The High Cost of Low-Cost Education

Abstract

T HE thesis of this paper is that what may appear to be and may so appear even after fairly close inspection by the casual observer-a plan of higher education which is easy of access, which operates without the usual standard controls at a very low cost so far as the individual is concerned, and at a respectable standard of accreditation, may, in fact, be a relatively high-cost institution which is under such limitations as far as expansion is concerned as to be relatively restricted in its access, is actually overcontrolled by rules and regulations, and is severely limited in its academic horizons and standards. The institution so described is the University of Puerto Rico, a complex and diverse institution enrolling some I5,000 students on three campuses and including among its programs undergraduate liberal arts, business, education, engineering, pharmacy, and agriculture, and among its professional programs law, medicine, public administration, social work, and dentistry. Let it be noted that no graduate program is included in the above listing, and that no junior college or extension program is included. The University, in existence since I903, is the absolutely indispensable educational pivot of the island. It provides most of the teacher education that is available; it provides most of the professional education that can be acquired; it supplies the education for government officials, for the entire core of management of Puerto Rican industry and agriculture; it gives basic training and generous assistance to the vast majority of all teachers in colleges and universities in Puerto Rico. In keeping with these many and diverse activities, the University is firmly based upon a concept of freedom of access at all academic levels, of low tuition, and of further amelioration of the existing low cost by subsidy in the form of scholarships at need, and by general lack of restriction and supervision insofar as programs and activities are concerned. Interestingly enough, within this very permissive pattern so far as behavior is concerned, the programs of study offered by the University are notable for their lack of elective courses. Virtually all programs and courses are required. Within this general pattern, then, which controls the University, five points may be picked out as products of this particular concept of administration. i. The undergraduate curriculum is sharply split into two different segments. One segment represents a reasonably contemporary generaleducation approach which holds true for the entire freshman year and part of the sophomore year, for a majority of the undergraduate students. This is followed by an abrupt return to a conventional or departmentalized curriculum operated by the several schools of the University in which, to all intents and purposes, a student, having completed his freshman and part of his sophomore year in the General Studies Program, begins over again in the general subject matter offered in a special area. As a consequence of this, almost no student ever has a chance to get to any of the advanced courses in any field and, in fact, is really debarred from so doing by the program requirements which must be surmounted before he can get to an advanced course. There are, in fact, very few advanced courses listed in the catalog. 2. As a result of the lack of instructional supervision, or as a result of the fact that over three-fourths of the faculty has never progressed beyond the master's degree, all or virtually all of the courses are given by the textbook-and-lecture method. This has several interesting results. (a) Student programs are heavy. They run to eighteen hours or more, and this means that a student who is following a textbook and collating it with instructors' lectures has less studying and in a sense less thinking to do about his courses than a student who is being taught by the reading-list classdiscussion method. (b) Students are notably studious and may be found deeply engrossed in their textbooks all over the campus, as well