ew Report Reveals Most Expensive Colleges With Highest Paid Presidents and Largest Government Subsidies Score the Worst On Basic U.S. History Test
Second Intercollegiate Studies Institute Study Includes 32 New Schools,
Introduces New Findings and Offers Latest Rankings of U.S. Colleges
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The second in-depth
study by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) reveals that some of
the most expensive universities, with the highest paid presidents, are
among the worst-performing in the country regarding the teaching of
America's history and institutions to their undergraduate students. These
universities, which also receive some of the largest government subsidies,
include the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Yale, Princeton, and Duke.
"Higher education is a $325 billion business where at many prestigious
universities presidents earn half-a-million dollars a year or more," says
Josiah Bunting, III, chairman of ISI's National Civic Literacy Board.
"Ironically, based on our research, the lowest gains in knowledge in
America's history and institutions are found at many of these elite
universities where their presidents are simply not doing enough to help
preserve our traditions of freedom and representative government. The time
has come for higher education's key decision-makers --- state legislators,
trustees, donors, alumni, faculty, students' parents --- to hold the
nation's colleges and their presidents accountable for teaching their
students America's history and institutions."
Complete results from ISI's second study are being released today in a
report titled Failing Our Students, Failing America: Holding Colleges
Accountable for Teaching America's History and Institutions. The new study
adds 32 universities not included in ISI's landmark inaugural study, but
the results remain the same. The nation's college freshmen and seniors
again scored just over 50 percent, or an F, on the exam, statistically
corroborating and confirming the initial study's findings that ISI released
last September.
The study of more than 14,000 randomly selected college freshmen and
seniors at 50 U.S. colleges and universities was conducted on behalf of ISI
by the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy (UConnDPP)
--- which administered a 60 multiple-choice question civic literacy test
about America's history, government, international relations and market
economy. For the first time, ISI's American civic literacy test is
available in its entirety along with the full results at
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org.
"Virtually every institution of higher learning claims some form of
citizenship, leadership, or national service in their mission statement,"
adds Bunting. "However, the evidence from our ongoing research shows that
colleges are failing to advance students' knowledge of America's history,
government and free market economics and consequently not preparing their
students to be informed and engaged citizens."
Critics have long expressed their concern that the nation's colleges
are not teaching what students need to know to effectively participate in
the American political process. ISI and its research partners at UConnDPP,
a nationally and internationally recognized leader in the field of public
policy and public opinion research, have now surveyed nearly 35,000
freshmen and seniors at 85 colleges. They have gathered and analyzed data
that provides statistically valid evidence that institutions of higher
learning, especially the most expensive and elite schools, are failing to
effectively teach America's history and founding principles.
Prestige Doesn't Buy Knowledge
In contrast to the performance of students from high profile, elite
schools, smaller regional institutions such as Concordia University in
Nebraska and Marian College in Wisconsin scored among the highest for
civic-knowledge gained (based on the differential between average scores of
seniors and freshmen). Their presidents earn less than $167,000 a year. The
top college for teaching America's history and founding principles is a
public, liberal arts college, Eastern Connecticut State University ---
reaffirming that prestige doesn't buy knowledge.
At the bottom of the civic-knowledge gain rankings are Cornell, Yale,
Duke and Princeton --- four prestigious colleges that cost more than
$30,000 per year. Their presidents earn at least $500,000 a year. Rhodes
College (Memphis, Tennessee), whose student scores topped the rankings last
year, ranks first again among the 18 colleges included in both the 2005 and
2006 studies.
Overall, the average score for college seniors in the new study was
54.2 percent, which is consistent with the average of 53.2 percent posted
by seniors in the findings released last year. Freshmen scored an average
50.4 percent, down from 51.7 percent. Therefore, both seniors and freshmen
scored an "F" on the American civic literacy test and not one college
surveyed can boast that its seniors scored, on average, even a "C" in
American civic knowledge. Harvard seniors posted the highest score, 69.56
percent correct; however, it ranked 17th in knowledge gained by students as
its freshmen score was 63.59 percent correct.
In an attempt to alleviate these failures, the new ISI report
encourages students, parents, faculty, trustees and legislators to demand
accountability. Five questions of accountability are offered in the report
in hope that they will help inspire constructive engagement leading to
positive changes in college curricula.
Questions of Accountability
1: Are parents and students getting their money's worth from college
costs?
The College Board estimates the average out-of-state cost for a
four-year public college is $22,743. (The average out-of-state cost for the
50 colleges surveyed in the ISI study was $21,986.) College costs continue
to rise, yet the least expensive colleges increase civic knowledge more
than the most expensive. If parents and students believe a college
education ought to increase a student's knowledge of America, then clearly
they are not getting their money's worth from most schools in the survey.
2: Are taxpayers and legislators getting their money's worth from
college subsidies?
Colleges enjoying larger subsidies in the form of government-funded
grants to students tend to increase civic knowledge less than colleges
enjoying smaller such subsidies. For instance, The College Board reports
that the average Yale freshman received $11,102 in government grants to
help defray the costs of attending Yale. Yale seniors, meanwhile, scored
3.09 points lower than Yale freshmen on the civic literacy exam.
3: Are alumni and philanthropists getting their money's worth from the
donations they make to colleges?
In 2006, according to the Council for Aid to Education, individuals,
foundations, corporations, religious groups and other organizations
voluntarily contributed $28 billion to American colleges. Some of the
worst-performing colleges also have the largest, most rapidly growing
endowments. These include Yale, Penn, Duke, Princeton, and Cornell.
4: Are college trustees getting their money's worth from college
presidents?
The results from the study indicate that trustees are not getting their
money's worth.
The report states that while college presidents are increasingly
compensated like top executives of leading corporations, there seems to be
no linkage between their salaries and the civic knowledge students gain ---
or lose --- at their schools.
"College presidents normally do not dictate their school's academic
programs or initiate new faculty hires, but their public pronouncements can
significantly impact the choices made by faculty," says Mike Ratliff, ISI
senior vice president.
5: Are colleges encouraging students to take enough courses about
America's history and institutions and then assessing the quality of these
courses?
The average senior had completed only four courses in the combined
subject areas of history, political science and economics. At seven
colleges, most seniors had not completed even one American history course.
But more courses taken did not always mean more knowledge gained. While at
some schools students' knowledge about America increased significantly with
each seemingly relevant course completed, at others it increased little or
decreased. The question might then be are colleges offering quality courses
in these subject areas.
More Key Findings
Do College Students Learn More Than Elementary School Students?
According to ISI's report, a 5-year-old kindergartener would have
scored about 20 percent on the American civic literacy exam simply by
guessing. The average college freshman scored 50.4 percent. That means one
can estimate that the average student's score increased 30.4 points --- or
2.3 points per year --- in the 13 years from kindergarten through 12th
grade. After three years of college, however, the average senior scored
54.2 percent, a gain of only 3.8 points, or about 1.3 points per year. The
college annual rate of gain was only about half the pre-college annual rate
gain.
American Colleges Under-Serve Minority Students
On average, minority seniors (Asian, Black, Hispanic and Multi-racial)
answered less than half the exam questions correctly and made no
significant overall gain in civic knowledge during college. Civic-knowledge
gain among whites was six times greater.
Higher Quality Family Life Contributes to More Learning about America
College seniors whose families engaged in frequent conversations about
current events and history, whose parents were married and living together,
and who came from homes where English was the primary language all tended
to learn more than students who lacked these advantages. For example,
students from families that frequently discussed current events and history
gained 2.3 percentage points more on average than students from families
that did not.
American Colleges Don't Teach their Foreign Students about America
The typical foreign senior had not taken a single course on American
history. Additionally, the average foreign senior gained a statistically
meaningless 0.2 points in knowledge about America's relations with the
world and the overall average gain in civic knowledge for foreign students
was a statistically meaningless one tenth of one point. Colleges thus
squander an opportunity to foster greater understanding of America's
institutions in an increasingly hostile world.
Working Toward Change
The news isn't all bad. At a number of campuses across the country,
faculty are working to address the dearth of civic knowledge demonstrated
by the American civic literacy survey by establishing new academic centers
for the teaching of America's history and founding principles.
Established centers, such as Harvard University's Program in
Constitutional Government, are invigorating efforts on their campuses. A
new center was approved at Tufts University earlier this year, and other
recently established centers are already operating at the University of
Chicago; the University of Colorado-Boulder; Emory University; Georgetown
University; the University of Texas-Austin; and the University of Virginia.
ISI's Jack Miller Center for the Teaching of America's Founding Principles
is dedicated to supporting the establishment of these academic centers of
excellence.
"While ISI's Jack Miller Center for the Teaching of America's Founding
Principles is beginning to make an impact, higher education's key
decision-makers must do so much more if we want to improve the teaching of
America's history and institutions," says T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., president
of ISI. "American higher education, especially some of our most prestigious
institutions, is not doing its duty to prepare the next generation to
maintain our legacy of liberty."
About the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) was founded in 1953 to
further, in successive generations of American college youth, a better
understanding of the economic, political, and ethical values that sustain a
free and humane society. With ISI's volunteer representatives at over 900
colleges, and with more than 50,000 ISI student and faculty members on
virtually every campus in the country, ISI directs tens of thousands of
young people each year to a wide array of educational programs that deepen
their understanding of the American ideal of ordered liberty.
About ISI's Jack Miller Center for the Teaching of America's Founding
Principles
The Jack Miller Center for the Teaching of America's Founding
Principles was established in 2004 at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
by Jack Miller, a successful Chicago businessman and philanthropist. Its
mission is to strengthen on college and university campuses the teaching of
America's founding principles--limited government, individual liberty, free
market economics, the rule of law, private property, and personal
responsibility. The Jack Miller Center provides support for new academic
centers of excellence and helps grow the number of professors teaching
America's heritage and founding principles through summer institutes,
ongoing support, and networking efforts.
Appendix
Intercollegiate Studies Institute's Ranking of Colleges by Learning Added to or Subtracted from Students' Knowledge of America's History and Its Institutions During the Baccalaureate
Rank by
Value Freshman Senior Value
Added College Mean Mean Added
1 Eastern Conn. State Univ.* 31.34% 40.99% +9.65%
2 Marian College (WI)* 33.66 43.10 9.44
3 Murray State University* (KY) 40.63 49.75 9.12
4 Concordia University* (NE) 46.29 55.28 8.99
5 St. Cloud State Univ.* (MN) 35.67 44.26 8.59
6 Mississippi State University* 42.50 50.86 8.36
7 Pfeiffer University* (NC) 36.05 44.30 8.25
8 Illinois State University* 42.74 50.93 8.19
9 Iowa State University* 45.03 52.69 7.66
10 University of Mississippi 41.87 49.32 7.45
11 Smith College (MA) 52.63 60.07 7.44
12 Rhodes College (TN) 53.76 61.18 7.42
13 University of Montana* 45.54 52.16 6.62
14 Idaho State University* 41.76 48.15 6.39
15 University of Wisconsin 51.57 57.87 6.30
16 Univer. of Southern Maine* 37.48 43.58 6.10
17 Harvard University 63.59 69.56 5.97
18 University of Notre Dame 55.66 61.25 5.59
19 Mt. Vernon Nazarene Univ.* (OH)40.04 44.60 4.56
20 Washington & Lee University 62.46 66.98 4.52
21 Calvin College (MI) 51.99 56.45 4.46
22 University of Florida 48.96 53.40 4.44
23 University of North Carolina 53.26 57.68 4.42
24 Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities*49.18 53.50 4.32
25 University of Michigan 46.68 51.00 4.32
26 University of Washington 51.63 55.88 4.25
27 Gonzaga University (WA) 47.71 51.86 4.15
28 University of Rochester* (NY) 55.69 59.32 3.63
29 Grove City College (PA) 63.64 67.26 3.62
30 Georgia College and State Univ.*40.28 43.68 3.40
31 Bowdoin College (ME) 59.50 62.86 3.36
32 University of Georgia* 54.48 57.76 3.28
33 Carnegie Mellon University* 54.06 56.90 2.84
34 St. Thomas University* (FL) 29.75 32.50 2.75
35 Texas State Univ.-San Marcos* 41.25 43.99 2.74
36 Texas A&M International Univ.* 38.43 41.14 2.71
37 George Mason University (VA) 47.28 49.96 2.68
38 University of Virginia 62.95 65.28 2.33
39 Brown University 63.42 65.64 2.22
40 Wheaton College (IL) 62.87 64.98 2.11
41 University of Pennsylvania 62.66 63.49 0.83
42 Univ. of Massachusetts-Amherst* 46.10 46.66 0.56
43 Oakwood College* (AL) 35.17 34.69 -0.48
44 Univ. of California-Berkeley 57.03 56.27 -0.76
45 Rutgers University* 50.93 49.99 -0.94
46 Princeton University 63.60 61.90 -1.70
47 St. John's University* (NY) 41.69 39.82 -1.87
48 Duke University 65.66 63.41 -2.25
49 Yale University 68.94 65.85 -3.09
50 Cornell University 61.90 56.95 -4.95
* Randomly Selected School
