Recently we heard President Obama and others criticize higher education. We heard about academic accountability and the growing problem of student debt. What has been the response from leaders in higher education? University of Washington President Mike Young says he’s annoyed with President Obama. Obama said last Friday that if universities don’t give students a break (on their tuition costs and growing debt), the federal government is going to start taking money away.
President Young called Obama’s threat “nonsense on stilts.”
He and his colleagues at Western Washington and Washington State say the actual total cost of educating college students has gone down in that state, when the dollars from parents and the state are combined. But as policy makers and legislators cut the dollars it sends to Washington’s colleges and universities, lawmakers have told them to go ahead and raise tuition to make up for the loss. So tuition has steadily grown in the same way all over the country.
Many students protest their lack of educational options. They point to the growing cost of higher education. Most are skeptical about their potential to dramactically increase their future earnings from an average of $14 per hour to jobs that pay over $30. The occupy movement has featured the false promises of a prosperous life after completing a bachelor’s degree.
The general consensus from employers and the public is that few undergraduate majors are “worth the investment” with the exception of certain hard sciences, engineering, math, business, and computer science. Most academics in other disciplines would be opposed to this verdict and provide anecdotal evidence to support their area of expertise. Two problems with a general defense of further investments in higher education are:
1. The lack of eloquent spokespeople for the value of general education
2. The proliferation and use of terms only academics understand. Academic gobbledygook such as immersion, experiential or deep learning, and integrated learning become academic gobbledygook to most parents and propspective college students
The pundits speaking on behalf of the liberal arts often use the concept of building ideal citizens and service-leaders. They claim a $150,000 investment returns a life-long learner who can solve community problems and build bridges. Detractors claim that academics are idealistic and live in an ivory tower. They claim that academics study arcane subjects to be the expert for an audience of five colleagues, in areas few people outside the discipline ever care to explore or even investigate. Academics defend their importance with lofty terms and claims, their language is filled with platitudes and three syllable words few others understand. This manner of speech is negitavely characterized as academic gobbledygook.
Rather than explaining their theories in plain and straight-forward language, the academic model is to make others believe the speaker is much more knowledgable than the audience by delving into details and complicated theorems. Accusations against higher education include the general lack of concern for the value of a dollar, and an “unrealistic or Utopian view of return on investment for the average college student’s tuition dollar.
Gobbledygook is also the language spoken by the goblins in Harry Potter by JK Rowling. Maybe that should be a sign to academics to forgo the gobbledygook and get to the point.
According to my former instructor Len Rogers, Gobbledygook is overly wordy writing which is filled with passive voice constructions, weak noun forms instead of strong verbs, and deadwood which gets in the way of clear communication. Gobbledygook, sometimes shortened to gobbledygoo, is a modern word compiled by Maury Maverick, a Texan lawyer who was at various times a Democratic Congressman and mayor of San Antonio. Writing as chairman of the US Smaller War Plants Committee in Congress, in the New York Times Magazine 21st May 1944, as part of a complaint against the obscure language used by his colleagues he used the word gobbledygook. He was inspired, he said, by the turkey, “always gobbledy gobbling and strutting with ludicrous pomposity”. Below are some of Len’s suggestions to minimize the gobbleygook:
Instead of Use
give consideration to consider
make inquiry regarding inquire
is of the opinion believes
comes into conflict with conflicts
confidential nature confidential information
of an indefinite nature indefinite
in order to to
in this day and age today (or) now
with reference to concerning
at this point in time now
has the ability to because (or) since
take the place of substitute
utilize use
to be cognisant of to know
to endeavour to try
terminate end (or) fire
effectuate do
Maybe its time to bring parents, students, and policy makers together without the gobbledygook and discuss how college is not right for everyone, but can be the catalyst for achievement and excellence in many others.
