By Campus Digest News Service
The new American participation sport has got to be griping. And the new superstars of the complaining competition are the professors.
Political scientist Everett C. Ladd Jr. of the University of Connecticut and sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset of Stanford not too long ago sent twenty-page questionnaires to faculty members at colleges and universities nationwide.
Nearly 75 per cent of all American college professors believe “too many people ill-suited to academic life are now enrolling in colleges and universities”; 80 per cent insist there has been a “widespread lowering of standards” in high education; and 64 per cent think that “the U.S. is creating a work force overtrained in terms of available jobs.”
These findings, published by The Chronicle of Higher Education, indicate a vast dissatisfaction among professors with whom they teach, what they teach and why they teach. Interestingly enough, Ladd and Lipset said the age of the professors seemed unrelated to their views.
As a result of their study, Ladd and Lipset found that “Professors, surely, are now restless, dissatisfied and strikingly lacking in confidence.”
What’s the answer? Although Ladd and Lipset are loath to give one, they offer evidence that a return to a “core (basics) curriculum” would please some 75 per cent of the professors. Whether it will please their students as well is another matter.