Education in the U.S.: The Modest College and Imperial University

I found this essay on American higher education a very compelling read.  I may assign it in one of my classes.  It's unfortunate that most college graduates wouldn't be able to grasp the first half of it.  (It's doubly unfortunate that it would be news to most college professors as well.)

A few quotes:

"To understand the ethos of a people, examine their system of education. Educating the young is
the essential human act, and in the institutions of a society we can see most clearly the people’s
aspirations, their conception of our ultimate end, and their fundamental beliefs about human
nature and our place in the cosmos."
...
"Higher education began in colonial America as almost a perfect embodiment of the ancient
synthesis: a network of regional and confessional colleges, each prescribing a similar curriculum
of ancient texts, blending together the three strands of philosophy, rhetoric and theology, with
the aim of equipping a ruling class with the elevated taste, breadth of learning, and piety for
tradition that support a character of virtue."
...
"Empires rarely collapse as a result of external pressures. Military defeat is normally a symptom
of internal decay. Four factors contribute to this decay: imperial overreach, fiscal profligacy,
bureaucratic hypertrophy, and personal vice and corruption. There are signs that America is
moving inexorably toward a textbook-perfect case of imperial collapse."
...
"Over four years, the average college student has improved in writing, critical thinking and problem solving by only seven percentiles (0.18 standard deviations), a gain about one-quarter as great as was typical a generation earlier. Nearly 45 percent of students show no measurable gain whatsoever. This lack of progress follows predictably from grade inflation and the collapse of standards. Students reported spending on average less than twelve hours a week outside of class studying, with 37 percent spending less than five hours a week. Fifty percent had not taken a single course in the prior semester that required more than twenty pages of writing."