Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, former Harvard President Derek Bok examines how much progress college students actually make toward widely accepted goals of undergraduate education. His conclusions are sobering. Although most students make gains in many important respects, they improve much less than they should in such important areas as writing, critical thinking, quantitative skills, and moral reasoning. Large majorities of college seniors do not feel that they have made substantial progress in speaking a foreign language, acquiring cultural and aesthetic interests, or learning what they need to know to become active and informed citizens. Overall, despite their vastly increased resources, more powerful technology, and hundreds of new courses, colleges cannot be confident that students are learning more than they did fifty years ago.

Looking further, Bok finds that many important college courses are left to the least experienced teachers and that most professors continue to teach in ways that have proven to be less effective than other available methods. In reviewing their educational programs, however, faculties typically ignore this evidence. Instead, they spend most of their time discussing what courses to require, although the lasting impact of college will almost certainly depend much more on how the courses are taught.

In his final chapter, Bok describes the changes that faculties and academic leaders can make to help students accomplish more. Without ignoring the contributions that America's colleges have made, Bok delivers a powerful critique--one that educators will ignore at their peril.

Former president of Harvard U. and a longtime specialist and frequent author on higher education, Bok has written a lengthy and thoughtful excursus on the complex question of what colleges can and should teach. Including many concrete examples and situating the larger issues within their historical context, Bok discusses a wide range of topics, including the role of higher education as a place where, in addition to learning, students learn how to communicate, think, interact with others, understand and embrace other cultures, become thoughtful citizens, and prepare for a professional life. Throughout, attention is paid to the role and method used by faculty and administration both in sustaining the status quo and introducing useful change. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Bok in this book criticizes the state of undergraduate education. . . . His research suggests that common problems in education extend beyond K-12.

Derek Bok's is readable, balanced, often wry, and wise. This book should be required reading for every curriculum committee and academic dean. As someone who has lived his whole life in the academy, Bok knows how to bring institutional practice in line with research on how students learn best. In a period when many other countries are working hard at improving undergraduate education, this book should serve as a spur to overcome the complacency that attends most discussions of American undergraduate education, especially in our leading institutions.

Bok focuses not on curriculum change but on pedagogy. He asks why college teachers have not taken more advantage of the extensive research that has been done on the conditions that allow students to learn most effectively.

Derek Bok makes a unique contribution by skillfully weaving his critique of campus and curriculum with an extensive review of the literature on student learning in a number of key areas. . . . Rather than identify a narrowly defined culprit in the supposed decline of higher education, Bok writes persuasively about the multiple aims of higher education and retains focus throughout on the question of how attention to each of these aims contributes to measurable increases in student learning. . . . This thoughtful critique of higher education will be accessible to a wide audience.

Derek Bok . . . points out in his recent book . . . that civic responsibility must be learned, that it is neither natural nor effortless.

What distinguishes from other books in the genre is the author's focus on what research has to say about what students are and are not learning, along with his insistence that institutions should put their money where their mouths are and invest in the teachers, teaching, and educational experiences that are likely to help them achieve their own chosen goals.

In , [Derek] Bok acts as both diagnostician and healer, wielding social-science statistics and professional studies to trace the etiology of today's illnesses and to recommend palliative treatments for what he has discovered.

Radical and conservative critics of undergraduate education have met their match in Derek Bok's new book. After carefully spelling out what the core purposes of undergraduate education should be--learning to communicate, learning to think critically, building good character, preparing for citizenship, living with diversity, preparing for a global society, developing breadth of interests, and preparing for a career--explains why undergraduate education in America is not as good as it could be and offers suggestions for improvement. Trustees, academic administrators, and faculty across the nation should all read Our Underachieving Colleges because Bok holds them all responsible for the deficiencies of our undergraduate programs and assigns each an important role in the quest for improvement. Perhaps his most important message is that undergraduate education is more than what goes on in the classroom; every aspect of life and decision making in academia is involved.

In his book, , Derek Bok, past-president of Harvard University, challenges postsecondary institutions to live up to their educational mandate. . . . [H]is stature in American higher education adds credibility and weight to his challenge. Also, the book is well researched and well argued. As such, it has the potential to motivate change. . . . If you are a senior administrator or board member, please read this book. If you are not, consider making a gift of it to someone else.

In, Derek Bok argues forcefully that those of us within the academy can do a much better job of educating our undergraduates, widening their vistas, and preparing them to succeed in life.

Derek Bok's most recent book, , is worth scrutinizing. . . . Bok is . . . on solid ground in pointing out that our colleges underachieve in preparing students for citizenship.

This book is a clarion call. Attention should be paid.

"Derek Bok's "Our Underachieving Colleges" is readable, balanced, often wry, and wise. This book should be required reading for every curriculum committee and academic dean. As someone who has lived his whole life in the academy, Bok knows how to bring institutional practice in line with research on how students learn best. In a period when many other countries are working hard at improving undergraduate education, this book should serve as a spur to overcome the complacency that attends most discussions of American undergraduate education, especially in our leading institutions."--Mary Patterson McPherson, President Emeritus of Bryn Mawr College and Vice President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

"A bookcase-worth of jeremiads, long on invective but short on evidence, decries the supposedly sorry state of undergraduate instruction. "The Closing of the American Mind, Illiberal Education, The University in Ruins": the titles give the game away. In "Our Underachieving Colleges," Derek Bok argues persuasively that, far from pinpointing a real crisis, these accounts are exercises in nostalgia, laments for an Edenic era that never existed. In jargon-free prose he makes accessible hitherto obscure studies on topics that range from students' satisfaction with their college experience to the efficacy of ethics courses. What's even more important, he draws on this research to advance useful and usable prescriptions for colleges that, while not doing badly, could do much better. For anyone with an open mind about the state of American higher education, "Our Underachieving Colleges" is indispensable reading."--David L. Kirp, Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley, author of "Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education"

"Radical and conservative critics of undergraduate education have met their match in Derek Bok's new book. After carefully spelling out what the core purposes of undergraduate education should be--learning to communicate, learning to think critically, building good character, preparing for citizenship, living with diversity, preparing for a global society, developing breadth of interests, and preparing for a career--"Our Underachieving Colleges" explains why undergraduate education in America is not as good as it could be and offers suggestions for improvement. Trustees, academic administrators, and faculty across the nation should all read Our Underachieving Colleges because Bok holds them all responsible for the deficiencies of our undergraduate programs and assigns each an important role in the quest for improvement. Perhaps his most important message is that undergraduate education is more than what goes on in the classroom; every aspect of life and decision making in academia is involved."--Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics and Director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI)

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

CHAPTER 1: The Evolution of American Colleges 11

CHAPTER 2: Faculty Attitudes toward Undergraduate Education 31

CHAPTER 3: Purposes 58

CHAPTER 4: Learning to Communicate 82

CHAPTER 5: Learning to Think 109

CHAPTER 6: Building Character 146

CHAPTER 7: Preparation for Citizenship 172

CHAPTER 8: Living with Diversity 194

CHAPTER 9: Preparing for a Global Society 225

CHAPTER 10: Acquiring Broader Interests 255

CHAPTER 11: Preparing for a Career 281

CHAPTER 12: Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education 310

Notes 345

Index 395