The Quality of our Institutions - The Contemporary Univeristy
Today's let's take a look at Greenleaf's thoughts on the contemporary university. Is this your experience of the university system?
"The contemporary university is the lineal descendant of the medieval one - a design that is now widely admitted to be suitable for a very small percentage of the population. What once was the goal of education, to provide continuity for a culture in which freedom and rationality would prevail, has given way to preparation for narrow professional careers. For many young people what should be a great creative experience is instead a literal incarceration in rigid, stereotyped academic programs for which they have little aptitude and less interest. The result is enormous institutions that are an impossible meld of elitist tradition and mass education, and which cannot withstand the shattering value changes that other forces are bringing on society. Colleges and universities now enroll about 50 percent of our young people (Note: In October, 2005 - the most recent stats I could find - 68.6 percent of high school graduates were enrolled in colleges or universities). They should be a major civilizing force, but instead they stand among contemporary institutions as the most troubled, the most fragile, and the least certain of their goals as institutions."
"The contemporary university is the lineal descendant of the medieval one - a design that is now widely admitted to be suitable for a very small percentage of the population. What once was the goal of education, to provide continuity for a culture in which freedom and rationality would prevail, has given way to preparation for narrow professional careers. For many young people what should be a great creative experience is instead a literal incarceration in rigid, stereotyped academic programs for which they have little aptitude and less interest. The result is enormous institutions that are an impossible meld of elitist tradition and mass education, and which cannot withstand the shattering value changes that other forces are bringing on society. Colleges and universities now enroll about 50 percent of our young people (Note: In October, 2005 - the most recent stats I could find - 68.6 percent of high school graduates were enrolled in colleges or universities). They should be a major civilizing force, but instead they stand among contemporary institutions as the most troubled, the most fragile, and the least certain of their goals as institutions."
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