James Côté

Editor’s Note: James Côté is a full professor in the department of sociology at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario, Canada, where he has taught since the early 1980s. He is co-author (with Anton L. Allahar) of the book Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis (University of Toronto Press, 2007).

While researching my recent book – Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis – and taking it through the review process, I have witnessed firsthand massive denial of the fact that our university system has problems rivaling those found in the United States. Yet we share with the United States the twin problems of grade inflation and students’ academic disengagement. We also face a third problem – university graduate underemployment, which has been well documented in Canada.

Grade inflation in the United States, especially in Ivy League schools, has received a considerable amount of press for some time. More recently, the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) studies have highlighted academic disengagement. The NSSE studies measure the demands placed on students, and the effort they expend, through annual surveys with students themselves. In both Canada and the U.S., the NSSE results show that only about 10 percent of students do the level of work that professors think is necessary to be proficient in the subjects they teach.