Former state college leaders reflect on ethical issues in higher education

Everything from the “publish or perish” mentality to Tennessee’s Hope scholarship, from the comparative salaries of college presidents and college coaches to standardized testing in high schools was on tap during a discussion Friday with a collection of some of Tennessee’s most respected educators.

 

Joe Johnson, president emeritus of the University of Knoxville, was the most vocal on a panel of four hosted by the Department of History, Politics and Philosophy to speak to students on the “Ethical Challenges Facing Higher Education in 2009 and Beyond.”

 

Johnson touched on everything from how student fees are used in universities to how admissions requirements limit the prospects of some Tennessee students; from the use of a lottery to fund scholarships to consulting fees for faculty researchers.

 

Also speaking on the panel were Randy Perry, dean of engineering emeritus at the University of Tennessee at Martin; Jim Perry, former admissions director at Tennessee Tech University; and Bill Davis, vocational director at Giles County High School.

 

Davis, a strong proponent for vocational education, brought up an interesting topic when he noted that many students who would be happy and well-fitted to vocational occupations that pay well – such as electricians, mechanics, computer technicians, etc. – end up instead attending a four-year college, where they often drop out before obtaining a degree.

 

Johnson echoed the comment, noting that Tennessee’s overall graduation rate in college is about 50 percent, so about half of the students who attend college end up pursuing another path.

 

The state spends a great deal of money teaching students in college who will never graduate, Davis said. More emphasis should be placed on vocational programs at the high school and college levels, so that students best suited for those occupations will be matched sooner and more successfully, he said.

 

“Sometimes those jobs take more skills than my job as president of UT,” said Johnson, noting that during his tenure at UT Knoxville he never had a computer on his desk.

 

Other ethical quandaries discussed by the panel included whether colleges are obligated to provide remedial courses for unprepared students; whether the state is “undemocratic” by requiring higher academic standards to enter the four-year university system than the community college system; and whether the state Hope scholarship actually serves the underprivileged students it was intended to serve.

 

Jim Perry, of Tennessee Tech, referred to a study of Georgia’s lottery-funded scholarships which found that the people who lived in the counties that bought the most lottery tickets had median incomes 20 percent below the state average, while the people who lived in the counties that received the most state scholarships, had median incomes 72 percent above the state average.

 

Students also made interesting observations, noting that often a top graduate from an underperforming high school can’t get admitted to the top colleges due to the high school’s performance not the student’s performance; and criticizing standardized testing as telling students “learn just enough to get by.”