Higher education in modern times walks a fine line between intellectual development and professional certification.
The two definitions offer an ongoing dialectic regarding the purpose of higher education. Is it higher education’s responsibility to foster intelligent scholars who think critically, or is it merely a system that exists to license the workforce of tomorrow?
With recent budgetary decisions and trends in education, this board believes that the balance is tipping dangerously in the latter.
Over the past year, we’ve made drastic cuts to writing programs. Fewer and fewer classes are being offered each quarter. Class sizes are swelling, and the numbers of teaching assistants, professors and lecturers are shrinking. The humanities must cut $5.8 million more of its budget over the coming year.
It’s becoming painfully clear what the university’s priorities are.
When Chancellor Gene Block announced Challenge 45, this board cautiously endorsed the program as an opportunity for serious self-evaluation. However, as more cuts have been made, a disturbing pattern is emerging.
Challenge 45 and other educational reforms are designed to reduce wasteful educational practices, but they also provide incentives for us to cleave ever closer to conventional degree paths and encourage us to graduate faster and with less consumption of the university’s resources.
The effect on our educational experience cannot be understated. We are being funneled into narrow, efficient highways of predetermined length, quickly branded with degrees and sent off into the world ““ at minimum cost.
It’s not just students who suffer from the lack of choice. Professors lose the freedom to offer elective courses they think are important. Instructors’ influence over the determination of major requirements and skill sets necessary in their fields is lost.
They even lose volition in determining the way their classes are taught ““ some professors are burdened with hundreds of students without the help of full-time TAs. Students and educators alike are losing their agency in the educational process.
This board will not point fingers at the UC Board of Regents, or even at the state. We merely seek to indicate a harrowing trend, not to place blame.
This sea change in our educational priorities has its roots in national educational reform programs such as No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and more broadly, the 21st century paradigm that education should be about standards.
This board acknowledges the economic reality behind education. Measurable value must come with the investment. However, when education becomes about economic efficiency, something crucial is lost in the calculations. Education, after all, should not be defined solely by a sheet of paper.