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" Despite the hours spent debating different models of general education, the choices faculties make rarely lead to any significant difference in the cognitive development of undergraduates. "
Derek Bok
Choices
Education
Development
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" The most obvious purpose of college education is to help students acquire information and knowledge by acquainting them with facts, theories, generalizations, principles, and the like. This purpose scarcely requires justification. "
Derek Bok
Purpose
Knowledge
Education
" Efforts to develop critical thinking falter in practice because too many professors still lecture to passive audiences instead of challenging students to apply what they have learned to new questions. "
Derek Bok
Practice
Questions
Thinking
" I believe that Harvard can have, and must have, a strong affirmative action program that reflects our commitment to equal opportunity while fully respecting the academic standards of the University. "
Derek Bok
Opportunity
Strong
Believe
" Although professors regard improving critical thinking as the most important goal of college, tests reveal that seniors who began their studies with average critical thinking skills have progressed only from the 50th percentile of entering freshmen to about the 69th percentile. "
Derek Bok
Goal
Important
College
" Colleges and universities, for all the benefits they bring, accomplish far less for their students than they should. Many students graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers... reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, non-technical problems. "
Derek Bok
Accomplish
Enough
Reason
" Critics of American colleges typically attribute the failings of undergraduate education to a tendency on the part of professors to neglect their teaching to concentrate on research. In fact, the evidence does not support this thesis, except perhaps in major research universities. "
Derek Bok
Education
Research
American
" The first country to adopt happiness as an official goal of public policy is the tiny little country of Bhutan in Asia near China and India. "
Derek Bok
India
Country
Goal
" Greater inequality in Europe has made people less happy. "
Derek Bok
Happy
Inequality
Less
" The college that takes students with modest entering abilities and improves their abilities substantially contributes more than the school that takes very bright students and helps them develop only modestly. "
Derek Bok
Students
Bright
School
" Ever since economists revealed how much universities contribute to economic growth, politicians have paid close attention to higher education. "
Derek Bok
Education
Growth
Higher Education
" There's a great deal of difference between thinking reflectively about moral issues and achieving higher standards of ethical behavior. "
Derek Bok
Behavior
Thinking
Achieving
" What college is all about is some kind of 4-year game about who is going to end up with the highest grades. And I don't mean to say that academic achievement isn't important. But it is, after all, a means to an end. "
Derek Bok
Grades
Achievement
College
" Once you start worrying about a national football championship, then you begin to worry about getting the quality of athlete, and the numbers needed, to win a national championship. And that worry leads to pressure to compromise academic standards to admit those athletes. "
Derek Bok
Start
Win
Football
" Freshly minted Ph.Ds typically teach the way their favorite professors taught. "
Derek Bok
Professors
Taught
Teach
" I think any self-respecting educational institution ought to judge its policies by its best estimate of what their long-term consequences for their students and for the society will be. "
Derek Bok
Best
Society
Judge
" I suspect that no community will become humane and caring by restricting what its members can say. "
Derek Bok
Community
Will
Become
" The vast majority of students probably emerge from college with an adequate grasp of no more than a single method of inquiry. Even this capacity may erode over time if it does not relate to experiences and problems that recur in the student's later life. "
Derek Bok
Student
Life
College
" Early admission programs tend to advantage the advantaged. "
Derek Bok
Early
Admission
Tend
" Most high governmental officials who speak of education policy seem to conceive of education in this light - as a way to ensure economic competitiveness and continued economic growth. I strongly disagree with this approach. "
Derek Bok
Growth
Speak
Light
" The University has a moral obligation to provide equal opportunities to women, minority persons and all other groups who work or seek to work at Harvard. "
Derek Bok
Equal
Work
Women
" There are no tests similar to SATs to tell us how much undergraduates know. State legislators, who appropriate billions of dollars each year to higher education, are naturally interested in finding out what they are getting for their money. "
Derek Bok
Money
Year
Education
" Universities are in a position where they can think very creatively. "
Derek Bok
Position
Where
Very
" Teaching methods are often inadequate for the goals faculties are trying to achieve. Important courses such as expository writing and foreign languages are frequently taught by untrained graduate students and underpaid adjunct teachers. "
Derek Bok
Writing
Goals
Taught
" I don't think the alternative to Yale is jail by any means. On the other hand, there is a mass of research that does show that there are real advantages to your subsequent career in going to selective institutions. "
Derek Bok
Real
Research
Career
" What we are doing in educating students is trying to prepare them to live more fulfilling lives for the decades after they graduate. And trying to provide a better, richer, fairer, more decent society for the generations after. "
Derek Bok
Live
Society
Trying
" Colleges do not merely offer preparation for the future; they occupy four years of a student's life, and an institution should do what it can to make these years absorbing and enjoyable. "
Derek Bok
Four
Student
Preparation
" I think it's sort of an outrage that companies should have to hire firms to teach the college graduates they employ how to write. "
Derek Bok
Hire
College
Write
" Doctoral training is devoted almost entirely to learning to do research, even though most Ph.Ds who enter academic life spend far more time teaching than they do conducting experiments or writing books. "
Derek Bok
Training
Writing
Time
" Economists who have studied the relationship between education and economic growth confirm what common sense suggests: The number of college degrees is not nearly as important as how well students develop cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving ability. "
Derek Bok
Education
Relationship
Growth
" Fewer than half of all university professors publish as much as one article per year. "
Derek Bok
Half
Professors
University