American Education: Declining by Degrees

As you prepare to assess your own education, you might find this short article (and you should read to the end) about many students' experience of education in the United States illuminating. It's called 'Declining by Degrees' by John Merrow, president of Learning Matters Inc. and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Foundation, who produced the documentary 'Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk,' which aired this summer on PBS stations.

You'll find some short extracts from the documentary, and a set of informative links to discussions of the structures, values and problems of contemporary American higher education at the web site dedicated to Merrow's book and the documentary.

Why might this material prove valuable to you? As you are assessing your own education, you might discover new ways to assess the value of your experiences if you can place them in the context of those of your peers, and thus discuss the ways in which your education might have differed from (or resembled) the norm which Merrow and his colleagues believe they have identified.

And you will also, in interviews, for example, be explaining your degree in integrative studies to potential employers, etc.. Again, if you can place your education in a wider contemporary context, you might be better prepared to distinguish what you have achieved (and learned as an undergraduate) from the achievements of your peers (and potential competitors) for jobs, grad. school places, internships, scholarships, fellowships, etc.