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Alberts: changes are already under way. Credit: RICHARD T. NOWITZ

Research universities in the United States consistently ignore the needs of their undergraduate students, failing to let them do research or even to find out what it involves, says a report released this week.

A commission set up by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to investigate undergraduate education also finds that the leading universities provide undergraduates with few of the communication or other skills needed in a job.

The commission finds that the research universities — which award about half of all undergraduate degrees in science and engineering in the United States — continue to teach science using methods borrowed from liberal art schools a century ago and clumsily adapted to the massed ranks of undergraduates now accepted each year.

It finds that the undergraduates, as well as being badly taught, are largely excluded from the intellectual life of the universities. They are, in the commission's words, “second-class citizens who are allowed to pay taxes but barred from voting, the guests at the banquet who pay their share of the tab but are given leftovers”. It blames incentive schemes that encourage faculty members to value research above teaching, as well as general resistance to change in university departments.

The commission started its work under the tutelage of Ernest Boyer, former president of the Carnegie Foundation, and continued after his death under the leadership of Shirley Kenny, president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Its criticisms of the universities, which resonate with growing resentment in the United States over the fees they charge undergraduates, received intense media coverage when they were released.

But the commission's recommendations for change promise little relief for the bank balances of students. Top of the list of ten changes that it says the universities should make is the replacement of lecturing of massed ranks of first-year students with enquiry-based methods, including personal attention through seminars. “The focal point of the first year should be a small seminar taught by experienced faculty,” the commission says.

This personal attention should continue through mentoring throughout the degree course, it suggests. Departmental boundaries should be breached to encourage interdisciplinary work, which “must reflect students' needs rather than departmental interests”. Communication skills should be integrated into teaching, the commission says, noting that “the failure of research universities seems most serious in conferring degrees upon inarticulate students”.

Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences and a member of the commission, says progress is under way to address many of its findings. At Stanford University in California, he says, first-year students take at least one enquiry-based course, and staff promotion is considered by a committee with a member who assesses teaching performance.