Adverse criticisms of higher education

Abstract

During the last decade higher education in this country has been the subject of no small amount of adverse criticism. College teachers, student personnel, student mortality, college standards, teaching methods, entrance requirements, extra classroom activities, arid, in fact, all phases of the college have been subjected to various severe criticisms. Many reasons might be assigned for the frequent attacks made upon American higher education. Certainly one may readily see how the astounding increase in enrollments in institutions of higher learning during the last ten or fifteen years has brought almost innumerable problems with which these institutions have had to deal. In attempting to solve these problems, the colleges and universities have necessarily had to do considerable experimenting, and while experimentation has been taking place, the critics have not been idle. It is not the purpose of this article, however, to point out the causes for the frequent adverse criticisms of higher education or to show why attacks have been made upon institutions of higher learning. The purpose of this article is to answer the following questions: 1. What are the adverse criticisms of higher education as expressed in recent periodical literature ? 2. How frequently are these criticisms presented ? 3. Who are the people offering most of the criticisms ? In order to answer these three questions a review was made of thirty-seven periodical publications covering a three-year period, 1927, 1928, and 1929. Sixteen of the publications are general literary magazines and the remaining twenty-one are professional magazines, journals, or bulletins of educational organizations. Some are published weekly, others monthly, quarterly, or annually. The review of this literature was very carefully made. It was not sufficient to look through the index of each magazine used and in this way