MOOCs and beyond.
The brutal truths that institutions don’t want to acknowledge.
There are harsh truths—lies and secrets, guilt and shame—that we generally don’t want to admit. That our family or our marriage is dysfunctional. That our intimate relationships are marred by hurtful, traumatic, toxic or abusive behavior. That our loved ones are unfaithful or addicted or are suffering mental decline.
Some harsh truths are actually clichés. Your actions are more important than your thoughts. Sustaining intimacy takes work. Talent means nothing without hard work. Perfectionism is a curse; unrealistic standards lead to paralysis. Impatience is destructive; it fractures relationships, makes us rude and petulant, degrades performance, and leads to rash decisions. In the end, we and our loved ones will die.
Some inconvenient truths are business-related. Your target audience isn’t everyone. You can’t do everything. Effective decision-making requires goal and priority setting and unpleasant trade-offs. Without a well-defined strategy and an understanding of an organization’s strengths and weaknesses and its competition, institutions inevitably squander their resources and energies. Adapt or die. Without innovation no organization can thrive. Success requires leaders to learn how to say no.
Anyone who cares deeply about American higher education needs to come to grips with a series of hard and unpleasant truths:
It’s high time to acknowledge and address those disturbing realities.
It’s not that institutions ignore campus inequities or student learning. The problem is, rather, that other priorities eclipse what campuses claim to value.
First, however, let’s ask why those inequities realities persist.
What would it take to change this grim reality?
There are a host of inconvenient or unpleasant truths that we forget at our peril. We err when we avoid discomfiting truths because they trouble and embarrass us and when we dismiss tellers of ugly truths as biased ideologues.
The economist Richard Vedder once published a paper detailing 12 unpleasant truths about higher education. He pointed out, for example, that undergraduates are too often neglected by faculty, that institutions too often run for the benefit of their administrators and employees rather than students, and that colleges hide vital information from consumers and legislators. However exaggerated, his claims need to be confronted, not ignored.
If we want to make higher education truly equitable and produce the learning outcomes that we claim to seek, then we must confront painful truths no matter how uncomfortable they make us. Which brings to mind a quotation from Abraham Lincoln:
“If the end brings me out all right, what’s said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”
Educational innovation isn’t a quick, painless or friction-free process. So, let’s acknowledge the disquieting truths about higher education, face up to them and do more than claim that our campuses are doing God’s work. Let’s take the steps that will make equity and deep learning more than empty promises.
Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.
Resources for faculty and staff from our partners at Times Higher Education.
