Higher Education Not in Crisis Says Janet Napolitano
Some people would disagree with this analysis. Higher ed bubble, anyone?
Ms. Napolitano recently wrote at the Washington Post.
Higher education isn’t in crisis
So let’s be clear. Higher education in this country is not in crisis. Instead, it is in motion, and it always has been. Higher education evolves as knowledge expands, societies change and new technologies are introduced. This does not mean that we should relax: There should be no comfort taken in maintaining the status quo.
As our universities and colleges undergo an intense period of evolution driven by advances in technology and better understanding of cognitive learning, and by concerns about cost and job-market demands, we should be asking ourselves questions, but they should be the right questions: Is higher education evolving in the right way?
Will it continue to be able to meet the needs of students and their families, to keep pace with an expanding list of responsibilities that range from promoting civil discourse to preparing the next generation of scientists and researchers, and to ensure that the fundamentals of American higher education — fundamentals that have served this country so well — remain strong?
Comments
It is clear that she knows no more about education than she did when she was in the government. She needs to be retired to the rocking chair.
This is precisely the type of empty babble that we have come to
expect from Napolitano. Higher education, at least in the humanities, is in free-fall because students are not being educated-they are being indoctrinated into the vision of an evil, imperialistic, racist America and an apartheid Israel. There is a severe anti-semitic problem on campuses that administrators including Napolitano are afraid to confront lest they offend Muslim students.
I teach at UC Irvine, but I hear more and more people including other teachers question whether a college education is even worth the expense.