department of Education, which set the standards for federal student aid might also be violated. For some institutions, particularly non-selective liberal arts colleges that are on the rocky edge of fiscal sustainability, the problems will not be surmounted. They cannot make it and will be forced to close. This occurred at the former Dyke College in Cleveland which has now been purchased and is  operated by a for profit group. These and other current fiscal problems extending nationally would appear to confirm the late Mr. Drucker’s 1997 predictions.

            An exceptional change has taken place in the attitudes and expectations of today’s college students. Then, the terms  novice and mentor might have described the relationships between students and faculty. This was before vocationalism and job preparation dominated mass market college curriculums. Higher education was once essentially elite, with only a vest-pocket percentage of the young men in the  population enrolled. It was expected, and hoped, that the subjects taught would  serve to make them into better persons, thus better citizens. The context of novice and mentor (even though it did not always work out that way) was a natural outgrowth of the  system. Job preparation was not in the mix.

             A U-turn has taken place. College students in mass market institutions which are no longer a minuscule part of the population but a vast constituency of many millions, tend to see themselves as consumers with education and training being products. Situated in their self perception as customers, they view the faculty’s production in ways similar to their purchase of a  car or TV. A novice-mentor relationship would be beyond their ken.To obtain vocational training and specific, technical preparation for jobs describes their purposes. They see themselves as purchasers, with marketplace customer rights accruing to them.

            It is glaringly true that vocational and job training for workforce citizens must be a first-tier priority in our nation, not only to retain economic health, but the health of the national spirit. Our economy demands workers trained in skills more than ever before. In simpler days training in crafts took place from father to son, within the apprenticeship system. This system now is essentially gone and  mobility of individuals has destroyed the stability of place necessary for fathers to pass on skills to sons. Also, the nature of today’s technical skills often involving expensive equipment is not compatible for father to son training. Some firms maintain expensive company run technical training programs for their own employees. The major responsibility for providing vocational and job related  training has landed on community colleges, regional public universities, and to an extent non-selective liberal arts colleges.  Community colleges have effectively provided  technical training for decades, but they themselves cannot handle the national need. This is where the four year regional campuses and liberal arts institution now enter the picture. In these institutions vocational and technical training have, to a significant extent, pushed aside the liberal arts and humanities meant to educate the whole person. This is a response to both a national urgency and student needs as well as desires. Obviously there are numbers professors who remain dedicated to the liberal arts, but next to them are faculty members teaching technical and job-related courses that differ from the inherited curriculums. These courses have always belonged to trade schools and, in Europe, to those institutions  called polytechnic institutes established separately from universities. By this  definition many campuses in the U.S. are tilting away from historic coursework to that of polytechnic institutes.  Because of national needs that trend will not abate but increase.

            Peter Drucker’s use of the term “relics”  for what he saw big universities becoming can, in one sense, be interpreted as the dominance of traditional curriculums becoming relics. To an extent this is what is happening.