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University of Minnesota President Bob Bruininks’ Oct. 19 guest column was unsettling. In it, Bruininks states, “We need both [quality and affordability] in order to be a leading public university; if we price ourselves out of the market in an effort to be world-class we will cease to be public in any meaningful sense, and if we fail to invest in quality we will slide quickly into mediocrity.”
I agree that affordability is a critical ingredient for a leading public university. However, tuition at the University of Minnesota has more than doubled over the past 10 years. As a result, University graduates are faced with the highest debt loads in the Big 10. Increasing tuition won’t reduce either of these figures, yet tuition increases are already planned and seem as though they will become de rigueur in the foreseeable future. How will these planned tuition increases combat the University pricing itself out of the market?
In his letter, Bruininks states that sharing knowledge in our classrooms is part of what we do here at the University. But it is common knowledge among undergrads that average test scores in most of the introductory math and science courses at the University are somewhere between 40 and 60 percent. Without a curve, about half of the people in the class would have failed. A midterm average in a class I recently took here was 32 percent. This seems to be business as usual at the University, even though these numbers clearly indicate an instructional problem. If no one is passing the tests, no one is learning anything.
According to Bruininks, “Minnesota has numerous colleges and universities that focus primarily on teaching and leave research and outreach to us …” Should students at the University not expect to be taught in their classes? Have 50,000 undergrads made a “false choice” by choosing the University, where education is apparently not the primary focus? Are we not sliding “quickly into mediocrity” yet?
Russell Ericson
University undergraduate student
Serving the University of Minnesota Community since 1900
1 Comment
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Bravo
Thank you for articulating the reasons Bruininks' statements were unsettling. It is painful to think that in our outrageously expensive education, we are perhaps discouraged from expecting teachers to dedicate their efforts to teaching in a way that promotes success. Ever since the introduction of "strategic positioning" (and the squeezing-out of General College, a primary point of access to the U for students who might have attended poorly-funded public schools and had fewer opportunities for college prep), I have been increasingly suspicious of all this talk of "research." Research is a valuable component of our undergraduate studies, but so is instruction and guidance by qualified, professional and dedicated leaders. Unfortunately, although research is valuable in every field, it seems the trend is to funnel research dollars toward the sciences, while arts and humanities too often have to make do with outdated or limited facilities and resources. This lack of investment in the talents and abilities of our creative, artistic and literary student communities only iterates the age-old superiority of math and science. It's tiresome, Bobby Bruininks.