Commission Readies to Write

I attended the first Commission on the Future of Higher Education meeting last October, and watched them struggle with who was representing what, what they were doing, and would it matter. Like a first day of any group work, there was a lot of checking out to see who had the power, what was going to happen, and was this going to work. I wrote several blogs about the Commission work over the next few months (see below), as I saw them gathering all kinds of information—some interesting, some good, some really strange. However, my initial impression was that they would not accomplish what needed to be accomplished because they had the wrong questions. Which were, access, affordability, accountability, and quality. It kind of looked like slam-dunk for NCLB-like testing and cost-cutting.

Last week watching them work, it was like the final days of a good seminar, retreat, or class that had really worked through some issues. The two higher education journals had different takes on the meeting, Inside Higher Ed being more caustic and trying to create an edge while CHE was, in my mind, more to the point. Keep in mind that the purpose of this meeting was to prepare for writing the draft—to get on the table what needed to be on the table, but not to say what the conclusions were yet. What I found good is that the Commissioners were openly struggling with the issues that needed more clarification. They were agreeing to disagree and agreeing to compromise. They were getting the stuff out there in the open for the staff to work through and try to draft a position. What they talked about were the real problems that we do need to address. They were laying the complexities out on the table. It was good sausage making.

The first draft will be circulated to the Commission around the first of August, and the final draft released to the public in mid-September.

So, what does it look like?

It sounds like they would like a report that is quite succinct, that has a few solid, well-documented points, and that significantly forecasts the changes that will need to happen in higher education. Specifically:

• On access and preparation, we need to “ensure that every person who can benefit and desires to go to post-secondary education should have a place and it should be affordable.” Naturally this resulted in much discussion about affordability, the financial aid packages, the kinds of education (degree or not—traditional “college” or not), kinds of preparation (academic [seemed to be agreement that preparation for work requires same high school graduation skills as preparation for college], cultural, financial) that will be fleshed out.
  
  
• Affordability was the natural next topic, and that came down to two questions, the costs the student or payer must provide, and the efficiencies of the institutions. The problem was stated, “Postsecondary education is becoming increasingly unaffordable for greater numbers of Americans, especially low-income and minorities (who represent an increasing percentage of our population/workforce).” They are playing with some recommendations here ranging from “nuking” the present financial aid system to shifting it towards the lower income quartiles to adding to it. At one point, one of the commissioners brought up the idea of a “GI Bill” concept. Consensus was that the current system of 17 programs has got to be fixed. Another recommendation was for removing barriers to other institutional models (Western Governors hovered in the background on this one, as well as the for-profits) to promote efficiencies.
  
  
• Accountability broke out into two areas as well, one for student learning and one for institutional quality. The first problem statement for accountability is, “Information about institutions of higher education is inadequate or unavailable for a large set of ‘consumers,’ to include students, families, taxpayers, policy makers, employers, contributors, academic institutions, and media.” What it amounts to is that we don’t know what we know, and we certainly are not making it transparent. All the commissioners seemed to agree that getting more data and making it meaningful was important. Charles Vest, former president of MIT, said the academy’s fear of assessment is grounded in using simplistic measures that lead to wrong numbers, give us the wrong answers, and force us to teach to the wrong values. There is a fear that a bureaucratic control of a large assessment process would quash innovation. The point was made several times that we need multiple measures of multiple competencies, one size does not fit all, and we need to, first of all, clarify the outcomes we want—what are we assessing for? What do we mean by student learning? At one point Rick Stephens, the commissioner from Boeing said that what he wanted his engineers to do was think, communicate, relate, collaborate, respect and enjoy diversity—the liberal arts skills. David Ward, from ACE, said that the academy would welcome assessment if we get it right—know what we need to know, use reliable instruments to get what we need, and be open about what it means and how it will be used. Vest concurred and said the academy will buy in if it makes a difference, is meaningful, fits the context, and actually leads to improvement.
  
  The second part of the accountability question dealt with accreditation. The discussion here ranged from, again, nuke it to ignore it. The nuke it part was a question raised—if we are doing good assessment, and it is transparent, do we need it? That argument was countered with the realization that the good assessment that is transparent is not here now, so we still need accreditation. But there was a call for more transparency in the accreditation process, what it means for the institution and for the stakeholders of that institution, and for more rigor in the accreditation so that it means something. At present it really is the foxes guarding the henhouse.
  
  
• The fourth area that Secretary Spellings had indicated the Commission should explore was Quality. Because that is such a nebulous term—quality for what, to whom, and accountable where, the Commission did work their way through to three areas of focus on quality in higher education: 1) workforce development and meeting labor needs, 2) increasing the supply to address capacity, and 3) innovation. Given the players at the table, one could predict what they wanted to focus on, but they did mull around with a multitude of ideas.
  
  
  1. Workforce Development: The problem statement for this area of the report is this: “The global environment requires changes in the US higher education system so that it 1) must be accessible to all groups of people—all economic [read racial and ethnic here as well] groups and all ages, and 2) must be flexible in providing both degree-based and career advancement skills.” Discussion points on this issue came primarily from the captains of industry. Their point was that a high school diploma, even with a good high school education, is simply not enough. Everyone will need some post secondary education. Rick Stephens from Boeing said that we have to ask “Are we teaching students to solve problems and pull information together.” As they all talked about how STEM is important, because that is the innovation for development, they talked about what place the US will play in a global world. Boeing, IBM, and Microsoft all said (and IBM was loudest here) that our forte may not be technical skills, but we are still way ahead in terms of the idea creation and management part of a global economy. If we work now, we can maintain that. They key is not just technical training, it is the critical thinking and communication and collaboration and diversity of our liberal arts education goals, coupled with our scientific and technological creativity that will keep us leading.
     
     
  2. Increasing Capacity: Those really embedded in academic culture will rebel at the language here, but this report is being controlled by non-academics—and that isn’t all bad. But it does make some of us a bit uncomfortable. Increasing supply to address capacity is business terminology for we have too many students and too few resources and no way of checking our quality controls. We don’t know where our money is coming from because the sources are drying up. On the other hand, we don’t know where the money is going, because no one can really tell why the costs are escalating. Here is the problem statement they suggested the report work on: “How can we emphasize good learning? The data we have suggests achievement is not good” (apropos studies published the last few years). That translates to a business model that if the data we have suggests we have a problem, we need to look at our capacity to meet our needs. We need to change higher education culture that has been content with students trying to find their own way through it. We have way too much attrition, and we offer virtually no help for students to improve retention, to understand the financial aid picture, to create a culture of college success. We need to work with emerging pedagogies and technologies to improve the efficiencies of the system. Okay, that might be business model language, but we can translate.
     
     
  3. Innovation: The problem was succinctly stated as “We are being challenged as never before, and the future is not looking good.” The specific points, or weaknesses, are an obsolete curriculum, adversity to taking risks, expensive tuition, not enough STEM students, and that higher education is out of touch with the needs of the 21st century. In the discussion, the Commissioners brought out that education needs to emphasize more communication, collaboration and relationship building with a strong centering in the liberal arts. Innovation must be turned over to the faculty, as that is where it will happen—faculty need to be encouraged and supported in innovative teaching, scholarship, and cross-disciplinary work. And finally, America must re-establish the fundamental purpose of higher education as a public good, serving all of society.
     
     What we might worry about a bit is that traditional routes to teacher education were touted as insufficient. There is an interesting contradiction here, as in much of the discussion about teacher education programs. Even though most of the good, creative work in teacher education is occurring in higher education institutions, and the call from this Commission and most other reports on education is for creatively studying and applying research on teaching and learning, they distrust the very institutions that are doing the work. The call for alternate routes to teacher certification is loud, but the alternate routes that are touted are quick fixes rather than solid research on teaching and learning.

Where does all this leave us?

It is no secret that there are major problems in higher education. The undergraduate curriculum that was centered on a fairly good agreement of general education courses in the middle of the 20th century has become such a large smorgasbord of courses that it is no longer meaningful. Costs have skyrocketed, and sources of funding are getting scarce. At the same time that education beyond high school is becoming more of a universal necessity, access to higher education, both financial and curricular, is deemed problematic and inequitable. When over 50 percent, and higher than that for some disciplines, of the courses, particularly for beginning students, are taught by a faculty cohort that is not a full-time participant of the institutional culture, the faculty role is shifting. In short, we are going through a major shift in how we operate. The question is whether this commission will make recommendations that will address these problems or not. My initial reaction last fall was that they would not. My reaction last week as I watched them work is that they just might.

Here is what I think they will say. We need more good data to show that what we want to happen is actually happening. We need transparency so we all, the town and the gown, understand what to expect from the institutions and whether they deliver it. We need to be open to and encourage new ways of providing and nurturing education, not just degrees, so that we as a nation are comfortable and profitable in a life of learning.

If the report can indicate what we need to do in light of the above areas, this may help us all re-conceive what needs re-conceptualization to address the major issues facing us. The risk in anything like this is that the Commission report will define too narrowly what the solutions are. I was hopeful in that I heard a lot of language that suggested the Commission saw this as a problem best solved by higher education, not for higher education. But then, I have always been an optimist.