Response to the Commish

When Chicken Little comes running into the room exclaiming, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling,” as academics, our response should be, “and is that necessarily a bad thing?” What do we mean by the sky is falling? Is it the sky or the ceiling? On whom is it falling? In its fall, what is revealed behind the “apparent” sky that is “apparently” falling? The questions can go on, but our response to a statement of alarm should be a reasoned reflection leading to a broader understanding of the reported phenomenon.

Which brings us to the report of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Are there problems in higher education? Obviously, yes. Are the problems the Commission identifies the real problems? Well, yes and no. In my first blog on the Commission (see below), published September 21, I questioned whether the questions Secretary Spellings asked were the right questions. I postulated that we would find out more about finances, enrollments, and global competitiveness, but I questioned whether the report would address the real issues that impact finances, enrollments, and global competitiveness. While I still see much potential in a Commission on the Future of Higher Education, I think this study was too quick, too pre-conceived, and too superficial to address the real needs. Chicken Little has cried, and we must now do the analysis of his cry to support and promote the real changes needed in higher education.

So . . . let’s see what the Commish wants.

1. Every student should have the opportunity to pursue postsecondary education. That means students need to have the appropriate preparation to enter college, understandable directions on how to get into college, and the financial opportunities to afford college.
2. The financial aid system should be restructured to privilege needs over merit and to be simple enough that the average student can apply. Furthermore, institutions should be rewarded for finding innovative ways to control costs.
3. We need to create a robust culture of accountability and transparency throughout higher education. That means knowing how well we actually educate our students.
4. We must change our academic programs to serve the needs of a knowledge economy by embracing a culture of continuous innovation and quality improvement through new pedagogies, curricula, and technologies.
5. Our citizens must have access to high quality and affordable education throughout their lives through promotion of life-long learning opportunities.
6. The United States must ensure capacity to achieve global leadership in science, engineering, medicine, and other knowledge-intensive programs.

Well, on the surface that doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, I could get behind most of them. Except that the report goes on in each area to spell out what they mean. And the problem is that they are applying action-oriented, quick-fix responses to complex issues that, I agree, need fixing, but cannot be done overnight.

The truth of the matter is, higher education is already addressing most of those concerns. Most of the knowledge about them is relatively public for the higher education community, being noted in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education to name the two most obvious sources. In addition, a report issued by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education titled “American Higher Education: How Does It Measure Up for the 21st Century?” highlights most of the same issues.

So, why the fuss and overzealous tone and frustration about the Commission’s report? Well, it might be that, yes, we know about these issues, but, no, we haven’t really placed them at the top of our agendas. Instead, we have been very busy denying that Chicken Little is seeing anything. And maybe we have been too busy debating whether it really is the sky that is falling. So, our job as academics needs to follow the next step, what Emerson called the scholar as actor. We must act on our knowledge.

At the AAC&U annual convention in Washington, DC last January, one of the deans of a large research university talked about how he initiates change in undergraduate general education. When questioned how to do it on his type of campus, he said it was “little by little and piece by piece.” He is right. All change must start where it can get a foothold. And meaningful change cannot be mandated from a policy board, it must come from the people most involved in making the change happen. But it is time to get beyond “little by little and piece by piece.”

We know we need to improve the success rate for all our students. We need to accelerate the adoption of the scholarship of teaching and learning on all our campuses. We need to ensure that the students who come to our classes are met with faculty who are prepared to engage them in an interactive dialogue that makes their learning real. We need to look closely at what succeeds and what does not, and not be satisfied that it is “the student’s fault” when she or he has trouble in our class. The students don’t come through the door reluctantly, but their reluctance to persevere has a whole lot to do with the nature of what they find when they come through the door.

Improving higher education is a complicated business. David Ward’s interview in the Chonicle of Higher Education about his refusal to sign the report articulates some of that complexity. The change won’t come in mandated quick fixes that the report advocates, but in the serious, hard work of the higher education community and its partners. We know what to do, let’s do it.