BEYOND ACCESS: WHAT ELSE TO WRITE ABOUT COLLEGE, VOLUME 1
by Linda Perlstein, EWA’s public editor

Newspaper and magazine journalists write a whole lot of stories about getting into college. They write a whole lot about paying for college. But what about going to college?

Consider this column the first in a series encouraging you to think more broadly about higher ed stories. To me, there’s one big bald spot in college coverage: what, and how, students are learning. These may not be the easiest stories to find, or to write, but we owe it to our readers to explain what they and their children and grandchildren are getting for that $2,000, or $20,000, or $200,000.

And not just in an "Is America developing its workforce?" sort of way. But rather by looking at trends in teaching and learning, the same way we do when we write about third-grade reading interventions, or high school forensic science classes, or the loss of arts classes in middle school, or standardized test prep.

Of course, everyone who writes regularly about colleges should read Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education, which both cover academic issues very well. (See, recently, Jennifer Howard on a new focus on teaching writers about reading, on or the latest translation sensation: the Aeneid. Subscription required for both articles.) Meet not necessarily with the university president but with the provost, the dean of arts and sciences, or the dean in charge of teaching, and ask them who is doing creative work with curricula and teaching methods. Colleges often highlight interesting professors on their home pages; click through to see if there are any worth meeting.

And, of course, get into the classroom. Narrow down the vast universe of learning by following your own knowledge and interests: Check out the subjects you studied in during college and see how things have changed, by visiting classrooms and disciplinary conferences. Did you major in romance languages? Because among today’s practical-minded students, there’s perhaps no more endangered species than the Italian or French major.

What other stories might you find on campus? Scott Jaschik, the editor of Inside Higher Ed, suggests several trends worth watching, which his site has covered: The adoption of a new approach to the hard sciences—less technological, more humanitarian—that appeals to female students. Attempts not just to catch students plagiarizing—we’ve all seen those stories—but to nip cheating in the bud by teaching, preemptively, what academic integrity looks like. The massive roadblock of remedial math, which might be the highest-enrolled subject on campuses today.

John Plotz, an English professor at Brandeis University in Boston, suggests that reporters look at the huge emphasis colleges today place on experiential learning, credits granted for practical experience such as internships. (This is also called active or integrated learning.) The bigger picture, he suggests, is how the outside world is now enmeshed in the university experience; no longer is college seen as four years within a bubble that you then pop out of.

Nor is it necessarily seen as four years. To save money, Plotz points out, students are piling on credits to graduate in three years. There are lots of questions to raise here. Do students in these circumstances choose majors based not on their interests but on which they can complete most quickly? Do they game the system by picking courses just because they count for two or three different graduation requirements at the same time?

Finally, Plotz says, "the digital version of everything is the huge question on campus." What’s interesting, he says, is not so much that students are using laptops or iPods in class, but that technology has transformed even humanities education. He points to his colleague Leonard Muellner, who has been translating the Iliad for ages. Muellner now has the project online, where undergraduates can weigh in on it, line by line.

One of the biggest stories in higher ed today is, of course, online learning. Instead of just writing about increased enrollment in such courses, investigate what it looks like for students. Spend some time with them as they do their work, and visit a live class covering the same subject, for comparison.

A "university," by definition, encompasses a massive range of experiences and ideas. A reporter could write only about academic life and never run out of things to say. "The story of the intellectual trajectory through those four years isn’t one story," Plotz says. "If it’s successful, it’s a thousand stories."

THE EDUCATED REPORTER
The only thing certain about No Child Left Behind’s future is that you’re going to have to write about it when politicians finally decide what to do about it. So this is a good a time as any to brush up on the history of federal education policy. You could read Diane Ravitch’s Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, and you probably should one day, but I’m going to pitch something a little more accessible. (And anyway, I’m saving my Ravitch allotment for the next column, because there’s a book of hers I like better.)

I’m talking instead about Political Education: National Policy Comes of Age (Teachers College Press, 2004). This book, by Christopher Cross, couldn’t be more straightforward. But it’s unwonky to be given five stars on Amazon.com, it’s only 171 pages, and every K-12 reporter should understand the history Cross lays out.

Cross, who has worked on congressional staffs and at the Education Department, takes the reader through not just the what of federal education policy—post-World War II school construction, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s place in President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the history of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, and the evolution of the current accountability movement—but he also clearly explains why. Now more than ever, what happens among politicians in Washington affects what happens in the classroom. It’s a great idea to understand how we got here.

Linda Perlstein can be reached at lperlstein@ewa.org.