PBS television program interviews IU professor

Tonight PBS will ask us, "How good is higher education in America today?" They wonder if our educational experiences in colleges and universities actually measure up to our hopes and dreams of what they would be, and more importantly what we need our experiences to be.\nThe special in depth documentary report, Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk, examines this idea by looking through the eyes of students, parents, professors, and college administrators. They do this by looking at four schools, all representing an archetypal learning environment. They are: a private liberal college, a major state university, a regional public university and a community college.\nIt is PBS' stance that Declining by Degrees comes "in the midst of a growing national concern about quality, fueled in part by an increasing preoccupation with college rankings, grade inflation, declining academic standards, and overall concerns about the quality and readiness of America's workforce." \nThey also note that today nearly a dozen countries have a higher percentage of youth in college, a major change from recent years.\nThe program is a production of Learning Matters, Inc. and Peabody Award Winning correspondent John Merrow. Merrow, a former teacher, heads the not-for-profit organization, which for the past ten years has been producing reports about American education. \nFollowing 30 students and teachers, the program attempts to document the journey of higher education from applying to graduating, including the all-important first year. \nMike Morefield, a student at the University of Arizona and one of the students profiled, described his freshman experience for the program.\n"It's like somebody comes along with a pin right after high school, pops your bubble, picks you up, throws you naked in some college, and you've got to figure it out," Morefield said. \nThe show makes it a point to mention that 1,200 of Morefield's classmates were not able to "figure it out" and did not return for sophomore year.\nAnd PBS is not just going to raise questions without offering up valid solutions. Going well beyond the program, Merrow and former president of Trinity College Richard Hersh have compiled a book of essays focusing on the core problems in the world of today's educational systems and also numerous plans for improving the situation. The book also includes a forward by Tom Wolfe.\nIU faculty member George Kuh was also interviewed for his views on education. Kuh gave his own personal insight to Merrow's documentary.\n"Merrow paints a rather negative picture of current trends in undergraduate education. I see the glass as half full rather than half empty, however."\nKuh then applied the program's views to IU in particular.\n"There are a lot of new and exciting developments in education, especially for freshmen, and IU is doing a large number of those. I don't want people to walk away from the program feeling that no one is making efforts to successfully deal with the challenges posed to education," Kuh added. \nThere is also an accompanying Web site launched by Learning Matters, Inc., www.decliningbydegrees.org.\nAlong with Merrow's reporting, PBS also uses a team of highly accomplished commentators, including Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Frank Deford, senior writer with Sports Illustrated; and Lara Couturier, director of research with The Futures Project: Policy for Higher Education in a Changing World, among other scholars. \nMajor funding for the program was provided by Indianapolis based Lumina Foundation for Education. Other contributors include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Park Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation and the Spencer Foundation.\nThe program will air tonight at 9 p.m. on PBS (WTIU).