Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 18, 1993 TAG: 9310180018
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HOWARD GOODMAN PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Eight of the 10 Nobel winners announced this year in economics, medicine, physics, chemistry and literature were Americans. Another is a Briton who lives and works in the United States.
At a time when many Americans have lost confidence in their country's elementary and secondary education - when violence plagues the public schools and too many graduates seem barely able to read and write - educators said the awards demonstrated the United States' continuing pre-eminence in higher education.
One thing that's often overlooked in the frequent criticisms of the U.S. educational system: This is the place where the rest of the world sends its graduate students. There's a reason.
The top 25 or 30 U.S. universities "are supreme in the world," said D. Gale Johnson, an economics professor and former dean and provost at the University of Chicago. Chicago boasts 64 Nobel winners among its faculty, former faculty or students - more laureates, it says, than any other school.
These elite - the Harvards, Princetons, Stanfords, Berkeleys - combine graduate education and research with very fruitful results, educators said.
Yet, the same country that boasts such achievement has also produced an estimated 40 million adults who are functioning at low levels of literacy.
Metal detectors stand at some school doors to intercept guns and knives - standing also as symbols for a widespread perception of the public schools' failure.
Of the current crop of Nobel winners, most did their major work in the 1970s.
"We're being awarded for past accomplishments," said David Merkowitz, a spokesman for the American Council on Education. "We're living off the investments we made in the higher education system 10, 20 and 30 years ago.
"As budgets become tighter and the public ties the purse strings more tightly," Merkowitz added, "I think it's going to be a legitimate question whether we'll be able to accomplish in the future what the Nobel Prizes signify we've accomplished in the past."
Still, some educators warned against painting too bleak a picture of elementary and high schools.
While poor districts, especially in those cities, struggle with the effects of debilitating social problems and faltering budgets, many other schools continue to prepare their students well. And yet, that paradox: so many struggling public schools, so near cloistered colleges.
Peter Syverson, a spokesman for the Council on Graduate Schools, said, "We seem to know how to do this very high-level kind of research. . . . I think there is a real irony: OK, if we could put a man on the moon, why are we having trouble with K through 12?"
by CNB