Is Higher Education Bloated And Dated?

[BeatMan]

Higher education faces two significant challenges: bloated curricula delaying degree completion and structural resistance to innovative, cross-disciplinary programs. Both problems are rooted, in large part, in a culture of tradition and unchecked faculty “ownership” over the curriculum.

Faculty influence can be an important safeguard for academic freedom and quality, but it can also lead to unintended consequences. The lack of institutional checks and balances to ensure efficiency, paired with the lack of inherent incentives to streamline curricula or collaborate across disciplines, has created barriers to student success and stifled innovation in university education.

Bloated Curriculum​

One of the primary causes of curriculum bloat is the strong yet misguided ownership that faculty members have over their programs and courses. Faculty are the primary architects of the curriculum within their departments, shaping it based on their own academic interests, expertise, priorities, and occasional whimsical and unpredictable ideas about the intent of education. This control can also lead to an accumulation of course requirements that may not serve the broader educational needs of students.

As faculty members develop new courses or revise existing ones, it’s not uncommon for departments to add more requirements to degree programs. They may add courses that reflect the faculty’s specific research interests or their perspectives on where industry is going, leading to niche offerings that, while perhaps valuable, end up bloating a degree program’s requirements. Over time, these additions can result in a curriculum that is difficult for students to navigate, requiring them to take more credits than originally intended or spend additional semesters to meet graduation requirements.

This dynamic exacerbates the problem of delayed graduation rates, especially considering there are no institutional incentives to increase efficiency. Sprawling degree requirements leave students struggling to enroll in the necessary courses due to limited availability, scheduling conflicts, or prerequisite issues. The result is that many students, despite their initial goal of graduating in four years, end up extending their time in college—an outcome that increases their financial burden and delays their entry into the workforce.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasladany/2024/12/10/is-higher-education-bloated-and-dated/

 

[MajorRewrite]

Right wing criticism of higher education may be influenced by this:

Voters with a four-year degree or more education – who constitute about 40% of all voters – favored Harris by a double-digit margin (16 percentage points), while those without a college degree favored Trump by nearly as much (14 points).

Voters with postgraduate degrees remained a strong Democratic group. Voters with postgraduate degrees favored Harris by roughly two-to-one (65% to 33%), which is similar to Biden’s and Clinton’s advantages in the past two elections.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

Higher education faces two significant challenges: bloated curricula delaying degree completion and structural resistance to innovative, cross-disciplinary programs. Both problems are rooted, in large part, in a culture of tradition and unchecked faculty “ownership” over the curriculum.

Faculty influence can be an important safeguard for academic freedom and quality, but it can also lead to unintended consequences. The lack of institutional checks and balances to ensure efficiency, paired with the lack of inherent incentives to streamline curricula or collaborate across disciplines, has created barriers to student success and stifled innovation in university education.

Bloated Curriculum​

One of the primary causes of curriculum bloat is the strong yet misguided ownership that faculty members have over their programs and courses. Faculty are the primary architects of the curriculum within their departments, shaping it based on their own academic interests, expertise, priorities, and occasional whimsical and unpredictable ideas about the intent of education. This control can also lead to an accumulation of course requirements that may not serve the broader educational needs of students.

As faculty members develop new courses or revise existing ones, it’s not uncommon for departments to add more requirements to degree programs. They may add courses that reflect the faculty’s specific research interests or their perspectives on where industry is going, leading to niche offerings that, while perhaps valuable, end up bloating a degree program’s requirements. Over time, these additions can result in a curriculum that is difficult for students to navigate, requiring them to take more credits than originally intended or spend additional semesters to meet graduation requirements.

This dynamic exacerbates the problem of delayed graduation rates, especially considering there are no institutional incentives to increase efficiency. Sprawling degree requirements leave students struggling to enroll in the necessary courses due to limited availability, scheduling conflicts, or prerequisite issues. The result is that many students, despite their initial goal of graduating in four years, end up extending their time in college—an outcome that increases their financial burden and delays their entry into the workforce.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasladany/2024/12/10/is-higher-education-bloated-and-dated/

It’s an article by a university administrator who recommends that the tenured faculty should have less control over the curriculum and the administrators should have more.

From observing my husband’s experience as a college professor, I think the article gets it exactly backwards. Universities are suffering from too much bureaucratic bloat and too many people making decisions who are not educators.

There’s too much emphasis on fund-raising and too many management-directed initiatives that add nothing to the institution’s educational or research mission.

There’s too much reliance on adjuncts and grad students to teach core classes, and not enough support for the professors.

 

[Chernosoth]

The bloat is in all levels and aspects of American secondary education: curriculum, administration, etc. We have too many kids in universities learning how to virtue signal and play social media politics instead of practical skills and career-centered knowledge. Many college students are studying what previous generations learned in elementary and high school, like basic math. Repairing (reviving, reforming, restarting, etc.) education starts at the bottom with the schools that have all the kids, not just the kids who go to universities, which are losing enrollment as teens recognize the slim odds of having a career after university with lifetime debt. Universities don't teach plumbing but they still need plumbers.

Education is one of the two greatest rackets of the nation, with outstanding PR to override and silence the dissent of anyone who says we don't really need to spend so much money for so little result.

 

[briancamdudetenger2018]

higher education as in the higher level upper class type of students who are the kind that can get upper class higher level type of jobs like doctors lawyers teachers reporters governors mayors presidents and senators stock broker real estate agents entertainment agents