From The Fall of the Ivory Tower
by George Roche
FOREWORD
American higher education is the best in the world, which is why it
attracts tens of thousands of foreign students. The breadth and
diversity of our institutions make their foreign counterparts pale
in comparison. But our system today is in deep crisis, financially,
morally, and academically.
George Roche able catalogues the signs of decay: the growing allergy
to undergraduate education manifested by the shrinking hours professors
actually spend in the classroom teaching; the decline and debasement
of academic standards and the concomitant grade inflation; "political
correctness"; the bloat of non-teaching staff; scandals concerning the
handling of government funds. The Fall of the Ivory Tower
joins Thomas Sowell's Inside American Education, Allan
Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, Charles J. Sykes'
Profscam, and Martin Anderson's Impostors in the
Temple in describing campus problems today.
But what will make this book a sizzling sensation is the answer Roche
gives to the question: What is the underlying reason for these
disturbing trends? His response: government funding. The author
argues that massive infusions of money from Washington and the
states to higher education institutions and to student assistance
are the root cause of today's troubles. This funding has encouraged
overexpansion, overstaffing, and overspending. It has subsidized
skyrocketing tuition and fiscal mismanagement. It has twisted
the thrust of many colleges away from educating undergraduates
to attracting more government funds. It has been, he says,
a Faustian bargain, and the price will be a dear one.
As long as the amount of money was growing--as it did almost
nonstop from the end of the Second World War through
the 1980s--colleges and universities could expand higgly-
piggly with no real sense of direction or focus. Now this
government funding flood is ebbing, and the results are,
and will be, devastating. Most institutions are faced with
serious budget pressures. Many will be forced to close their
doors.
The immediate response to these financial pressures has been
the so-called "Washington Monument Syndrome"--cut what will
generate an immediate public outcry so that the money will
be restored. Undergraduates are initially bearing a
disproportionate brunt of the cut-backs. Thousands of students
are discovering that it may take them five or six years to
graduate because required courses are quickly oversubscribed.
This book will fuel the rage of parents and students who are
increasingly asking: Why aren't the still-vast sums colleges
and universities receive being used to provide a timely and
sound undergraduate program. Why do so many of these
institutions seem to have their priorities backwards--protecting
staff and grossly underutilizing tenured faculty?
Roche's thesis will be hotly controversial among academics. But
wise educators will recognize that there is validity in what
he says about the governance of higher education. They will
realize that the financial pressures are not temporary, particularly
as government-financed research is scaled back in the post-Cold
War world. And they will conclude that the management of
many colleges and universities will have to be fundamentally
refocused and restructured.
Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr.
Editor-in-Chief
Forbes