Higher Education's Road to Relevance

Navigating Complexity

Susan A. Ambrose, Laura A. Wankel

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119568407
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Explores the current context, role, and challenges of post-secondary education and presents options for promising pathways forward.

The post-secondary educational system has undergone dramatic changes and experienced immense stress in the past two decades. Once regarded as the logical next step toward career opportunities and financial security, higher education is a subject of growing uncertainty for millions of people across the United States. It is more common than ever to question the return on investment, skyrocketing cost, and student debt burden of going to college. Prospective students, and many employers, increasingly view attending institutions of higher learning as inadequate preparation for entering the 21 st century workforce. High-profile scandals—financial impropriety, sexual abuse, restrictions of free speech, among others—have further eroded public trust. In response to these and other challenges, leading voices are demanding strengthened accountability and measurable change.

Higher Education's Road to Relevance illustrates why change is needed in post-secondary education and offers practical solutions to pressing concerns. The authors, internationally recognized experts in college-level teaching and learning innovation, draw heavily from contemporary research to provide an integrative approach for post-secondary faculty, staff, and administrators of all levels. This timely book helps readers identify the need for leadership in developing new networks and ecosystems of learning and workforce development. This valuable book will help readers:

• Understand the forces driving change in higher education
• Develop multiple pathways to create and credential self-directed learners
• Promote access to flexible, cost-effective, and relevant learning
• Adapt structures and pedagogies to address issues and overcome challenges
• Use an inclusive approach that extends to employers, K-12 educators, post-secondary educators, and policy-makers, among others

Higher Education's Road to Relevance is a much-needed resource for college and university administrators, academic researchers, instructors and other faculty, and staff who support and interact with students.

CHAPTER 1
Exploring Challenges and Opportunities: Setting the Context for Change

In this chapter, we describe the confluence of three major factors that have led American higher education to where we are today and that impact our future. These factors are

• Growing Public Concern around:
  • Return on Investment
  • Persistence and Graduation Rates
  • Lack of Access
  • College Readiness
  • Perceived Skills Gap
  • Misalignment with Workforce Needs and Public Interest
  • Political and Social Context
  • Fierce Competition and Confusion in the Marketplace
• Radically Changing Employment Landscape, including:
  • Accelerating Pace of Change
  • Automation
  • Globalization
  • Changing Nature of Organizations
  • The Rise of the Gig Economy
  • Increasingly Diverse Workplaces
  • Employer View of the Future
• Expanding Learner Base and Changing Learner Needs that involve:
  • Traditional Learners
  • Post-traditional Learners

INTRODUCTION

We begin this book by establishing the need for change in higher education, because without a clear understanding of the problem (and the desired end goal/state), it is hard to strategize about pathways to get us there. We are attempting to present a coherent and logical argument based on data, and we believe our colleagues in various roles and different types of colleges and universities will be ready to engage in thinking through how their respective institutions should respond.

It is no secret that the world around us is changing rapidly. No matter your age, socioeconomic status, race, ethnic background, or educational attainment, every day brings something new—for example, an “invention” (app, product, service, etc.), political strife, medical breakthroughs, natural disasters, regional conflicts, economic shifts, and scientific discoveries. All of these changes provide context to the work we do in higher education. While we do not believe that “the sky is falling,” given the vast changes in the world—demographically, economically, socially, and politically—we believe that higher education does need to (a) evolve in some areas (e.g., think beyond degrees, semesters, and credit hours), (b) shift our focus to be more inclusive (e.g., expand our potential learner base), (c) transform how we deliver, measure, and credential learning (e.g., adopt competency-based education, focus transcripts on knowledge and skills instead of courses, consider the role of adaptive learning platforms), and (d) leave behind some vestiges of ages past (e.g., lectures). We must find new ways to be as flexible, agile, and adaptable as the graduates we send out into the world will need to be.

If we are to remain relevant and add value to our learners' lives, it is essential that we more fully understand the forces and shifts in the world around us—globally, nationally, locally, and institutionally—because that world will both impact and be impacted by our evolution and transformation. It is also important to be able to see that world not only from our own perspective, but also from the perspective of those we “serve”—for example, parents, learners, employers, legislators, and K–12 educators. And we should remember that the public often does not distinguish among institutions the way we do (such as public/private, nonprofit/for profit, residential/commuter, two-year/four-year, technical/liberal arts, urban/suburban), but rather views postsecondary education as one monolithic entity. This means that even if some of the criticisms levied on higher education do not ring true for your institution, department, or courses, we are all tainted and impacted by them.

This chapter identifies and briefly discusses some of the major concerns about, critiques of, and changing forces that affect our industry, as well as the conditions in the world around us that set the stage for thinking about new paradigms that are needed to maintain relevance in the future. After all, “as academics, we have a moral and professional responsibility to help shape the public narrative about learning and education in the United States” (Sullivan, P., 2017, pp. 68–71). If we do not, others will! In fact, some have already asserted that we are close to losing control of our own narrative—to legislators, the media, employers—and must begin to define a compelling and positive future rather than assume the role of victim by allowing others to create it for us (Seymour, 2016). It is in this spirit that we approach our work, and we are hopeful that we will further stimulate the conversation and challenge the status quo with engaging new pathways of possibilities that will transform our educational ecosystems and learning potential commensurate with our emerging new world context.

GROWING PUBLIC CONCERN

Long-held beliefs have supported the notion that higher education provides critical social and economic mobility and a ticket to achieving the American Dream. Consequently, some might argue that access to quality postsecondary education is a critical element to ensuring the vitality and sustainability of our society. Although postsecondary education is not solely a “public good” in the economic sense of the term (i.e., a good that cannot be restricted to only those who pay for it, and consumption by one does not prevent consumption by others), one could certainly make the case that it is a “good” that serves the public interest. Postsecondary education and related research in the United States is a story of continual expansion and integration with our society's needs to develop the talent, skills, technology, and capacity to serve a growing nation. As such, higher education has also been the beneficiary of considerable funding from the public sector, either directly in state- and locally supported institutions or indirectly through federal and state financial aid programs supporting students. In light of the intersection of the perceived need to have access to quality education in order to achieve success and the growing costs to operate these institutions, the public's scrutiny of the academy has reached a new level. The scrutiny has led to growing skepticism in many corners and has fueled public concern on a range of issues.

Return on Investment (ROI). Although we believe that ROI is more than simply attaining a good job, we recognize that job attainment is one publicly embraced measure of postsecondary education's ROI. That said, much of the narrative on higher education focuses on the value higher education provides to individuals given the cost and debt load graduates carry, which impacts their lives in a variety of ways. For example, “a college education is now the second-largest expense an individual is likely to make in a lifetime—right after purchasing a home” (Dickler, 2016, para. 1). However, that characterization understates the negative impact of student debt for many recent graduates because student loan borrowers are not buying homes as they used to given they are not able to save for a down payment (Bauman, 2018; Lew, 2015). According to the National Association of Realtors and American Student Assistance, “student loan debt is delaying homeownership for millennials by an estimated seven years” (Lerner, 2017, para 2). In fact, homeownership for people younger than 35 has declined from 41 percent in 1982 to 35 percent in 2017 (Kitroeff, 2018). The student debt situation is becoming so mainstream that employers and states are looking at new ways to creatively leverage the student debt situation to attract and retain employees. The state of Maine, for example, which has about a third of their workforce either retired or rapidly approaching retirement, recently announced a student loan forgiveness program designed to attract recent graduates to live and work in the state (Sreenivasan, 2018). Some companies have also started to integrate student debt assistance into their employee recruitment and benefits offerings and strategy. In 2015, Fidelity Investments was among the first companies to launch such an effort by paying $10,000 over a five-year period toward student debt for full-time employees. Aetna followed suit in 2017 and also expanded similar benefits for part-time employees. Additionally, Fidelity has been contracted by Hewlett Packard, along with at least 25 other companies, to help them develop similar programs for their employees (Pandey, 2018).

For some college graduates, the situation is even worse; according to U.S. census data reported by the Pew Research Center, “today's young adults are significantly more likely to be at home for an exten...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1: Exploring Challenges and Opportunities: Setting the Context for Change
• CHAPTER 2: Leveraging Complexity: Illuminating Compelling Outcomes
• CHAPTER 3: Discovering Possibilities: Designing for the Future
• CHAPTER 4: Charting a Path Forward: Getting Us from Here to There
• INDEX
• End User License Agreement