As tuition costs climb, student loan debts accumulate, and recent graduates struggle to find jobs, more people are questioning whether the American system of higher education is working as well as it could. Kenneth Starr, president of Baylor University and well-known independent counsel for federal government investigations from 1994 to 1999, visited North Carolina recently to discuss whether higher education is “working hard or hardly working.” While in Raleigh, Starr discussed higher education’s challenges during an interview with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio. Here’s an excerpt.
Kokai: Beyond just the number of hours spent, are the types of things that students are studying the right things for a college environment?
Starr: I think that’s another serious question that each institution needs to ask itself. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, ACTA, by name, came together five or six years ago … based in Washington, D.C. And it’s been very helpful in analyzing the rigor of the curriculum of over 1,000 colleges and universities.
The results of that were, I think, somewhat distressing for much of higher education. Now, some will quarrel with the standards and the categories employed by ACTA, but I take those categories seriously. I hasten to note that the university that I’m privileged and blessed to head up did receive an A. That’s the highest grade. There are no A-pluses.
But only 23 — this last go-round — colleges and universities received an A from ACTA for the rigor of the curriculum. What is it that you’re requiring those students to do? And the illustration that I like to use is our illustrious graduate student-athlete, [Heisman trophy winner and current Washington Redskins quarterback] Robert Griffin III. I know this is not Redskins country, but you have listeners everywhere. And Robert Griffin was the true student-athlete.
Because he was and is interested in law school, he had to take a foreign language, like the other Baylor students, but what did he choose? He chose Latin. And I’m free to say, even though privacy laws prevent certain kinds of disclosures, this is in the public domain, he got an A in both Latin I and Latin II.
That is the ideal. We want students to really be, from the Baylor perspective, transformed, to see and read the great works. We want them to be transformed in their perspective, to grow in maturity, to ask those existential questions. What is life all about? What is human? What does it mean to now be in the United States in the 21st century, a global century? Those big questions that I’m fearful all too frequently we, in higher education, are not calling on our students to ask.
