By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
It has been a tough year for colleges and universities, but for mostly different reasons than in K–12. The number of tenured faculty had already fallen—replaced by temporary adjuncts who only taught. This “financial flexibility” was used to downsize when enrolments dropped due to the pandemic.
Lacking state assessments, there was no simple way to show learning loss. But faculty themselves provided ample evidence of how the shift to online delivery resulted in less content being taught and lower student performance. Learning loss was greatest in acting, orchestra and other performance courses requiring group work as well as in science and healthcare courses requiring real labs.
Our growing need for nurses has become obvious. But despite the compassion fatigue, burnouts and obvious dangers, more young students are expressing a commitment to enter healthcare. As a result, it is estimated that there will be 80,000 more nursing applicants than nursing schools have capacity to train.
In contrast, the widespread unprofessional treatment of K–12 teachers by both administrators and the general public has accelerated the decline in college students entering public school teaching. That gradual decline had been underway since 2001. Now as more veteran teachers are leaving, even fewer college students are entering the student-teacher pipeline.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, newspaper-of-record for higher education, has detailed drops in college enrolments and documented problems with online teaching, including a serious increase in cheating when students are remote. It has also become clear that K–12 students have lost nearly a half of their expected learning over the last two years, and this learning loss will transfer forward into college coursework. Nevertheless, Chronicle advertising continues to hype distance learning as successful.
The ACT and SAT college entrance exams cannot be administered and prevent cheating outside of closely proctored settings. Since in-person testing was often not possible during the pandemic, many state and private institutions temporarily dropped this requirement. With continuation of the pandemic, as well as questionable concerns for equity, many have now completely dropped this criteria for college admission, relying only on high school GPA. While GPA had been a good predictor of college success, many K–12 schools are now inflating grades, undermining the ability to discern who is really “college able.” Some select universities favor dropping the tests since they will get more applicants they can reject and claim to be even more exclusive, thereby gaining even higher rankings.
International students suffered from closed borders. Some are unable to attend universities that have accepted them. Some were unable to return from a brief visit home. Huge numbers have had to take their coursework online and from a continent away, signing in and participating in the middle of their night in courses being held in daytime halfway around the world. This decline in international students that began under the former administration may not turn around despite a new friendlier administration.
The critical role of foreign students in sustaining U.S. STEM programs was documented by the National Foundation for American Policy. And the Center for Security and Emerging Technology report confirmed that China surpassed the U.S. in producing science doctorates in 2007 and will produce twice as many as the U.S. by 2025. Foreign students comprise nearly half of our science doctorates.
Meanwhile, “state” public universities have moved even further from being state-supported to state-assisted to nearly state-in-name-only, accelerating their emphasis on marketing and treating the student as customer. As a result, less popular foreign language and physical science programs are being dropped at a time when the U.S. is in desperate need for more such graduates.
Politics in university governance has exploded overnight. Academics is now under attacking more than in the Joe McCarthy era. Some politicians threaten to remove higher ed governing bodies and prohibit programs that study anything that does not uphold the myth of a perfect America.
Private for-profit online schools, many that lived on GI Bill monies, were in decline before the pandemic. That has changed. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports enrollment at 4-year for-profit schools rose by over five percent, and for new students lacking former college experience, over nine percent. But based on their prior track record, a large number will fail to complete programs and most will face larger debts.
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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.