The Faculty-Student Low-Low Contract

In too many college courses, faculty and students appear to why college students are not learning. Evidence for the engage in what I term a "low-low contract." Students have "low-low contract"is manifest in the sharp reductions in ·--low-ex-pectations0f-faculty.with-respecLto--teaching_.and. __ recenL)!.ear.s.iu.lh.eJlIJ)Q]LIJ1.QLtjme.(lllcl§ffgr:LfacllltyAi;:Voti;:._ faculty have low expectations of students with respect to studying. To put it colloquially, "faculty pretend to teach, students pretend to study, and as long as parents and others paying the bills are oblivious, everyone is happy." Numerous popular books have claimed, often in highly moralistic anellor cynical terms, that rather than teaching and learning being the primary focus oftoday's universities and colleges, faculty have become overly invested in their research; students more interested in partying than studying; sports have been given top priority (evidenced by the fact that some football coaches are paid far better than university presidents); and vast sums of money have been spent on student amenities from climbing walls to dorms with high end· suites. With the publication of Richard Arum's and Josipa Roksa's highly discussed book, Academically Adrift, we have the beginnings of hard scientific evidence that universities and colleges are, in fact, failing to educate the current cohort of students. What Arum and Roksa show in their book (and in a subsequent report) is that students' critical thinking skills develop little if at all during their college years. Their research provides verification that higher education is giving far too little attention to teaching and learning. The focus of this short essay is on why the incentives for faculty to teach and for students to study are now such that we have the "low-low contract," an obvious explanation for