Declining Standards at Michigan Universities

Reflecting a national problem, Michigan public universities are producing graduates who are unprepared for K-12 teaching careers and the business world. The demise of the traditional core curriculum, indoctrination in the classroom, and questionable teaching methods that emphasize emotion and subjectivity over rigor and critical thinking are to blame. The study documents extensive evidence cited by employers that college graduates lack crucial communications and thinking skills, and it finds a link between poor training of aspiring teachers and declining K-12 student performance. Analysis of over 300 undergraduate course syllabi reveal the dominance of trendy, politicized course content. 88 pages.

Contents

• Foreward
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• I. The Evidence in the Marketplace
• II. The Decomposition of English Composition
• III. Foreign Language Follies
• IV. The Coreless, Canonless Curriculum
• V. Teacher Training Fails to Make the Grade
• VI. “Sifting a Learnt Tradition”
• VII. A Few Encouraging Signs
• VIII. Eleven Specific Policy Recommendations & Conclusion
• Affirmative Action and Racial Preference at the University of Michigan
• Mathematics in the Postmodernist Era
• Undergraduate Engineering at the University of Michigan 1956-1996
• What I Learned at the School of Education
• Memory and Expectation: Language and Literature at Hillsdale College
• Endnotes
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author