IN MAY 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education released a damning report on the state of public education, Entitled "A Nation at Risk," the report cited "a rising tide of mediocrity" in the nation's classrooms and incited a flood of media attention and finger pointing by and at teachers, administrators, parents and politicians.

Now it may be the colleges' turn.

Three reports issued in the last five months have condemned the state of higher education claiming that the tide of mediocrity has engulfed colleges and universities as well The reports, issued by prominent educators, were not nitpicking all three spoke in terms of a crisis on America's college campuses. The most recent, issued in February by the Association of American Colleges, charged that the bachelor's degree issued every year to hundreds of thousands of graduates have become meaningless credentials.

The other two reports were not much softer. The first, issued under the auspices of the National Institute of Education (an arm of the Department of Education), decried the loosening of academic standards and the increasingly vocational orientation of higher education. The report cited as evidence of worsening conditions several statistics, including declining scores on 10 of the 14 subject areas of the Graduate Record Examinations.

"The strains of rapid expansion, followed by recent years of constricting resources and leveling enrollments, have taken their toll," the report stated.

Among its 27 recommendations, the report called on colleges to establish minimum standards and to test students extensively in both their fields of concentration and general knowledge.

The second report, released in November by then-chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities William J. Bennett, warned that many college graduates lack "even the most rudimentary knowledge about the history, literature, art and philosophical foundations of their nation and civilization."

Placing most of the blame on college faculties, Bennett argued that undergraduate education has been severely crippled by intellectual or ideological faddism, narrow specialization in the graduate schools and too little attention to introductory and lower-division courses.

"All too often teaching is lifeless, arid, and without commitment," Bennett said in the report, "On too many college campuses the curriculum has become a self-service cafeteria through which students pass without being nourished."

Bennett, who is now Secretary of Education, recommended that colleges require courses on the history of Western civilization, literature, philosophy, and proficiency in one foreign language.

The axe fell on faculties again in February when the Association of American Colleges decried "the transformation of the professors from teachers concerned with the characters and minds of their students to professionals, scholars with Ph.D. degrees with an allegiance to academic disciplines stronger than their commitment to teaching or to the life of the institutions where they are employed."

The report stressed that improvements must be made in graduate education to assure that future professors are better prepared to teach. It also recommended that the requirements for the Ph.D. include evaluation of candidates' teaching abilities.

In addition, the panel called on colleges to institute more coherent curricula, instead of merely strengthening distribution requirements or adding multi-disciplinary courses. It proposed a minimum required program of study for all students, consisting of nine different categories.

EXPERTS AGREE that the plethora of criticism is indicative of a conservative trend in American culture, an attempt to recover from what Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Steven Ozment called "the hangover from the '60s," when traditional requirements were generally abandoned under student and faculty pressure. Along with a yen for argyle sweaters and fervent anti-communism. observers have demonstrated a desire for a return to strict standards in higher education. But not everyone thinks that the situation should be presented in such crisis terms.

Dean of the Graduate School of Education Patricia A. Graham likens the current pseudofrenzy to the American reaction to the Launching of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviets in 1957. That event, considered the formal beginning of the superpower "space race," raised concern that America's school, were not doing their job in producing technology whizzes who could rival the Soviets.

"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."

But Riesman adds, "The correct curricula of colleges should consider what their faculties are good at. They should not destroy Shakespeare for students by bad teaching. A required course has to be captivating."

As a sociologist, Riesman not surprisingly attributes the decline in educational qualify to trends in society's values, especially the increasing materialism of American culture. "We have in a market-driven age in higher education," he says.

On the student side of the equation, Riesman asserts that schools are being sought on the basis not of their education, but of their tuition

On the faculty side of the equation, the picture is even bleaker, Riesman says. Academia is not viewed by graduating students as a cornucopia of opportunity, and consequently, a shortage of young, bright faculty has developed.

"We're running out of faculty in hot subjects," Riesman says "I don't see bright students in the pipeline. Most of my students disappoint me by going on to Lawershood."

GRAHAM, HOWEVER, does not like to indulge in reminiscing. "They always like to think there's some great golden age in the past," she says. On the contrary, according to Graham, the typical Harvard graduate in the '80s is far more knowledgeable than one earlier in the century. And whereas any rich person used to be an automatic shoo-in for admission, now the competition for spaces is fierce.

Like Glazer, Graham says the changes in higher education over the years represent increased enrollment more than a decline in academic quality. "A perceived decline is something that is usually described when a substantial new population enters the schools," she says. So while a Harvard education may be better than ever, "there are more XYZ colleges out there today...a great gamut."

Thus, Graham studiously avoids generalizing about the state of higher education. In addition to emphasizing the opening of college to social classes that have never had that opportunity before, she frequently points out that the majority of students enrolled in colleges these days are not in the 18- to 22-year-old age group, and have different expectations for their education.

Consequently, the dean says she does not think the three seating reports can have much of an effect on such a heterogeneous institution as American higher education. And, in fact, the condemnations have not received nearly so much media attention as the 1983 National Commission report on public schools.

"It's a very different set-up," Graham says, "No one is required to go to college. It's much less regulated."

Glazer concurs "The groups involved are not authoritative enough and the crisis is not widespread enough that these reports will have an enormous impact." In fact, Glazer says, he has only fully read one of the reports.

Cross, who argues that change is needed, is almost as pessimistic. "Whether it will reach the professor is anybody's guess," she says. "And unless these reports affect the faculty members in some way, they aren't going to do much."