Reading (here) about a meeting in Washington of 12 college presidents from the Leadership Alliance — “a coalition of 29 higher-education institutions established in 1992 to bring more minority students into mathematics, science, engineering, and technology” — I was reminded of Back to School Night when daughter Jessie began middle school.
On that memorable occasion the beaming principal of Jessie’s new school — a “diverse” school in not always “diverse” Fairfax County, Virginia — welcomed an auditorium full of new middle school parents with the good news that as a result of changes in the grading system the year before the average grades of students had increased significantly! However, he added with considerably less enthusiasm, there was still work to be done because the scores on standardized tests had not shown any comparable improvement.
My wife Helene and I, standing on opposite sides at the back of the overcrowded auditorium, both broke out laughing simultaneously, and alone. I would be tempted to laugh, for similar reasons, at the distinguished Leadership Alliance presidents, except that the solution they offered to the “diversity” problem in math and science is so sad.
One big problem, they argued, is that introductory math and science courses are too hard.
Several of the presidents blamed what they called “weed-out courses” in the early stages of undergraduate education for driving disproportionate numbers of minority students out of math- and science-related fields. Freeman A. Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, said that even those minority students who go on to earn bachelor’s degrees in such fields often are too discouraged by the difficulty of the experience to consider pursuing a graduate education.
They “don’t go on, quite frankly, because they have not done well as undergraduates,” Mr. Hrabowski said. Colleges should do more to get such students “excited about the work,” he said, and should not be afraid to take steps such as urging students to repeat introductory courses in which they received grades of C or lower to ensure that more-advanced classes do not leave them feeling overwhelmed.
Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, was among those who suggested that colleges should rethink their reliance on rigorous introductory courses to ensure that prospective science and mathematics students can handle work in those fields. “Just because we have always done it that way does not mean that is the way it has to be done,” she said.
That certainly makes sense. If your goal is to induce more minority students to pursue graduate education and careers in math and science and the introductory courses are so “rigorous” that they discourage minority students from doing so, by all means make them less rigorous. Or perhaps the implicit, under the table race norming that characterizes admissions — admit the most qualified whites, the most qualified Hispanics, the most qualified blacks, etc. — should be expanded to grades (if that hasn’t been done already).
Gutmann’s proposal, moreover, also has a certainly appealing symmetry to it: since, in order to enroll more minority students, colleges admit some minority students who are not capable of doing the high quality work expected of other students, why shouldn’t those same students be passed on to graduate schools and employers?
The problem the Leadership Alliance 12 identified is not limited to overly rigorous introductory courses. There’s also a problem with some minorities coming in with Advanced Placement and not taking the introductory courses.
Several college presidents and administrators on hand suggested that earning Advanced Placement credits in high school may have unintended negative consequences…. The speakers said that, as a result of earning such credits, many students place out of introductory courses that they could handle easily, and go straight into more-advanced classes without adequate preparation, earning poor grades that leave them discouraged.
Shirley M. Tilghman, president of Princeton University, suggested that such students may be done “more harm than good” by earning AP credits.
I think I’ve got it now. The introductory courses are too rigorous … except for the students who don’t take them, who could handle them easily.
Advanced Placement has even more downsides.
Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami, said she had seen students earn their undergraduate degrees early as a result of Advanced Placement credits but then go on to graduate or medical school without the maturity needed to handle it. “They are getting into trouble later on,” she said.
Maybe we should ask Jessie (who graduated from college at 17 and is finishing her first year of graduate school) about that. Or maybe we should worry instead about the rigor, judgment, and maturity of college presidents.
Colleges, it would seem, are presented with some unappealing choices. They can discourage minority students from going on in math and science by making the courses too hard. Or they could pass on to graduate schools the underqualified students they have accepted, who remain underqualified by virtue of taking less rigorous courses. Or they could pass on bright students who come in with Advanced Placement, graduate early, and lack sufficient “maturity” to succeed in Graduate School.
But just when the problems seem intractable, comfortable and appealing problems with comfortable and appealing solutions happily appear.
Participants in the meeting also cited a fear of high student-loan debt and inadequate minority representation on college faculties as factors discouraging minority students from pursuing doctorates in math- and science-related fields. Ms. Tilghman warned that colleges would suffer if they did not get more minority students to earn doctorates and go on to teach.
“If we do not diversify our faculty, we will look increasingly anachronistic,” she said. “Who wants to be part of something that looks like it is basically behind the times?”
Yo, Presidents! Provide more money for race-based financial aid! Hire more minority faculty! Now you can all go home satisfied that you’re already doing what needs to be done. And, as Princeton president Tilghman points out, no one will accuse you of being stuck in a past where it was a principle (if not always the practice) to judge everyone by the same standards, and to have those standards set high enough to produce the very best math and science professionals, not low enough to ensure proportional multicultural inclusion.
Yes, I certainly wouldn’t consider graduate school if my race and gender weren’t sufficiently represented among the faculty. Because we have to keep our priorities straight here, yes? And “professor of desired ethnicity” is way more important than “professor who can teach something I want to learn.” Really, this is so ridiculous that it’s almost unfair even to answer it.
If the “weeder courses” have a disproportionate impact on different groups, the obvious explanation is that the different groups are not equally prepared for the work. Now, why would that be?
And if kids with AP credits are hitting courses the next level up and tanking, the obvious solution would be to stop using AP credits, or else get the ETS to toughen the exams.
I am curious what Donna Shalala is on about. Are there legions of students who graduate in fewer than four years due to AP credits? Are they disproportionately underrepresented-minority? Do they in fact drop out of med school at a higher rate than average?
Seriously, don’t you guys get tired of beating up on these poor people? How long would anybody stay a university president if he/she/it spoke the truth about this situation?
Give these guys a break! Look what happened to the President of Harvard.
It reminds you of Russia under the Communist system. Everyone toes the line or else. Or, that line from Macbeth:
Now does he feel
His secret murthers sticking on his hands,
Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
Of course, there is a more alarming interpretation of this meeting. What if they really do believe what they are saying?
I think the whole “weeder” idea is horrible, anyway. I went to a school small enough that we didn’t have 300-student classes, but I know people who did. Even those who went on and finished in their field suffered because the school didn’t do a good job teaching the basics in those freshman-level courses – they were too busy weeding. I’m serious. I’m taking a class in microbiology right now, as I mentioned before, and the number of drops is scandalous. The reason is that people are signing up for this class without basic knowledge of chemistry and biology, even such knowledge as you could get in a decent high school program. That’s not their fault, and there’s no way to know what their potential is since they’re set up for failure.
joel, I have a nasty suspicion that a lot of them do believe it. But if they don’t, they’ve an intellectual responsibility not to lie about it.
The interesting question is why they’d be in jeopardy if they said anything but what they did say. But then, I thought Summers’ comments were inoffensive, so what do I know?
Laura, I don’t understand. You’re saying that these are people who got through the “weeder” courses and still can’t handle the material for the next year? I realize that much of the “weeding” involves an insane workload, and usually nasty hours (OChem at UC/Berkeley is always at 8 a.m., for example; so was heat transfer [required in MechE]), but presumably some actual acquisition of knowledge takes place in there. At least, I sure hope so. On what basis are they “weeding” if not on how well you know the subject matter of the course? And even if it all boils down to how well you take tests, you can’t pass tests in specialized subject matter without knowing it reasonably well, especially if the graders are determined to fail as many people as possible.
The person I am thinking of specifically said her weeder class was freshman physics. She passed the course and went on to get her degree in chemical engineering, but she had to struggle to catch up because there was stuff she missed learning in that class. The professor talked with his back to the room and no one could hear him. The students signed petitions and everything, and nothing was ever done. Most of the kids dropped the class in defeat. What exactly is the purpose of this kind of thing? Is it that hard to just teach freshman physics like you hope all the students will learn it? All of my teachers liked their subjects and didn’t think it was their job to try to discourage us. My physics professor thought physics was cool and neat and wanted us to think so as well. Is that so horrible? As for my micro class, I’m afraid it’s just greed on the university’s part. They get tuition from everyone who signs up; if students get in who should have taken some freshman-level chemistry or biology first and hence can’t learn the material, well, the school still gets their money. I mean it, I’ve studied with some of these kids and the gaps in their knowledge are just jaw-dropping, considering the stuff you’re clearly expected to know already when you read the textbook.
I don’t consider 8:00 classes weeding, however. If people can’t get to class at 8:00, how are they going to function when they get a job?
As to AP classes: my daughter is taking two AP classes this year. She had to apply to get into each of them, and submit a substantial group of essays at the beginning of the year, that took a good bit of time over the summer to write. The classes are small and the work is at least as demanding as college courses would be. But for a lot of high schools, AP classes are like honors classes, just the same high school stuff with a bit more homework. The kids may do well on their exams, but there just is no substitute for learning everything you’re supposed to get at that level.
Laura,
Re “weeders,” what you’re describing is bad teaching, not “weeding.” Your basic “weeder” course is difficult — you don’t come out on the other side skill-deficient. If you pass, it’s because you learned something.
My freshman physics course was taught by an activist who dedicated the last class period before the final to the screening of a film about nuclear winter. Earlier in the same semester, a strike was called on behalf of divestment from South Africa. We therefore spent the class talking about South Africa. When the strike was carried over to the following Monday, a student yelled out that he’d rather learn some physics than talk more about South Africa, and the class voted for physics, so there we were.
Re 8:00, it’s just that there were certain classes always at that hour, and they were always required courses, and difficult ones. Electives, you had a choice. But if you can’t work yourself up to get to an hour and a half of Heat Transfer at 8 in the morning, obviously you aren’t sufficiently motivated. No, you can’t take it after lunch.
My motto has always been
John,
I feel you are being obtuse on the issues. What most of the college administrators are guilty of is bad phrasing and poorly formed ideas.
On the point of Advanced Placement, it is my experience that many kids come in with enough knowledge from high school calculus to get halfway through the first semester. But they may have enough knowledge to get credit for the first semester class. Thus, they get into the second semester without a full background and without the experience of having passed a college math class. It even shows more on junior college transfers how come into a science degrees with classes in organic chemistry and differential equations but without the same knowledge is the kids who went through the first two years at a traditional university.
John, I believe you are over-looking the University’s financial incentive to pooh-pooh AP classes. I skipped my first year of calculus and never looked back. The rule I remember from high scholl was: you get AP credit in fields you aren’t planning on majoring in.
In regards to the “weeder” courses. The notion of 300 person classrooms, strict curves, and the sink or swim mentality are becoming things of the past. I agree that it is a misnomer to call the weeding process “discriminatory”, but the truth is students who come from stronger high schools start out ahead on the curve. Before your knee-jerk reaction of “well of course better prepared students do better” consider that these students who do well in the 100 level courses aren’t the outstanding students at the end of 4 years, i.e. their head start has been erased by more ambitious students. So the weeding process is in fact selecting studetns for background, and not future potential.
“…you get AP credit in fields you aren’t planning on majoring in.” Good idea.
I like the rest of Roy’s post too. May I add that if there is no way a smart, hard-working kid from a substandard high school can get anywhere at a university – and I mean State U, not Harvard – then we’ve dropped the ball on the American dream. By and large, kids don’t get to choose their high school.