Thank you for sharing this article. While other threads have discussed college as a Veblen good, this article may have a specific goal.
I went on the university’s website to look for some kind of data or study indicating how much students... were actually learning. There was none. This is not unusual, it turns out. Colleges and universities rarely, if ever, gather and publish information about how much undergraduates learn during their academic careers.
Some may say this sounds like a push for standardized testing, and for narrowing the scope of studies.
A recent study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that, on average, American college graduates score well below college graduates from most other industrialized countries in mathematics. In literacy (“understanding, evaluating, using and engaging with written text”), scores are just average.
The linked page for the OEC study shows "In partnership with PEARSON Foundation". Other threads discuss the relationship between Pearson, standardized testing, and common core. Do we want common core type of standards, uniformity, and testing to take over the colleges and universities?
Instead of focusing on undergraduate learning, numerous colleges have been engaged in the kind of building spree I saw at George Washington. Recreation centers with world-class workout facilities and lazy rivers rise out of construction pits...
In the above quote from the article, the author's positioning of these sentences seems to imply a water park at GWU?
(There is not.) The above statements are offset by the following facts also shared, but not prominently, within the article.
(These facts provide appropriate context to understand that the building spree was not capricious, but in support of offering additional educational programs): The university was an inexpensive commuter school when Stephen Joel Trachtenberg became president in 1988. By the time he was finished, two decades later, it had been transformed into a nationally recognized research university, with expanded facilities and five new schools specializing in public health, public policy, political management, media and public affairs and professional studies.
U.S. News & World Report now ranks the university at No. 54 nationwide, just outside the “first tier.”
It was no secret where the money had come from to pay for it all: the students and their families. Under Mr. Trachtenberg’s leadership, tuition grew until George Washington was, for a time, the most expensive university in America.
In related current events,
accreditation of post-secondary institutions is being
discussed until Feb 28, 2015, as is the NACIQI's desire to control that process. (PDF documents
here (2015) and
here (2012).) This could have far-ranging effects on U.S. colleges and universities going forward. If NACIQI, currently an advisory committee, gains singular power over the process of accreditation and access to Title IV funding, checks-and-balances could be removed (bringing to mind the adage
Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely.)
