The missing "education" in post-secondary education

In a previous post, I discussed how the software industry is funding computer science education in younger levels of schooling as a countermeasure against the diminishing supply of programmers and the lack of proper post-secondary education for computer science. But one fact that was glossed over was why universities are providing such a poor education, especially in computer science. Why are companies losing faith in the credentials of a Bachelor's computer science degree? The reason: money.

There is no lack of research in education strategies and effective classroom management. I cannot even begin to describe the list of terms and strategies that have emerged from education research over the past decades. One of the more common devices being used is more personal interaction with students – especially through scaffolding: slow but deliberate removal of temporary supports over time to encourage students to achieve without assistance. In addition, an MIT survey from students themselves revealed what might seem obvious: students attend class more often if the lecture is interesting and engaging. Unfortunately, there are three big obstacles blocking lectures from being personally engaging and interesting: low teacher-student ratios, administrative fear of student failure, and lack of experienced lecture professors. All of these issues stem from business- and revenue-related concerns by university administrators.

One of the biggest success factors a university can tout is its rate of growth: more students, more grants, more research facilities, more research throughput, etc. Most of this is related to money. The more students that are put through, the more tuition money can be allocated to new buildings and, of course, bigger administrator salaries. However, more students can only lead to one of two outcomes: more professors, or bigger classes. And, somehow, despite the horrid treatment and payment of adjunct professors (for those who won't read the linked articles, a nice quote: "nearly a quarter of all adjunct professors receive public assistance, such as Medicaid or food stamps"), who universities are hiring more and more of, class sizes are still increasing. Because of the "need" to teach as many students as possible while spending as little as possible on faculty, it is nigh impossible to provide one-on-one feedback and engagement with every student in a class. Differentiated education can only go so far to spread among a class of one-hundred or more students. As a personal anecdote, the Introductor to C++ class at my university has gotten so large that Teaching Assistants will only help students via a helpdesk ticketing system set up explicitly for the class!

The next issue beyond the number of students in a class is how the students in the class are treated. As the previously mentioned MIT study found, many students will allocate less time for a class if they do not find it mentally challenging. However, universities cannot make classes too hard, because retention rates are a vital statistic for rating colleges. Not only is every student that drops out many thousands of dollars of lost tuition money, but it also contributes to an image that the school is no-good and not worth applying to. As compensation, classes must be made easier, or crutches for failing students must be created so that drop-out and transfer rates do not cross a threshold that would affect admissions.

Finally, and this is the oldest of the three problems, is the lack of teachers that can...teach. At a research university, research is generally a lot more profitable than undergraduate or even graduate instruction. Grants and donations can fund the creation of an entire new laboratory, and can generate significant positive publicity for the university. Because of that, professors are encouraged to routinely output research papers, sometimes even at the cost of the content of such papers, lecture quality is more of an afterthought. University professors are not required to get a Masters degree in education like public school teachers do, nor do they participate in student teaching and other exercises to teach them how to teach. Professors rarely have the skill needed to provide a satisfactory education to a full class of students. In the university setting, this is sometimes mitigated by the ability of students to learn on their own, but such workaround is a poor replacement for an education that is so expensive.

In the end, it all comes back to the money. Whatever administrators can do to turn their university into a powerhouse of students coming and going, and professors writing and publishing: that will be the primary strategic plan. Education has become secondary in post-secondary education. And the victims are the students, as well the companies hoping for these intelligence factories to be producing high quality bright minds.

The missing "education" in post-secondary education by Tyler Romeo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.