Keywords: Admissions

Boyer, Ernest L. College: The Undergraduate Experience in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.

Boyer's College: The Undergraduate Experience in America contains many of the same arguments, problems, and solutions as are found in Charles Sikes's Profscam, albeit Boyer goes through all this without the hysteria and manages to rely more on statistics than anecdotes.

It begins with the admissions process, comparing the myths and realities of student expectations for how the process works and what college life will be like. Student disillusionment can begin with misleading brochures used to recruit students. These brochures often give a rosy picture of college life. The ACT and SAT entrance examinations are popularly thought of as vital to college entrance, but the reality is that the majority of admissions officers barely look at such scores. So Boyer gives much advice on how to choose a college, and recommends ways colleges and universities can give more accurate portrayals of themselves.

When students arrive at the college of their choice, a week-long orientation to the campus is recommended to give students a base of shared activities and friendships with which to begin their new lives. Another part of orientation should work towards acquainting students with the rigors of scholarship.

Boyer assigns administrators the task of developing a statement of purpose for each university. But, while he acknowledges the difficulty of getting a cross-section of faculty members to agree to any such statement, he does little more than say, in effect, "Let's try harder."

The faculty and the curriculum have their usual problems discussed with the usual recommendations. For faculty, the old conflict between research and teaching is discussed. As you would expect, Boyer calls for an increased emphasis on teaching, but he does this without rebutting the arguments for emphasizing research. The curriculum is torn between the high standards-we-need-the-humanities party and the vocational/practical knowledge party. Boyer's solution to this conflict is to say that knowledge of a discipline is not complete until it overlaps another discipline, thereby emphasizing the need to interconnect branches of knowledge and make it easier for students to learn.

Boyer also discusses the need for on-campus activities as a necessary means of building a sense of community for students. Finally, he discusses the difficulty of developing a sense of community among commuter students.