STATE OF OUR COLLEGES – AT 9:43 P.M. ET:  Reader Jean Spik alerts us to an excellent column in the Washington Post by former Republican member of congress Heather Wilson, a Rhodes Scholar, and the first Air Force Academy graduate to be elected to Congress.  She worries about some of the things going on in our colleges:

For most of the past 20 years I have served on selection committees for the Rhodes Scholarship. In general, the experience is an annual reminder of the tremendous promise of America's next generation...

...I have, however, become increasingly concerned in recent years - not about the talent of the applicants but about the education American universities are providing. Even from America's great liberal arts colleges, transcripts reflect an undergraduate specialization that would have been unthinkably narrow just a generation ago.

As a result, high-achieving students seem less able to grapple with issues that require them to think across disciplines or reflect on difficult questions about what matters and why.

And...

An outstanding biochemistry major wants to be a doctor and supports the president's health-care bill but doesn't really know why. A student who started a chapter of Global Zero at his university hasn't really thought about whether a world in which great powers have divested themselves of nuclear weapons would be more stable or less so, or whether nuclear deterrence can ever be moral.

Yes, we've noticed.

Our great universities seem to have redefined what it means to be an exceptional student. They are producing top students who have given very little thought to matters beyond their impressive grasp of an intense area of study.

This narrowing has resulted in a curiously unprepared and superficial pre-professionalism.

And...

I detect no lack of seriousness or ambition in these students. They believe they are exceptionally well-educated. They have jumped expertly through every hoop put in front of them to be the top of their classes in our country's best universities, and they have been lavishly praised for doing so. They seem so surprised when asked simple direct questions that they have never considered.

Why shouldn't they be surprised?  They've been told how wonderful they are, how perfect they are, and they are endlessly protected by their colleges from being "offended."

Many of our young people spend four years getting very expensive college degrees. But our universities fail them and the nation if they continue to graduate students with expertise in biochemistry, mathematics or history without teaching them to think about what problems are important and why.

COMMENT:  One of the great myths about colleges and universities is that they are deeply intellectual places.  Most are not.  Indeed, non-intellectualism, or even anti-intellectualism, have often been mainstays of American higher education.   There is more trendiness than thought going on. 

Excellent column, highly recommended.

Oh, by the way, Heather Wilson is both a Republican and a Rhodes Scholar.  But I've been told that Republicans are dumb?  How did she happen?

January 24, 2011