Back to the future

Throughout the semester, I have been looking at articles about the current state of higher education, and the financing of it. As instructed by our professor, I have focused primarily on articles that have been written in the past few years; most within the past year.

But now, I’m interested in taking a look backwards. I have heard the famous quote; often attributed to Georges Santayana, but sometimes cited as coming from Edmund Burke, "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."

So, I wondered – how long have some of the prognostications about crises in higher education financing been around? Well, I found an article by Henry Wriston, President of Brown University (at the time) titled “ How to Finance Higher Education in the Future” written in 1955 in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

What strikes me about Dr. Wriston’s work is the extent to which so much of it could just as easily be written today. He complains about student’s lack of writing skills, the need to use more technology, the need to do away with the classic lecture/textbook method of instruction and the need for students to engage in more group work.

He also discusses the costly nature of accreditation and the need to assess what students actually learn, rather than what the institution offers. Amazingly, only 56 years later, it appears that WASC (and presumably other accrediting bodies as well) are finally coming around to that notion.

It makes me scratch my head in wonderment, that universities are supposed to be the place of innovation and forward thinking and new knowledge, but in many ways we are stuck in a sort of bureaucratic purgatory, having a sense of what may lead us to the great beyond, but still not sure if the beyond is heaven or hell.

Along with his proposals mentioned above, Wriston also hopes for greater corporate donations to institutions of higher learning. Together with new technologies, better pedagogy and more efficiency on campus, this should all solve the financing of higher ed, right?

 
But no, here we are 56 years later with all these things and more, and higher ed is more expensive than ever.

What next, Dr. Wriston?