"Then it was a military issue," Graham explains "Now it's an economic issue."

The pressure this time seems to be coming from the business community. K. Patricia Cross, a senior lecturer on education, points to "a kind of Renaissance in business" in which creative, entrepreneurial employees have become the object of corporate desire, favored over mass-produced, formula-spouting "yes men." Cross cites Steven Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers, as the prototype of the new ideal employee, and the kind of person that college faculties are failing to cultivate.

The main fault of college teaching these days, according to Cross, is that professors spend too much time at the information at the expense of stimulating students' intellectual development. Students should be learning how to analyze and synthesizes, Cross argues, rather than memorizing facts.

"Lecturers giving information to students is not a reasonable way to go about teaching anymore," Cross says. "They can get information in lots of ways. To develop cognitive capabilities is the problem."

And for this, Cross says, professors are to blame: "Students will rise to the challenge. It is the fault of the teaching. Students should bear some of the blame. But students will follow the lead of the faculty."

Although noted education expert and Ford Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus David Riesman '31 says he thinks students are partially to blame for the decline in standards, he also believes that most of the burden lies with professors. "The faculties are not thinking of ways to invite students into what they're doing," he says. "Fires aren't lit by the faculty anymore."

Not everyone shares that feeling, however--especially Ozment, who calls the reports' accusations "cheap shots." Unlike Riesman and Cross, he says "it's more of a problem with the consumers than with the producers of the product."

"Teaching is not a three-ring circus," Ozment says. "We put the material out there, we respond to questions. The question is what students do with what we given them It's an immature attitude to say, "Hey, turn me on, Dean Ozment'."

Ozment places most of the blame for declining quality on "careerist, grade-grubbing and narrows" students. "A critique has to be made of the present culture of youth," he says.

Professors of Education and Social Structure Nathan Glazer agrees that inferior faculties are not the problem facing higher education "Teaching is taken pretty seriously these days," he says. "It has less to do with the faculties than it does with a collision between traditions and students strong drive to move into lucrative and rewarding financial occupations."

But unlike Ozment, Glazer says he does not want to pin blame on anyone. He sees the changes in education as a natural result of more high school students going on to college than ever before from 6 percent in 1950 to about 25 percent today (excluding community colleges). While he says colleges should have a strong commitment to the humanities, he predicts, "We're going to have a real problem using the traditional method on everybody."

Glazer disagrees strongly with the Bennett report, contending that colleges "have to be sensible in how much they make [humanities] an additive for people who come for different reasons." He says he does not regret the renewed emphasis on the humanities, but does see society as being too complex to impose one model on every college student. If enrollment in the humanities is going to increase, it should come about through more effective "advertising," not through imposed requirements, Glazer argues.

He adds that the ideal of a common culture cannot be used as a justification for a homogenous curriculum if the majority of Americans do not attend college. "If we feel a common culture is that important, how come we're letting three-fifths of our people get away without it?" Glazer asks, "I think you can be a good citizen without reading Plato."

Riesman, a contributor to the Bennett report, differs sharply. While Glazer thinks that Harvard's Core Curriculum is the best way to clean up higher education, Riesman advocates Columbia University's Core Curriculum as the ideal to which all colleges should aspire. In Columbia's program, all students are required to take several common courses on Western civilization. Riesman argues that if every student must take at least a few of the same courses, the true meaning of colleges will be restored.

"The true point of the Core should be that everybody is reading the same books," Riesman says. "There is little that is common today among students except sports, sex, and food."