Over the past year, I have spent a significant amount of time talking to college presidents and asking questions of journalists. The question each asks is essentially the same. What does the future hold for American higher education?
To each I gave the same answer. The funk that's gripping us right now may never end.
Most of those asking the question, like me, are steady consumers of higher education morning news coverage covering failed presidencies, campus closures, campus chaos, and political intrusions. These problems are reflected in the ongoing dysfunction caused by the federal government's failed FAFSA venture.
Then I realized I was completely wrong. The real problem is that higher education, like society as a whole, is being engulfed in a flood of righteous indignation. My evidence? A nightly parade of cable news commentators and hosts.
With high-pitched voices, waving hands and distinct grimaces, they denounce a host of villains, bad ideas and misplaced loyalties. Eventually, I came to understand that what I read every morning was just an echo of what I watched on TV every evening.
What we need as an antidote to righteous anger is something that unites our campuses rather than divides them. It's a hard but necessary lesson I finally understood as I participated in a gathering of 20 institutions developing three-year bachelor's degrees that a growing number of colleges and universities are adding or experimenting with.
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At that meeting, as before, I was asked questions about what the future holds for our struggling industry. Now my answer is different. What lies ahead is no longer punk, but rather a willing entry into the darker waters of this righteous anger.
As is my custom, I ended my presentation by asking questions. On cue, the first university president growled, “Okay Bob, we got the message, but what should we do?”
Without hesitation, I told him: “Try something! It is intended to address key higher education issues. “It’s a really great idea to leverage something valuable and an important element of our campus.”
The need to be a united and positive force was a lesson discussed almost endlessly by the 20 institutions developing three-year degrees at the time. Now they know what worked, what didn't, and how their efforts mattered.
That was the lesson Merrimack College President Christopher Hopey learned when he asked a small group of faculty to design a three-year bachelor's degree curriculum.
Two months later, he said his faculty felt liberated by College-in-3Work, which gave them a burst of energy and optimism.
I had a similar experience at another school. Once I started, success took care of itself. What at first seemed impossible has proven to be possible. I felt encouraged by my certifiers and willing to seek help from my institutional friends.
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The factors that enable this outcome are now fairly well understood by College-in-3 members.
First, almost all participating institutions were considered small, offering only a few of the three-year options rather than the full undergraduate curriculum. And while the prospect of a bachelor's degree costing students a quarter less was an administrative talking point, the real excitement came from the opportunity to design something truly new, starting from what students did in their first year.
Old taboos have been discarded. New ideas were easily tried and discarded if they didn't work. The new watchword for effective design was “Is it really student-centered?”
Integrating traditional learning outcomes with professional interests has become easier. There is a new willingness to make internships, summer work, and learning experiences elements of the new curriculum. This will make it easier to think about the following questions: “What do we expect our students to know and be able to do when they leave us?”
Perhaps the most unexpected development has been the outspokenness of institutions in the face of regulatory hurdles. For example, the New England Commission on Higher Education told the first of our institutions to submit a three-year degree proposal and then wait a while.
Undaunted, the agencies mounted a successful campaign to persuade the Commission to issue guidance for approving the three-year option.
A public institution in another region sought approval to pursue a three-year degree, and seemingly did everything right, including obtaining approval from an accrediting body. But it ran into political hot water as it sought the necessary approval from the state legislature. Upon arrival, the teachers' union declared that a three-year bachelor's degree was impossible. A 25 percent reduction in the time to obtain a degree means fewer faculty jobs in general and fewer liberal arts jobs in particular.
The professors' union won. However, the institution has not given up and continues to work on College-in-3..
Advancing a three-year alternative is not the only way to do important work and create unity. Still, it neatly illustrates the merits of what I have in mind when it comes to what and how students learn.
College-in-3 does not require protests or other means of action, but it can promise success to all students it deems worthy of admission, regardless of background.
This is not a lament on the subject. It is not the righteous anger of the marginalized in a topsy-turvy world. Instead, we engineered intentional change from the bottom up. This is the antidote that higher education needs.
Robert Zemsky was a founding director. Higher Education Research Institute from the University of Pennsylvania.
This story about College-in-3 was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Subscribe to Hechinger's newsletter.