Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis.

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

A check of a recent Maclean’s university issue will reveal a low level of student engagement at most Canadian universities, at least as identified by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). By engagement NSSE means student participation in programs and activities that institutions provide for their learning and personal development. Such findings would not surprise Côté and Allahar, two seasoned sociology professors at the University of Western Ontario who have tracked changes in higher education for more than a quarter century. It is their view that a series of complex interrelating developments have created the phenomenon. First, the authors see a society that places an increasing premium on credentials. These days a B.A. or equivalent is an essential requirement for most jobs and this pressure from the job market is felt right through the system. Because a certain minimum average is required for entry to university, at the high school level there is an insidious pressure on teachers to pass their students with sufficient averages that they can go onward.

These same pressures are felt at university, but there are extra insidious financial pressures as all government in recent years have reduced the level of per capita funding, and increasingly thrown the costs of education on students. What university wants to be known as tough to get in—and tougher still to get out? For students, the pressures to maintain a sufficient grade point average are often compounded by new financial pressures that keep many working as they go to school. No wonder it is hard to keep them engaged. Meanwhile their professors, faced with many students there for the marks rather than the education, become disengaged themselves, particularly as they face their own new pressures to publish. Many give in and award marks higher than warranted—articularly since these very same students get to grade them in year-end course evaluations.

Côté and Allahar have identified a series of developments that no one can deny exist. Some will dispute their research, some their conclusions, but everyone in the post-secondary sector needs to read this book.