Historically, university education was limited to the elites. There were exceptions but mostly students came from schools where they studied Latin and Ancient Greek and developed an affinity for Shakespeare by the age of 17. There weren’t that many of them, and consequently, they didn’t need that many professors to teach them.
A professor who could teach such students was an erudite, a pretty exceptional person. He existed in a leisurely universe of reading, thinking, and teaching an occasional course or two.
Gradually, higher education stopped being an elite pursuit. Women, African Americans, children of regular people started seeking college degrees. (And anybody who is getting ready to point out that there were always some women and black folks in higher ed should go directly to the Facebook page where people are discussing that the Obama presidency equals a post racial society.)
These students needed a lot of what we call “remediation.” They needed Intro, Beginners, and Basic courses because nobody could any longer expect them to know any Latin or recognize the names of Chaucer and Thackeray. As the time progressed, more and more “non-traditional students” came to campuses. They needed more and more remediation to the degree that one could barely fit anything but remediation into their programs.
For a while, an aberrant situation surfaced where the faculty catering to these students still could live the leisurely lifestyle of erstwhile erudite professors while teaching very basic courses that required no lengthy sessions at the library to be prepared and delivered.
It was a pretty cool gig and the lucky participants of the scheme forgot that it was an aberration. They decided it would go on forever. They thought they could live like the pampered erudite profs of the past but with nothing like their erudition. Hey, forget erudition. I met a tenured German lit prof a short while ago who told me she hadn’t read a book in at least 2 years. That answered my question about the reasons why the field of Germanic Studies was dying once and for all.
The agony of the aberrant model is painful and boring to watch like any agony. The sooner it dies and gives place to a new way of doing higher ed the better.
Clarissa's Blog 
I have a colleague who has so embraced the non-elite nature of our work that he has written an article in which he brags about not assigning any reading. In a general education class. That is supposed to integrate science and social issues.
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Yeah. . . I had a colleague who wrote flyers trying to convince students to take his course because “there will be no writing!” His subject was English literature.
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This is the inevitable consequence of making democratic access the sole political concern of the Academy. Certainly access should be a consideration but not the only consideration.
I kind of want to name and shame the people doing this, but I’m pretty sure that tenure would not protect us if we started calling out the people who boast of not requiring reading and writing.
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Welcome to my Mathematics course, when you’ll have no problem to solve!
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Sign up for my super innovative student centered Chinese langauge class – where you don’t actually have to learn any Chinese words!
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Only calligraphics, cuz it’s so cool!
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My cutting edge innovative Chinese course has no room for calligraphy.
There are some computer games and social media (not just about language! I have theorized that actually talking and texting about other stuff during language class increases grades!) there will be some talk about the inscrutable nature and ineffable beauty of characters (but no need to learn any) and maybe an anecdote or two from people who know people who’ve been to or thought about going to China and maybe a field trip to a Chinese restaurant and maybe a Sushi place.
This is pure 21st century higher education gold!
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Thank you for this post! I begin to see why Econometrics and Epidmemiology are fields that are in great trouble right now.
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And I’m so angry at those freakazoids in Québec who talk about abolishing CEGEPs.
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CEGEPs are an absolutely amazing thing. Only total idiots would want to dispense with something so good.
It’s unbelievable how many people want to destroy things instead of building something.
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What drives me crazy about this is the assumption these profs make that less elite students need dumbed down classes that consequently require little prep or thought for the prof. My personal experience is the opposite–they thrive in challenging basic classes but these require a lot of prep and creativity on the part of the prof.
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I wonder if I know that German professor?
In any case, the death of German Studies in the US has been highly uneven. Programs that pay attention to quality instruction at lower levels and embrace a bit of curricular flexibility and innovation in the upper levels seem to be doing OK. Unfortunately, the field seems to have an oversupply of people who resist change at every turn and will man the barricades of principle to fight every hopeless battle to the bitterest of bitter ends and then turn around and wonder why the Dean doesn’t seem to like them.
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My field is exactly the same. 😦 People will complain about the evil administrators, politicians, Republicans, etc, but will never recognize their own contribution to what is happening.
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The physics community has recognized and credentialed a cohort of “education researchers” who will never quite explicitly say that they want to dumb things down, but if you attend their presentations they sure want to emphasize the qualitative over the mathematical.
Someday historians will recognize that as the death of physics in the US.
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Not just physics, there is such a group in engineering as well. Apparently their big thing is that any kind of mathematical rigor is driving down diversity!
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Plus, there is the “Let the electronic textbook teach it” movement. Don’t these people realize that one day the electronic book will substitute them entirely?
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The electronic book will never substitute for what they could offer. It will substitute for what they claim to offer or choose to offer.
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I hate hate HATE the people who say that mathematical rigor drives down diversity. It’s incredibly racist, if you think about it, but they are cloaked in so much social justice lingo that they are perceived by most people as sitting on the moral high ground in these sorts of discussions.
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With you all the way. Basically they are saying black, ethnic minorities, and women are too dumb to take the rigorous courses. Few people are such insufferably condescending pricks as those who deem themselves enlightened.
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All potent lies are half-true. I think it’s probably true, in some sense, that many members of disadvantaged groups are not properly prepared for more rigorous courses. Therefore, if you make no changes to anything whatsoever, many members of disadvantaged groups will in fact fail rigorous courses, so in that sense rigorous courses might just be incompatible with diversity. However, the correct solution, of course, is to improve their preparation, not to redefine the subject as not needing a lot of math.
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I’d much rather we first made sure that the able and prepared members of the underrepresented groups did not become the victims of attrition. Not losing those who already want to be there due to reasons that have nothing to do with their abilities is the first step. Then we can think about how to entice those who may not be properly prepared. Why lure women who are lukewarm about STEM into STEM where they will feel like crap because of sexism? Leave them alone to get their education and nursing degrees until we figure out how not to lose the women who are gifted and enthusiastic about STEM and whom we manage to chase away with atrocious work climate, sexist advisors and management, dudebro coworkers etc. (similar or worse for ethnic minorities). No need to dumb anything down.
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Fixing those things would be hard. Reducing the math level to make the class easier takes less work. Plus, if people still struggle, well, the class was easy, so no need to blame the system. Must be the fault of the individuals.
Those who talk the most about diversity and reform are usually only interested in protecting the system, not changing it in a meaningful way.
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