Tamar Lewis has an important article on the front page of today’s New York Times, “Colleges Adapt Online Courses to Ease Burden  “ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/education/colleges-adapt-online-courses-to-ease-burden.html?ref=education.

I’ll comment more on it in due course but here’s her starting point:  “…the gritty task of harnessing online materials to meet the toughest challenge in American higher education: giving more students access to college, and helping them graduate on time.”

Are those really the “toughest challenge in American higher education“? Or are they two slices of white  bread around what should be  the meat in the sandwich – getting students to engage and learn.  Without student engagement and learning access to college doesn’t mean much and graduation rates are not likely to rise from their current dismal levels.

 There is plenty of evidence that student engagement and learning need to rise throughout higher education. That, in my opinion, is the toughest challenge.  Let’s get it in focus first, and judge technologies and innovations by whether they contribute to it or not.

 



“Quality” is not a word policy makers often use when they talk about

 higher education.  “Accountability,” “attainment,” “persistence,” “transparency” are all the lexical rage. But don’t use the “Q word” unless you are prepared to seem old-fashioned, out of style,  archaic, pretentious, or, worst of all, elitist.

But on April 265th 2013  the “Q word” started to appear in the prose of the federal Department of Education: “The Department announced  it will begin conversations with the higher education community on rules that would be designed to ensure colleges and universities are providing students a high-quality education …”  That sounds pretty good until one reads on and sees what the feds mean by quality: …” that prepares them for the workforce and lifelong success”.  www2.ed.gov/news/newsletters/edreview/2013.

 Now I get it: they have hijacked the Q Word.  They want it as a smokescreen for job preparation.

So what will these rules be? We may begin to find out in May: “Hearings on these subjects will be held in May in San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C.  Based on comments at these hearings, the Department will draft a list of topics to be considered by rulemaking committees.  Negotiations would likely begin this fall. … “.

My hunch is that the a soft-landing from this process would be a more sophisticated version of what  Virginia has imposed on its colleges and universities – a requirement that they publish average salaries earned by graduates eighteen months after graduation.  The Virginia results are flawed in many ways, for example by excluding the self-employed, US government employees or those working outside the Commonwealth.  The results, however, have been widely reported, for example by the  Wall Street Journal, with a chart that looks (in part) like this:

George Mason                                              $41,153

UVA-Charlotte                                               $39,648

Va. Polytech                                                 $38,957

Old Dominion                                                $36,576

James Madison                                             $35,224

College of William & Mary                            $34,571

Virginia State                                                 $28,820

Note: Virginia State is a historically black institution.  Its salary data presumably reflect in part the persistent difficulty African-Americans have in attaining high paying work.  The Virginia  reporting system, in other words, builds racism into its results.

And, of course the figures can be sliced in the other direction, to show average salaries by major.

A hard landing in the federal process would make Pell grants and other federal funds contingent on an institution’s graduates attaining certain levels of job placement or salary.

Either outcome sends the message, “That’s what college is for  -- ‘workforce preparation and [financial] success’.”  The process is flawed from the outset by the way the issue is framed.   Once that mistake has been made, no outcome is likely to be beneficial.

That point needs to be made at the public hearings, whose schedule is this:

May 21, 2013 -- U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C., Eighth Floor Conference Center, 1990 K Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20006

May 23, 2013 -- University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Cowles Auditorium, 301 19th Avenue S, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55499.

May 30, 2013 -- University of California, San Francisco, UC Hall, Toland Hall Auditorium (Room U142), 533 Parnassus Avenue, San Francisco, California 94143

The ongoing attacks on liberal education often imply that liberal arts graduates are destined for unemployment, or at best meanly compensated toil.  It sounds right. Most of us didn’t get that kind of education in hopes of getting rich.  But is it really true?

Why not try to find out?

Peter Ewell tells me that is just what is happening:  “In partnership with the Association oif American Colleges and Universities , the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems is conducting a long term study of this topic using data from the American Community Survey (the replacement for the Census).  The design is to look at earnings by major for cross-sections of age groups in ten year increments all the way up to "over 60."  Our hypothesis is that although professional degrees produce an early bump in earnings right out of college, the advantage goes more to people who have honed critical thinking skills, often with a bump from a liberal arts major in the later years of a career.  We will also be looking at graduate school impacts, because we know that liberal arts majors disproportionately go to graduate “school (think Biology to MD and Political Science to JD). “

The study is being funded by the  Spencer and Teagle  Foundations, God bless ‘em! The report should be out by early fall.  Stay tuned. 

 

The naming of a provost as the new president of a university often means more of the same. I admire Christopher Eisengruber, the provost who has just been named the next president of Princeton University [http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S36/65/54C75/index.xml?section=featured  ].   I know that many of my sometime colleagues at Princeton share that feeling. He may prove to be a smart innovator.  Congratulations and best wishes!

For a while at least Princeton, and some other private institutions, can continue on the same course it has been on for many decades.  (See Richard Chaitt and Zachary First “Bullish on Private Colleges” Harvard Magazine http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/11/bullish-on-private-colleges).  The demand is there.  If tomorrow tuition were increased to $100,000 a year, applications would continue to pour in.  Princeton could probably fill its entering class with students who could pay the full freight.  Financial aid would be available for those who couldn’t.  Admission could be need- blind; student could continue to graduate without student loans.  The student body could become ever more diverse, among international students as well as home-grown ones.  The faculty-student ratio could continue to stay low. Faculty compensation could stay high.  Quality, as commonly understood, would continue to grow.

All this -- the “Princeton model” we may call it --  depends on a combination on high tuition and high student aid, strong endowment growth and generous alumni support.  As long as all that continues, yes, the model Princeton has developed over the past fifty years should be sustainable for the foreseeable future. 

But here’s what it would take:

A few years ago I realized that it had been a little over a half century since I completed my Ph.D. at Princeton.  So, in a fit of nostalgic curiosity, I put some figures together with the help of old pals in Nassau Hall.  Over the half century (1960 –2010) tuition increased from $1,450 to over $35,000, i.e., a factor of more than 23.  That increase had been accompanied by a large increase in student aid, made possible in turn by generous alumni support and the remarkable growth of the university’s endowment -- from a little over $186 million in 1960 to  $14.4 billion in 2010, in other words, by a factor of 76 .  (During the same period the CPI increased by a factor of approximately 7.)

Extrapolate this pattern for the next fifty years: By 2060 tuition will be over

$822,000 and the endowment over $1 trillion. (The most recent figures I have found are about $17 billion for the endowment (2012) and for tuition $40,170 (2013/14). So things are more or less on track for the 2060 destination.

Achievable? Sustainable?  Desirable?  Those are questions for president-elect Chris Eisengruber and the Princeton faculty and trustees.   But there’s one question that reaches far beyond those ivy covered walls – Is this model replicable elsewhere?

That’s not a joke.  Over the past fifty years “the Princeton model” has been one of the most powerful means of improving quality in American higher education.   Princeton has no copyright on it, of course, but Princeton is in many respects the clearest example of it.   If my memory is correct the model has worked well for Princeton.  And it works. Quality at both the undergraduate and the graduate level has increased significantly. (Particularly, some would say, since I left the faculty.  Post hoc ergo propter hoc!)  The model has also worked well at a fair number of other colleges and universities, including some public institutions and some private ones noticeably less affluent than Princeton.  And it has set a standard in student/faculty ratios, student aid, salaries, etc. that administrators elsewhere have pressed donors, state legislators and others to keep up with it.     

So if the model is no longer replicable, where does that leave the search for higher levels of quality in American higher education ? Is there another model that can work as well, without the staggering costs associated with Princeton over the past fifty years?

 



While the MOOCs get the spotlight, the five hundred pound gorilla sits over in the corner, quietly munching bananas, waiting for its moment of fame.  

The gorilla’s name is “competency based education. As Carol Geary Schneider points out, there’s no agreement about what that means but it certainly includes giving academic credit for non-academic activities.  And once credit is given, students can scoot through degree requirements prontissimo.  There are plenty of people and institutions out there willing to call it a college education.

So stay tuned. California is considering a no-faculty college.  North Carol;ina Wesleyan has  announced its three year undergraduate business degree program, and the big foundation money seems ready to pay for the bananas. “The Lumina Foundation …[is] arranging a meeting next week on competency-based education that will include representatives from 25 colleges that have dabbled in it, several sources said. Also attending will be officials from the U.S. Department of Education, state higher education agencies, and other foundations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.” (Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/17/competency-based-education-heats-new-entrants#ixzz2Qj2BHhLv )

The trick, of course, is choosing a major that genuinely excites you.  There’s good reason to believe that if a student does that and follows through seriously, there’ll be a job – no, a rich, satisfying career – awaiting him or her.

But try telling that to mom and dad, especially when debt loads are high.  They often sound as if they expect their student to have a  guaranteed job on graduation. After all, they have been reading the press and watching TV which will (mis)inform them that the only jobs available are in the STEM disciplines.  I’d rather have a students major in science, technology, engineering or math than in Parks and Recreation or other light-weight fields, but I keep hearing stories of STEM majors who can’t find a good job on graduation.  STEM majors come with no job guarantee.

But a Classics major does, at least at Middlebury College in Vermont.   After looking at the letters of inquiry from high schools and secondary  schools seeking to hire a Latin teacher, Pavlos Sfyroeras of the Middelbury Clssics department has made  a “personal guarantee” of such a teaching job for  any Middlebury Classsics major on graduation.  That’s not the only thing Middlebury classics graduates do, of course.  They go on to business and other positions, and to graduate and professional schools with high success rates, but there it is – the guaranteed job on graduation.  One could do a lot worse, don’t you think, Dad?

 

Denis Feeney, the president of America's principal  association of classicist, has joined  the discussion of  the purpose of a university education.  As always, his comments are  to thenpoint. Thjey can be read at http://apaclassics.org/index.php/apa_blog/apa_blog_entry/april_2013_presidents_letter_whats_a_university_for/

 

The Association of American Colleges and Universities, a leader in advancing liberal education, decided to find out the answer to this paraphrasing of Freud’ famous question.

Here’s what they found by surveying more than 300 for profit and non-profit leaders. 95% of the employers surveyed  said that their company “puts a priority on hiring people with the intellectual and interpersonal skills that will help them contribute t innovation in the workplace,” and 93% said that “  A candidate's demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than undergraduate major.“

For more on the survey and the “Compact” that has been developed by AAC&U see http://www.aacu.org/leap/presidentstrust/compact/documents/compact.pdf


You can also read more about the survey at  http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/10/survey-finds-business-executives-arent-focused-majors-those-they-hire#ixzz2Q3qJIXtV 



If employers are serious when they speak in these terms, then the liberal arts and sciences are in a strong position to help their students find challenging and rewarding employment, provided they find ways to demonstrate that an undergraduate degree in the liberal arts and sciences really results in these qualifications.  Grade inflation has made the transcript less credible, and the hyperbole endemic in letters of recommendations has eroded their credibility.  That’s why the AAC&U has pointed to the need for strong internship programs available to all undergraduates and has developed sophisticated advice about designing student portfolios. Their site www.aacu.org is worth studying.

 


David Brooks asked the right question and made bold move toward answering it in his recent column in the Times, “A Practical University” -- http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/opinion/Brooks-The-Practical-University.html?ref=davidbrooks&_r=0 .

His answer to the question “What is a University For?” combines some thinking about  Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) with Michael Oakeshott’s distinction between technical and “practical” knowledge.  “Technical knowledge is the sort of knowledge you need to understand a task — the statistical knowledge you need to understand what market researchers do, the biological knowledge you need to grasp the basics of what nurses do. “ It’s like a cookbook, Brooks adds.  MOOCs, he suggests, do as well as the standard lecture in transmitting such knowledge -- which isn’t saying much since there is ample evidence that the “standard” lecture is not very good at that.

 That’s clear enough, maybe even right. But what is this “practical” knowledge? The term is far from transparent, but Brooks’ gets off to a good start in explaining what he means, “ Practical knowledge is not about what you do, but how you do it. It is the wisdom a great chef possesses that cannot be found in recipe books. Practical knowledge is not the sort of knowledge that can be taught and memorized; it can only be imparted and absorbed. It is not reducible to rules; it only exists in practice. “  But then the slippery slope, for the word seems to make it all-too-easy to equate education with the acquisition of skills useful “ for anybody who wants to rise in this economy: the ability to be assertive in a meeting; to disagree pleasantly; to know when to interrupt and when not to; to understand the flow of discussion and how to change people’s minds; to attract mentors; to understand situations; to discern what can change and what can’t. “

 What would have happened, I wonder, if instead of turning to a career manual  Brooks had at this point  turned his Chicago education to the beginning of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, where praxis is very much in view:

…in every praxis and every moral choice it [The Good] is the goal.  For it is on account of this that people do whatever else they do.  So if there is something that is the goal of all practice, this will be the Practicable Good. (Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics I.  1097 a 20 ff.)

 Or Brooks might have turned in another direction: Practice is putting  into action a set of commitments, moral principles,  societal concerns, knowledge.  The agent may or not be aware of this, may or may not be making a rational choice, may or may not have worth-while principles upon which action is based, but practice enacts ideas about what one values.   A ‘practical’ education, then, seeks to clarify the bases upon which one acts.   That requires study of a sort  that Brooks himself must have experienced, but, like so many of us, loses sight of in the blur of deadlines, events, career, the quest for  fame and fortune.  These studies might 

Ammunition IV  BITIING THE BULLETT

The foes of liberal education have a clear focused message – education is about jobs and liberal arts majors don’t get as many jobs or as high salaries as vocationally oriented  majors do.  They back that up with figures from hiring and salary surveys.  You know the  stuff, though it’s worth looking at it again to see what we are up against.  There is an overview in the last New and Noteworthy Newsletter: http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/1109165/c3328410a6/520044277/76b428fcde/

Earlier postings  on this blog  point out the weaknesses in this simple minded approach, and provide some anecdotal  and argumentative responses.  But it still looks to me as if the advocates of liberal education are going into the ring with both hands tied behind their backs. One hand is tied by reluctance to talk about “outcomes.”  Advocates say the  results of a liberal education are “subtle,”  “may not emerge for decades,” and must never be “utilitarian.”  Maybe, but that lets the opponents of liberal education define the goals of higher education. And you can bet they will do it in the narrowest possible way.  They won’t talk about using evidence, critical thinking, analytical reasoning, ability to write and speak effectively, clarity about values, or any of the other things a liberal education can help students develop.  These may be “by-products” of mastery of a field of knowledge, but they are not to be shrugged off, or passed over in silence.

The other hand is tied by reluctance to use quantitative evidence.  The evidence is now  available to show that students in  the traditional majors of the liberal arts and sciences  show  greater gains in critical thinking and analytical reasoning than those in more vocational fields.  Take a look at the tables in Richard Aum and  Josipa Roksa’s Academically Adrift, (http://www.amazon.com/Academically-Adrift-Limited-Learning-Campuses/dp/0226028569

)or a more recent study by Jeffry T. Steelde and Michael Bradley “Majors Matter.” It’s   at http://www.collegiatelearningassessment.org/files/Majorsmatter.pdf  Their conclusion “… students studying natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities and languages scored the highest, and students studying business and education scored the lowest.”

It’s time, I think, to take off the gloves, or bite the bullet,  whichever metaphor you prefer.  If we really care about students’ well-being, shouldn’t we be insisting that student advising and the allocation of financial resources focus on fields where students  are most likely to develop long-lasting,  life-enhancing capacities?