Higher Education? by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, and Crisis on Campus, by Mark C. Taylor, are both highly critical of higher education in our country today. They share some of the same concerns, such as the soaring cost of college; the privileging of trivial research and professorial and administrative personal interest over what’s best for students; the irresponsible growth of credit hours generated by “contingents” or temporary, often part-time, and obviously exploited faculty; and the complacency of overpaid and underworked tenured faculty. Neither book suggests that a higher percentage (it’s nowhere near a majority now) of credit hours should be generated by tenured faculty members. Both recommend the elimination of tenure as an impediment to accountability. For both, that reform should be one among many that reorient higher education toward the encouragement of excellent teaching above all else.
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