Assessing the Future of Higher Education

In 2006, the General Social Survey (GSS), a survey oftrends in social attitudes conducted nearly every year since1972, asked a series of questions about the scientificknowledge of the U.S. adult population. Among thequestions posed was, “Now, does the Earth go around theSun, or does the Sun go around the Earth?” Overall, justunder three-quarters of the respondents correctly answeredthat the Earth goes around the sun; but nearly one in fiveresponded that the sun goes around the Earth, and nearly10% said that they didn’t know. Sociologists Omar Lizardoand Jeremy Freese showed that the prevalence of scientificmisunderstanding varied for adults with different levels ofeducation. Among those with a high school diploma or less,approximately 37% said either that the sun rotated aroundthe earth or they didn’t know. But among those with at leastsome college, 19% reported either that the sun rotatedaround the Earth or they didn’t know.Findings such as these clearly establish that if the state ofAmerican higher education is a glass, it is either half-emptyor half-full, depending on one’s initial assumptions. If weassume that the difference in understanding between thoseadults who have gone to college and those who have not isproperly attributed to the college experience, then theseresults suggest that among the many things students mightlearn in college, some come to know that the sun, not theEarth, is the center of the solar system. On the other hand,the fact that nearly one in five adults reporting that they hadattended at least some college either believed that the Earthwas at the center, or did not know, is a powerful testamentto the limited influence of the American education systemon the children and youth it serves. In the state of NewYork, for example, understanding that the Earth revolvesaround the sun is part of the core curriculum for elementaryscience in grades K-4.When the GSS results were released, some sociologistswere quick to direct attention away from the sheer volumeof scientific misunderstanding within the U.S. adultpopulation, focusing instead on understanding groupvariations in these misunderstandings. The idea that therewas a great deal of scientific illiteracy, even among theproducts of an education system once touted as among thebest in the world, really wasn’t a surprise. AlthoughSputnik had propelled Congress in the late 1950’s to investin the infrastructure of American education at all levels ofthe system, there had been a steadily escalating rhetoric ofdecline dating back at least to the 1983 report of theNational Commission on Excellence in Education, ANation at Risk. As the fate of the nation’s economy hasbecome increasingly tied rhetorically to the quality of theAmerican education system, the rhetoric has become evermore shrill: if we do not move quickly to increase what ourchildren learn in school, our future will be bleak.Although the primary target for this new wave ofeducational accountability has been the K-12 schoolsystem, colleges and universities are increasingly comingunder scrutiny. The Commission on the Future of HigherEducation convened by former U.S. Secretary of EducationMargaret Spellings was a natural successor to A Nation atRisk, expressing concern over college affordability andaccess, the quality of postsecondary instruction, and theweak and inconsistent accountability of colleges anduniversities to the students who attend them and thetaxpayers who support them.