Page 147 - Crisis in Higher Education

118 • Crisis in Higher Education

for keeping standards high and ensuring that applicants are well pre-
pared. If public universities make a sincere effort to reduce costs, the
states may provide additional funding as an incentive when universi-
ties succeed.
• Chapter 12: Reshaping Faculty’s Role: Tenured faculty should have
an active role in university governance as well as provide more
leadership in designing and implementing curricula, including
leading and working closely with potential employers and profes-
sional faculty. If this is accomplished, the costs should be reduced
and standards should be maintained.
• Chapter 13: Creating High-Tech Learning Materials: There are new
technologies that can be implemented to improve the learning pro-
cess. These efforts will cost less than current textbooks, enhance
learning, and improve the productivity of faculty.
• Chapter 14: Revamping Relationships among High Schools,
Community and Technical Colleges, and Universities: Building stron-
ger relationships among these learning institutions is essential. There
are too many high school graduates who are unprepared and cannot
gain admission to colleges and universities. Too many students are
admitted who need remedial course work, and they pressure faculty
either directly or indirectly to reduce standards.

5.5 THE SOLUTION

The solution must be comprehensive because there are multiple problems
and the problems are complex and systemic. Table 5.1 shows that there are
no one-to-one relationships between the elements of the solution and the
root causes, so each element impacts more than one root cause, and no
root cause is addressed by a single element. In addition, the root causes
and the elements of the solution are interconnected. Following are some
examples.

1. Root causes (rows in Table 5.1) are interconnected: When universi-
ties misunderstand customer expectations, they make poor deci-
sions about resource allocation, and they may ignore the lack of
productivity by administrators and faculty. Excessive spending on