Regents VP grills universities on lack of issue-based classes

The vice president of the Board of Regents blasted the state’s three universities for turning out students who know nothing about global warming and the other key issues of the day.

“What universities need to do is undertake their primary mission of fully educating our students so that they realize that they have challenges ahead,” Ernest Calderón said Monday. “It’ll be their generation that probably has to solve these challenges.”

Calderón told a conference on climate change that the gap in education became obvious in his efforts to recruit a college graduate to help market his new law firm.

So far he has interviewed 17 students, all Arizona college graduates with grade point averages of 3.4 or better. He took the opportunity to query them about global warming.

“I have had one that said it’s something about the icebergs melting and the water coming up,” he said.

“These are your finest,” he told his audience, specifically noting the presence of the presidents of all three universities. “You must be proud!”

Calderón did not limit his criticism to administration.

He said faculty members have been worrying more about time off and salaries than ensuring students get the well-rounded education they need.

“You have the power now, faculty, to make a change,” he said. “Teach something in this university that every student has to learn.”

Calderón said all incoming students should have to take at least one course on issues — and not just global warming.

He said most students are ignorant of the tenets of Islam despite the religion’s rapid growth.

And he said students also should have at least a general background in other pressing subjects, like DNA.

If nothing else, Calderón said that course, which would include both faculty and guest lecturers, would provide a basis for students to ask questions during the rest of their college education about how what they are being taught relates to these issues.

All three university presidents were cool to the idea of a specific course.

But they conceded students may need some additional breadth in their education.For example, University of Arizona President Robert Shelton said his bias, as someone who taught physics, would be to require everyone to take more science, “not to do quantum-chromodynamic calculations but to understand how mag-lev trains work, understand how solar panels work, semiconductor physics, to understand radiation and how overhead power lines are not going to cause cancer.”

Michael Crow said Arizona State University already has some of that, albeit in a very compressed form known as “ASU 101,” where all incoming students must attend five lectures, one on “sustainability.”

But even Crow conceded universities “teach in isolation.”

“We don’t give tools to everyone so that they understand what ‘physical models’ mean,” enabling them to interpret what researchers produce, he said. “We don’t give tools to our scientists so that they understand the limits of political systems.

“We are producing individuals who are incapable — increasingly so, by the way — of communicating with each other,” he said.

Northern Arizona University President John Haeger said all universities require students to take a number of what he called “general education” courses to provide a broad background. But he noted there are universities that provide the kind of background Calderon is suggesting.

He said Portland State University in Oregon organizes its entire freshman year around problems of the city, ranging from housing to government.

“It has a marvelous impact on them and drives them quicker to their chosen specialty,” Haeger said.