Over the past couple of weeks, I
have been reminded several times of the danger facing American higher education
institutions. One of the strengths
of American higher education has been its diversity. However, today it appears that many institutions are
struggling with falling attendance amid increasing competition, at a time when
both the higher education community and the broader society are questioning the
purpose of the college/university in the new global information society.
One
suggestion that I heard was that states should privatize their public colleges
and universities, selling them off to corporations that would then manage
them. That, to me, is exactly the
wrong thing to do. Higher
education is a fundamental institution of our democracy. Our colleges and universities are the foundry
in which we, as a nation, forge new ideas—often ideas that are not popular at
the time or that may threaten profit-seeking companies. Corporatizing higher education would
simply turn our campuses into job training sites where students are acclimated
to corporate mores. Higher
education is about building and maintaining our society. Even with faltering State support, much
of the teaching mission of higher education is supported by federal
scholarships and loans; I see no reason why our social commitment to students,
funded by our taxes as a societal investment, should be used to make a few
corporations rich. The critical
issue is to understand the social need for higher education in a changing
cultural and economic environment as we shift from the Industrial Age to the
Information Society.
A
quick look at history might help explain the importance of a societal context
and where we need to go. Most of
our public state colleges and universities were created during the early days
of the Industrial Revolution. The
big land grant universities were funded originally by the sale of federal lands
through the Morrill Act of 1862 in order significantly expand the number of
professionals needed to support the nation as it settled the frontiers and
created industrialized urban centers.
The goal was (according to the Land Grant Act of 1862):
. . . to teach such branches of
learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as
the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote
the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several
pursuits and professions in life.
The Act was in response to the
significant changes to society stimulated by the Industrial Revolution: (1) the
need for greater professional expertise in a wide variety of professions—from
engineering to social sciences—and (2) urbanization and the growth of cities as
a result of industrialization. We
needed better agricultural production to support urbanization; one result was
the creation of agricultural colleges and research centers in each state
university and an Agricultural Extension Services that put university
agricultural expertise into every country, helping farmers improve production
on the front lines of agriculture.
This social mandate also
resulted in new curricula, new types of courses (laboratory courses in science,
for instance), and new academic subjects (statistics and the social sciences,
for example). It also brought to
higher education new students—the children of farmers, coal miners,
immigrants—who would lead the country as the Industrial Age matured.
One
of the drivers of urbanization was immigration. As the population became more diverse, States responded by
creating normal schools—schools designed to prepare teachers to educate the
children of immigrants and to create standards for school systems in a
state. Many of today’s state
colleges and universities began as teacher colleges.
Over
the years, these public colleges and universities became the “three-legged
stool” of innovation for the Industrial period, combining teaching, research, and public service to serve the needs of
their states and of the nation, generally. Each college and each university is a community of academics
and other professionals who focus on developing new knowledge and passing that
knowledge on through direct interaction with various user communities and,
through the curriculum, with future professionals. The diversity of American higher education, then,
becomes a societal asset, as there are many places where new ideas can take
root and many contexts for understanding knowledge and turning it into action;
this diversity is a strategic strength for American society.
By
the 1950s—when the nation was just beginning to see the outline of the coming
Information Revolution—the Truman Commission on Higher Education identified
eleven principles or goals that summed up key characteristics of an educated
person on the eve of the new era:
·
An ethical code of behavior
·
Informed and responsible citizen solving problem
skills
·
Understanding global interdependence
·
Habits of scientific thought in personal and
civic problems
·
Understanding others and expressing one’s self
·
Enjoyment and understanding of literature and
the arts
·
The ability to create a satisfying family life
·
The ability to choose a useful and satisfying
vocation
·
Developing critical and constructive thinking
habits
These were ways in which higher
education was expected to contribute to the quality of life in American society
that went beyond simple preparation for a career.
Higher Education in the Information Era
We
are now a generation into the Information Revolution. It is easy to see that some of the innovations made to help
higher education adjust to the Industrial Age are no longer relevant and that
others need to be seen in a new context. We saw that higher education innovations in the 1800s
were stimulated by urbanization, immigration, and the need for new kinds of
professionals to grow and sustain the industrial economy and the new society
that it was forging. So, what are
the drivers for innovation in this new era? Some thoughts:
·
Just as the Industrial Revolution stimulated a
need for a new professional class, it has become clear that the Information
Revolution requires a more educated workforce at many levels. The federal government has set a goal
that 60 percent of high school graduates will go on to postsecondary
education. Currently, the level is
39 percent. This should help
reverse the enrollment decline; however, most high school graduates who are
prepared to go to college already do so.
We need to significantly increase the percentage of high school
graduates who are prepared for college-level work. This will require that colleges actively support
improvement of the K-12 curriculum, potentially blurring the traditional lines
that separate K-12 and postsecondary education.
·
Agricultural production remains an issue, but today—and for
the future—the problems are increasingly international and driven by long-term
global trends. Writing in Scientific
American, Lester R. Brown noted that world grain production has fallen
short for the past several years, while demand for food continues to rise. This is an example of what he calls a
“trend-driven” change that is “unlikely to reverse without a reversal in the
trends themselves.” (Scientific American:
Lights Out—How it All Ends, Kindle Edition, p. 722). The goal must be not simply to increase
agricultural productivity but also to address a spectrum of public policy and
environmental issues. The
Cooperative Extension model created in the 1860s to improve agricultural
production needs to be re-imagined to address these global environmental and
biotechnology issues.
·
We are now starting to see unintended
consequences of late twentieth century innovations in health, energy, and other
fields. Julie Wakefield, again in Scientific American, noted: “Innovation
is changing things faster than ever before, and such increasing
unpredictability leaves civilization more vulnerable to misadventure as well as
to disaster by design.” (Ibid., p.
132) In an increasingly
interconnected world, disasters—especially biological disasters like
epidemics—can spread both far and fast.
It is essential that our
universities produce graduates who are prepared to understand and respond to
the increasingly global implications of local actions. The old disciplines need to be
re-thought and, where appropriate, new interdisciplinary curricula need to be
created. At the same time, we also
need to generate new interdisciplinary research efforts.
·
The post-Industrial economy is inherently
global, but it is also essential that we build local communities that can
thrive in a global economy and society.
In this environment the university is an ambassador, linking local
communities with global trends.
These issues affect all three legs
of the higher education stool:
teaching, research, and engagement. Some examples:
·
Teaching
– We need a more interdisciplinary approach to general education and a capstone
general education event that helps soon-to-graduate professionals better
understand the broad social issues that will face them when they enter their
professions. Increasingly, the
professions will require interdisciplinary approaches that will facilitate new
kinds of innovation and connections across traditional professional
communities.
·
Research—We
need interdisciplinary thinking to drive research ideas and an environment that
encourages inter-institutional collaboration.
·
Engagement—The
“service” mission needs to be seen as fully integrated with the other two, as we build
new relationships with communities through both teaching and research and
technology transfer.
Reinvigorating Higher Education as a Social Good
It should be clear that higher education
in the Information Age should not be seen as a purely “personal” good. It must be perceived and supported as a
“societal” good in this new environment, just as it was at the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution. This begins
with a re-commitment to the vision of higher education as a three-legged stool,
with a firm commitment to the integration of teaching, research, and
service/engagement.
We
also need to recognize that these functions are no longer place-specific. Technology allows us to
distribute our resources and also to combine resources to ensure that all
students and beneficiaries of research and engagement have access to the best
possible talents and services.
Examples of technology-based collaborations already exist to point the
way. For instance, the Great
Plains Inter-institutional Distance Education Alliance (IDEA) allows state
universities in the Midwest to offer degree programs that call on the expertise
of faculty across all participating institutions. Similarly, the CIC CourseShare initiative is a collaboration
among “Big Ten” institutions to use technology to aggregate students and extend
the reach of faculty in specialized courses. The Worldwide University Network has used the Internet to
create research collaborations in a variety of subjects. The American Distance Education
Consortium brought together Cooperative Extension Services at land grant
universities across the nation to share agriculture-related expertise. In short, online technology allows
colleges and universities to extend their ability to deliver to their
communities the best, most appropriate programs, faculty, and research.
In
this new environment, not every campus needs to duplicate every discipline,
every degree program, etc.
Technology should allow states to transform some campuses into specialty
campuses and then use online learning to distribute some courses to other
campuses as needed. That said,
campuses should also be sure that they are fully engaged with their local
community, using technology to bring into the community resources from other
institutions.
Ultimately,
much depends on State governments re-committing to the idea that higher
education is a public good, not just a private good and embracing changes that
will allow our institutions to do a better job of building educated and agile
communities in this new era.
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