The numbers game

How to hollow out education

Sunday, August 10, 2014

As you ramble through Life, Brother,

Whatever be your goal,

Keep your eye upon the doughnut

And not upon the hole.

It's a childhood memory now, that little verse on a colorful poster above the doughnut-making machine in a local bakery. But the words keep coming back, along with the aroma of those fresh-baked doughnuts. Even if we tend to forget that old admonition in the heat of rhetoric here at this little shop of the polemical arts and crafts. And wind up concentrating not on what is essential but only peripheral to the discussion. It's easy to do in a world full of distractions from what really matters.

No matter what the topic being debated at the time, someone billed as an Expert Analyst, a leader in his field, not just a mover-and-shaker but a thinker and doer, will invent a sure-fire way to judge how much progress is being made in a particular field, and how to make even more such progress.

Often enough his way involves numbers, tables, graphs, charts, metrics . . . all the ephemera that lend a solid, numerical sound of authority to whatever new program is being proposed at the time. H.L. Mencken said it: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Hey, figures don't lie, we're incessantly told, and all too often come to believe. No need to mention the possibility that liars may figure. But it's not necessary to deceive in order to mislead, even to mislead ourselves. Many of those who swear by the numbers are sincere believers, and the numbers themselves are reliable enough in their highly limited way. Unfortunately, they may also be irrelevant, not having much if anything to do with the substance of whatever is being debated at the time, like that hole in the middle of the doughnut.

All of that at came back on reading Jeannie Roberts' thorough, fair and balanced story in last Sunday's paper about the latest report on college graduation rates in Arkansas, the numbers having been duly provided by the state's Department of Higher Education.

The story began on the front page and continued inside at some length. ("6-year rate rises at 3 universities/But graduation gauge falls overall at state institutions"--Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 3, 2014.) The point of the story was simple, so simple it didn't need to be spelled out, so simple it was just understood: To improve higher education in Arkansas, improve the graduation rate. The more degrees granted, the better education will be in the state. Also the economy. Hesto-presto, Progress!

Listen to Governor Mike Beebe, whose earnest good intentions on this subject as on so many others are beyond doubt. "I've been pleased that these colleges have bought into this goal," says the governor, "and are doing what they can do within the parameters and resources to do those things necessary to achieve that goal."

The head of the state's university system, President Donald Bobbitt, echoed the governor: "Research shows that college graduates are much less likely to be incarcerated, engage in less risky behavior . . . so that the decreased burden to society alone is a true economic driver for any economy."

Who could argue with all that? Except maybe some nitpicker who might ask whether just graduating from college has much to do with being really educated. Doesn't the answer to that question depend on which college and what requirements it has for graduation?

Both the governor and the head of the state's university system were speaking the same language--a kind of patois mixing educanto, executalk, and syllogisms with a missing premise or two. Our ears perked up at the all-too-familiar lingo: parameters, a true economic driver, Research Shows . . . . as if we'd just heard alarm bells go off. For we've learned over the years that research can show mainly what the researcher wants it to show.

Besides, there's always somebody out there, or even in the state's educational hierarchy, who hasn't gotten the word yet, and may even be heretical enough to question the validity or just relevance of the numbers cited.

Joel Anderson, chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, was quoted in this news article, too: "I take strong exception to the measure," he said, mentioning all the older students and transfer students whom this report skips lightly over. "The six-year, first-time, full-time measure is simply not appropriate to all institutions." Like the kind of urban university he heads, informally known as streetcar universities.

If a higher graduation rate becomes the sole criterion of a university's success, and its ticket to more money from the state's taxpayers, that university will be tempted to just hand out more degrees--even if standards have to be lowered to do so. Which was why it was so encouraging to hear Steve Runge, the provost at the University of Central Arkansas at Conway, say standards there would not be lowered whatever the pressure to do so.

It's good to hear that UCA is not about to compromise the quality of the education its offers. The school has developed a variety of new programs to support and retain students--including student mentors for incoming freshmen and others--but that doesn't mean UCA should expect any less of its students.

The innocent observer might not want to take too close a look at how either laws or sausages are made--or how students are run through your typical diploma mill, handed a degree, and declared certifiably educated. Hey, they've got the degree to prove it!

The big problem with having only a numerical standard of quality for higher education is that it may not touch on essential questions. Questions like what education should be about. Racking up the numbers, filling in the applicable boxes, producing enough bodies to fill the needs of some corporate personnel office, now known as the Department of Human Resources . . . . All of that may not really have much to do with what Matthew Arnold once called the very purpose of education: to pass on to the next generation the highest and best that has been thought and said in our civilization.

Speaking of which, there was once a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas who, after becoming controversial there because of his unhesitating embrace of excellence in education, went on to become president of a streetcar university in Boston--and stir up even more controversy there by getting rid of the deadwood on the faculty and generally turning the place into a model of excellence in higher education, no matter what tenured mediocrities he offended, and what politically correct banalities he refused to repeat. There hadn't been as refreshing an educator since Robert Hutchins turned the University of Chicago into an intellectual powerhouse in the last century.

After the long and glorious tenure of John Silber as its president, a renewed, revamped and far better Boston University began to slip back into its old ways, chasing after every transient fashion that has misled American higher education for so long. (See the kind of courses labeled Feminist/Black/Queer Studies instead of just plain, solid history, or maybe whole departments of what is called--and only called--education.) But, oh, while John Silber lived and fought for excellence, what a citadel of free and civilized thought B.U. had become.

How improve higher education in Arkansas? Because personnel is policy, perhaps the best answer to that question is to find leaders who are more like John Silber and less like those administrators in our colleges and universities whose chief interest seems to be protecting their own turf, and finding somebody else to blame for their disasters. They may show little interest in pursuing essential questions like what's an education for. In short, they forget to keep their eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole.

Editorial on 08/10/2014