It certainly feels like the national spotlight is on higher education. And to the general public, it may even appear that we are marching bravely toward meeting the country's needs for higher education in the 21st century. But are we? Many faculty on college campuses around the country are not convinced.
Recognizing the need for a highly educated workforce to ensure the country's global competitiveness, President Obama, for instance, set an ambitious goal for the nation -- to have the highest percentage of college graduates of any country in the world by 2020. At the state level, a number of state governors have committed to increasing graduate rates in their public colleges and universities as their part in this national project. Foundations have funded initiatives to increase graduation rates. And the heads of many state college and university systems have followed suit.
What's not so clear is how we are going to meet these specific goals or the country's general economic and social needs for a more highly educated population in the 21st century.
In fact, increasingly, faculty members at the colleges and universities where these plans will actually play out, worry about a counter-trend working against the quality of higher education in the 21st century, one that could set us back for generations if we don't take it on now.
The deep concern stems from this fact: at a time of unprecedented de-funding of American higher education, a wave of "solutions" and "innovations" for how to increase access and student success have been proposed, mostly without evidence, sufficient forethought, and stunningly little debate.
I'll deal with specific proposals in future postings, but the brief and meteoric rise (followed by an equally speedy burn-out) of for-profit education as the "answer" to American higher education certainly provides a cautionary tale and suggests the need for a more thoughtful discussion of all proposals before they are implemented.
The details about recruitment, financial aid, and student loan practices in the for-profit sector are still coming in, but this much is clear: what was touted as a quick, easy (and cheap) answer to America's shortage of higher education capacity has resulted in financial disaster for millions of students and a potential loan default problem rivaling the mortgage loan crisis.
A year ago, wild enthusiasm (and savvy advertising) made questions about the practices of for-profits or their appropriate role in meeting the country's education goals impossible. Today, the damage is done.
The painful and rather obvious lesson here is that proposals touted as magic bullets or simply proclaimed, without evidence, as desirable "innovations" need scrutiny, analysis, and public debate. Faculty members around the country believe that, without more thoughtful discussion and more careful assessment of proposals for "fixing" American higher education, we risk failing students' needs and the public's expectations yet again.
Seventy faculty members from 21 states met last weekend in Los Angeles to discuss these and other issues. The attendees represented over 225,000 faculty members who teach more than 3 million students in colleges and universities of every type from Hawaii to New York. Some representatives were members of higher education unions; others were not.
The common denominator was a shared concern about the future of higher education and a commitment to making sure we engage in a national discussion that ensures the very best quality higher education possible in the 21st century.
A number of immediate actions to improve the public conversation about higher education's future garnered universal support. Among them were three immediate needs to be addressed:
1) We need principles to guide policy and to help us evaluate proposals for change.
Participants reviewed a draft document, agreed to circulate it widely on their campuses and in their communities for comment, and to report back in March. Readers can review the document and make their own comments here.
2) We need a broader range of voices in the conversation about higher education and its future.
Attendees agreed to begin outreach to others who have too often been absent from the discussion of higher education's future--students and parents, for instance.
3) We need a campaign for the future of higher education that ensures a solid future for students, for their communities, and for the country.
Higher education is a "hot topic" and the centerpiece of many an advertising and political campaign these days, but it will take a broad, grassroots effort to provide the level of access, quality, and affordability this country will need if we are to avoid betraying coming generations.
Participants left the meeting committed to joining with others to launch such an endeavor.
Higher education is at a crossroads. What kind of college education do we, as a country, need? Who will have access to it? How can we assure to students access, quality, and affordability? How will we decide among the many proposals being proffered almost daily?
If we fail to exercise the same critical thinking we claim higher education is about in discussing its future, we surely risk losing the very features of American higher education that have made it the envy of the world.
Watch your admin sweat. Go into contract negotiations pointing out these comparables at every turn and refuse to settle until they give you at least one financial plum modeled on what the full-timers have. We got a 13 step longevity pay scale that significantly rewards us for staying around (one of our positions was poor pay, no bennies caused 30% PT faculty turnover, contributed to lousy graduation rates). Refuse % raises. Insist on dollar for dollar.
Don't be surprised if your school's FT union turns against you. The rank and file FT fac won't.
As you may know, CSULA is going through a debate about whether to convert to Semesters. Originally it seemed that conversion could be accompanied by a thorough re-thinking of the University. Unfortunately, that idea was shot down. Now the faculty are divided between those who want semesters unconditionally and those who don't . There doesn't seem to be a way to find an approach that would appeal to a large majority. A divided faculty may in fact be what the administration wants. We'll have to work hard to avoid that.
In any event, I'll be following your posts.
-- Russ Abbott
Florida lowered its general-revenue spending for 28 public colleges and 11 universities by 14 percent over the last three years to $2.8 billion in fiscal 2011, according to a Dec. 7 policy briefing for the state’s House of Representatives. Funding for the State University of New York, a system of 64 colleges and universities, fell $355 million to $8.09 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, according to state documents.
We hire thousands of college grads in the United States. I worry about, with all the state budgets, that some of these great state institutions will become weakened, That, for us, is our lifeblood.”
Above quote from, Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric Co., based in Fairfield, Connecticut, speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Jan. 7.
Bloomberg Businessweek 1/13/11.
"It’s ass-backwards, it’s upside-down, it’s stupid. We’re reducing the ability to create the next generation that is going to create the jobs that’s going to pay the pension obligations that this state has, let alone create the jobs we need.”
The above states it well. These are words of Robert Ackerman, founder, managing director of Palo Alto, CA- based Allegis Capital, a firm with investments in computer networking and software companies including Allegiance Inc. and Solera Networks Inc., both in South Jordan, Utah.
From Bloomberg Businessweek, 1/13/11
-- Kevin Moore
I like it. "Madjunct". I am one of you and everything you've written here is right on target. We're Walmart employees because essentially universities are following the Walmart business model. Some of my students who work make more than I do. It's a corrupt and abusive system and I don't understand how the administrators and management and department chairs sleep at night or even look at themselves in the mirror. This is on no one's radar. The school goes about its business as if this is not only acceptable but positive conditions--like some alternate reality. You can't make up these nightmares. Ultimately it speaks volumes about how people really feel about education, despite public utterance to the contrary.
Several participants reminded the attendees that contingent faculty teach more than half of the classes and need to be part of the discussion and part of the solution.
However, the actual discussions and break-out groups were democratic, with no differentiation based on appointment status. There was a clear sense that every faculty member is being undermined--but worse every student's education is being undermined--by current trends in higher education. As the draft principles state, "improving higher education should be a goal of everyone--the public, elected leaders, businesses, and those who work to provide that education."
Elizabeth Hoffman (contingent faculty member)
Of course it's not an "innovation." It's been happening for for more than 30 years, every year getting more and more exploitative. It is the single most important reason that now traditional faculty are feeling their power slip away. It is the reason why traditional faculty need to join with their adcon colleagues who are as qualified and dedicated as they, and who are willing to support traditional, but only when all are included, and included with historical clarity in a sincere and powerful commitment to end the two-tier system. That's actual democracy under the circumstances, and no one should believe that, in the real lived history of the deterioration of higher education, all classes of faculty have been "undermined" to the same extent, and that claims to be working on behalf of the "students" can operate to erase differences that were long, and continue to be, ignored by some faculty members at the expense of others.