Declining by Degrees

In EDEA 646, American College Students, we watched a PBS documentary, Declining by Degrees, and I thought it was especially relevant to the Curriculum class because it identified some major issues with higher education that we discussed about the instruction paradigm. The documentary explored the pressures facing institutions to retain students, pressure on professors to grade on a curve to retain students, and the surface level learning methods students employ to get by in their classes. The documentary reinforced much of what was discussed in Tagg’s book about the instruction paradigm and basically delineated all that was wrong with our higher education system of this age. I've linked it below. If you have time, I highly suggest watching!

Students interviewed describe how they are beating the system and using surface learning methods by doing the least amount of work to get the desired grade. Interestingly, the faculty in the documentary described this phenomenon as "sleepwalking through college". Complaints on either side (administration, faculty, students) are prevalent in this video. Who will accept responsibility?

During one particularly interesting moment, one of the interviewees mentioned efficiency as the motivating factor in the teaching process. Some students had complained that they felt that they were lost in large lecture-style classes. My initial thought during this moment was how can teaching be efficient, in the true sense? By nature, the give and take of information requires critical thinking, disagreement, dissonance, follow up, and critique. That process is not about efficiency. Making teaching efficient is contradictory...efficiency is for factory lines in manufacturing plants (reminds me of the RSA Animate video we watched earlier in class). What about effectiveness? 

The higher education system has become so much more profit-minded and career-oriented that concepts like efficiency is overpowering effectiveness. And students are graduating with pieces of paper that don't necessarily mean much anymore. There's no way to gauge if they are actually learning. Grades certainly don't mean what they used to mean. And I'm not sure if ever meant what it was supposed to mean either.  

Should higher education be valuing efficiency over effectiveness?