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• Mr. Merrow's commentary on education reform
• Declining By Degrees: Higher Education At Risk
• Mr. Merrow's bio

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Tavis: John Merrow is an award-winning journalist and a former English teacher who's been a longtime contributor to both public radio and public television. In 2001, he won the prestigious Peabody Award for his PBS special 'School Sleuth.' He's back on PBS later this week with a new documentary on higher education in America. The project is both a film and a book. It's called 'Declining By Degrees: Higher Education at Risk.' The documentary airs this Thursday night on most PBS stations. Here now a scene from 'Declining By Degrees.'

Woman: College education is an absolute necessity for any individual to enter and stay in the American middle class.

Narrator: But even with college a necessity, there are warning signs that all is not well in higher education. Drinking has always been a problem on campus, but today 39% of students admit to binge drinking.

Tavis: Mr. Merrow, nice to meet you.

John Merrow: Tavis.

Tavis: Glad to have you on. This--As I mentioned, this project is both a book and a documentary. The documentary, which airs, again, on most PBS stations this Thursday, follows essentially 30 students from admission to graduation.

Merrow: Well, we didn't spend the whole 4 years. We filmed for about 2 years. But that was the question: what actually happens between admission and graduation?

Tavis: What'd you find out? What happened?

Merrow: Not enough. Not enough. The standards are kind of flabby. There are two things going on. One is the standards have gotten low, so that there's kind of a nonaggression pact between an awful lot of faculty members and students, saying in effect, if you don't ask too much of me, if you don't bother me, I won't ask a lot of you. You'll get a good grade. I'll have time to do my research. So that's too common. About 20% of students are kind of treading water and getting through college with the same degree you got or I got. So that's not fair. The other thing that's happening is that, well, back at the time of the G.I. Bill, this country said education is a significant investment, a public investment, a worthwhile public investment. It's a good thing for Tavis to get educated, for John, and so on, because the whole country benefits. And we kept on doing that up until about the time Ronald Reagan became president, when people realized, hey, wait a minute. If this guy goes to college, he makes a lot more money, let him pay for it. And so for the last 25 years, we've been withdrawing the public investment so that now, as some wag put it, a rich white kid, dumb white kid, has as good a chance of getting into a top college as a poor smart nonwhite kid. So we're limiting access. So two things are happening. One is the standards aren't as high as they need to be, and the second is that your economic status is becoming your educational destiny. That's a bad thing for America.

Tavis: I don't mean to show my naiveté in asking this question, but I'm essentially asking because I want to hear your response, so bear with me for a second here. When you say that somehow, somewhere along the way, namely around the time Ronald Reagan took office, we lost our commitment as a country--

Merrow: We began withdrawing.

Tavis: Sure. We began withdrawing. Juxtapose for me how that effect has in effect happened with the political rhetoric that I get every day, that education is still our number one priority. 'I want to be the education president.' Leave no child behind.

Merrow: Well, you know that walking the walk and talking the talk, there's a real disconnect. I mean, the Pell Grant, which is the marker, that essentially was for poor kids, lower-income kids. When Richard Nixon was president, a Pell Grant paid 98% of the tuition at a public four-year college. Today it's a little bit more than 50%. So we withdraw that support, so the poor, aspiring student can't afford to go, has to borrow money. Poor people are reluctant to borrow money. They end up going to community college. That's what I meant when I said your economic status becomes your educational destiny. It's just not a good thing. We used to be number one in the world, Tavis, in percentage of our population going to and completing college. Would you believe we're about number 7 now?

Tavis: So the primary issue here then is one of access or lack thereof?

Merrow: It's access and standards. It's two issues: teaching and learning. What happens between admission and graduation, but then also who gets to go where? We set up higher education--at least starting with the G.I. Bill, the idea was if you got the smarts and the determination, you can go anywhere. Not anymore. That's a bad thing.

Tavis: Let me--I'm not sure I should use this word. Let me wrestle with you intellectually here for just a second on how we got to this place or why it is that we behave or misbehave in the way we misbehave these days around the issue of education. If I said to you, as I will now, that we have arrived at this place because we figured out at the start of the Reagan administration from the census numbers that this country is--We're seeing a browning of America, as somebody called it. We now live in the most multicultural--God knows that's the case now. Reagan was back in 1980. We live in the most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever. Explain to me why I'm not wrong, why I'm not a cynic if I happen to believe that the very time we start to see our country becoming really multicultural, multiracial, and multiethnic, we started to change the rules on how much we really value education and--Let me just stop right there first. Does that make sense to you? Am I missing something? Am I--Have I lost my mind?

Merrow: Well, I think that once we saw that it wasn't just Johnny and Mary, but it was Juanita and Carlos and Tavis, we thought, "Well, wait a minute. Maybe we don't need to--" Yeah, there's a little bit of that. I don't like to think that about this country because, in fact, the new people coming in have been the source of incredible vitality, and the economic engine has always been fueled by immigrants, and a lot of the immigrants don't look like me. But--so yeah, there's a--that's part of it, and it's--but it's also gender-driven as well. I mean, we--Science and math have sort of systematically excluded females.

Tavis: Don't tell Larry Summers out of Harvard, but that's another--

Merrow: Well, I just did a piece for 'The News Hour' about that, and it's just striking that, I mean--Again, uh, Korea, South Korea is producing engineers, 30 times as many as we are per capita. Part of the reason is that they don't exclude girls, so I mean, we're doing some dumb things.

Tavis: Let me set aside for the moment the vitality issue that you've just raised in terms of what people of color and immigrants bring to the table. Help me understand, to your earlier point, how it is we regain our place as number one in the world, where education, manufacturing, any litany of issues are concerned. Tell me how we regain our place in the world as number one, if we're going to deny the very people access to a quality education who are about to make up the majority of our workforce. Back to those census numbers, we know in just a few years from now, with all due respect, John, I'm sorry, white men are about to be outnumbered in America. The majority of Americans will be people of color and women, as you and I both just mentioned. How then, without a quality education, do we ever make America number one again if we deny those very people?

Merrow: We don't. It's simple. We don't. Unless you say we have to elevate the importance of teaching and learning on the campus, that's one, and then we have to--we have to increase a public investment because what happens now is that as the public investment drops, the social contract--You know, it's worth investing in everybody's education. We walk away from that, tuition goes up. The middle class is upset about tuition going up, but tuition's going up because the public support is not there. So you have to increase public support, but you also have to raise standards. You have to say, "You go to college; you're not there just to party. You're there--It's a 24/7--Party on weekends if you want, but take this business of learning seriously."

Tavis: I got 3 minutes. Let me put out my blue card. There are 3 things I wrote down, 3 things you argue in this book I want to get to right quick and get you to top-line for me. One: You argue that, with regard to this problem, it exists in part because the media has given higher education a pass.

Merrow: I think that's correct. I think we've been very harsh on K-12. K-12 is a lot better than you would conclude if you only read the newspapers and watched television. Higher education is nowhere near as good if you only read papers and watched TV. So that free pass--We're not giving 'em a free pass, not in 'Declining By Degrees.'

Tavis: You argue that administrators are obsessed with college rankings, that higher education is really big business.

Merrow: You know what's going on? It's called merit aid. Merit aid used to be miniscule. Now it's 25% of all aid. Essentially, if you did well on the PSAT, which you take in 11th grade, National Merit, colleges throw money at you. In 'Declining By Degrees,' you meet a couple of kids at the University of Arizona who made a profit going to the university, because they got so much in merit aid. And that's just on standardized tests taken in 11th grade. That's insane.

Tavis: I know the PSAT very well. I took it 3 times. Ha ha ha! That's another issue. Lastly, there's more--You mentioned this earlier--but there's more focus on research funding and overlooking--overbooking, I should say--the researchers, the professionals with research projects.

Merrow: Well, because the public investment isn't there. The University of Arizona is a state school, Tavis. 28% of its money comes from the state of Arizona. 40% comes from contracts with private companies, with the Defense Department, all that sort of thing. So...do they start--Is that the tail wagging the dog? If research is where the money is, then that's how you get your contract. You don't pay as much attention to teaching. That's a priority issue.

Tavis: What's the first thing we do to reverse this trend?

Merrow: Well, I would say it has to be done on campuses. I don't think government can make a rule and say, "Well, increase your graduation rates." You have to have the commitment on campus. The job here is to make a difference. When we've admitted you, 4 years later we ought to be able to say, you know, this guy Tavis, look at this--So some guidance as you're going through, high standards, paying attention. Colleges can do it. They can set up what they call learning communities where you're in a dorm with 200 other men and women. You take some of the same classes. You study together. Somebody's paying attention, somebody who knows you. You can do it on campus with 30,000 students. But you have to work a little harder. Well...it's important.

Tavis: The new book and documentary on most PBS stations this Thursday night is called 'Declining By Degrees: Higher Education at Risk.' Behind this project, the award-winning John Merrow, who I'm delighted to meet tonight. Mr. Merrow, glad to have you here.

Merrow: Thank you.

Tavis: Up next, a cultural phenomenon around a dance craze known as clownin', krumpin'. Stay with us.