Improving Higher Education

There is considerable ferment in the academic world today—about the high cost of college, about the curriculum and what students actually learn and should learn, about teaching methods, and about the quality of student life. What can be done to channel these concerns constructively into improvements?

Insiders agree that the colleges cannot by themselves make the necessary changes. In “Our Underachieving Colleges,” former Harvard President Derek Bok has written that “it would be myopic simply to wait in the hope that reform will emerge spontaneously from within.” But engaged alumni, trustees and parents can make change happen. They have more power and influence than they realize.

Alumni elect the governing boards of many colleges, but relatively few bother to vote. At Harvard, less than 10 percent of the 330,000 alums vote. More should; and they should vote for those candidates who have a strong interest in improving higher education, who can work cooperatively with others, who are open-minded, who are seriously interested in the issues higher education faces today, and who are willing to express their views and not simply rubber stamp whatever is presented to them. These are not necessarily those alums who are the biggest cheerleaders or the biggest donors to their alma mater.

Most college trustees have taken a docile role regarding the issues involved in the current ferment in the academic world. They seem to think of themselves only as fund raisers who should leave all other matters entirely to the college administrators and faculty. But they are fiduciaries who should not abdicate their responsibilities.

Trustees should make it their business to speak up for the students when the occasion demands, because the students themselves come and go and have little influence. To cite just one small example, last year at Harvard an enterprising student noticed that the Harvard Coop was selling the required books at high prices. So the student decided to publish a list of required books with their ISBN numbers online to make it easy for students to order them from other sources. As the student made his way through the Coop writing down these numbers, he was threatened with arrest for stealing proprietary information! In the brouhaha that followed, some faculty members justified the Coop’s monopoly prices by citing the service the Coop performed in reminding the faculty to get their lists of required books into the Coop in time for classes. This illustrates in a small way the imbalance between the convenience of faculty and the interests of students. Students already pay high prices for books. To pay even more to remind the faculty to do their job is outrageous.

Parents of current students can and should play a role too. But today most parents work like dogs (and get their children to work like dogs) to get them into the “best” college, and then, as Tom Wolfe has written in a foreword to “Declining by Degrees,” do not show “the slightest curiosity about what happens to them once they get” to college.

Parents and trustees should ask questions. For example, what sorts of policies does the college have in place to prevent a rush to judgment such as occurred a few years ago at Duke and severely harmed its innocent lacrosse players?

Parents could insist that they be informed whenever the college believes their child is in trouble. While there are privacy rules to consider, we should never again see the tragedy that occurred at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year when the college denied a student’s mother access to her son’s dorm room and computer until she obtained a search warrant, even though the Federal Bureau of Investigation was searching for him as a missing person. The student was found dead a week later.

Trustees, alumni, and parents have no right to micromanage the faculty or the administration, but they should take an interest in whether students receive a broad liberal education, effective teaching, skilled advising, and an enriching and satisfying college experience. Too often today they don’t know and don’t care. I believe it’s time for a change.

Robert L. Freedman ‘62 is a petition candidate for election to Harvard’s Board of Overseers. His Web site is www.freedmanforoverseer.com.