In a January 12th blog post on Inside Higher Ed, Professor Steven MIntz added to his often thought provoking articles with a narrative titled The Revolution in Higher Education Is Already Underway: Are you prepared?
Dr. Mintz, a history professor at UT Austin, accurately summarizes changes in higher education that have occurred throughout the 20th century. Among these changes are:
- Higher ed’s shift from education for the elite to mass education to near universal education.
- Rapid growth of vocational, technical, career-aligned, and pre-professional programs at the undergraduate level.
- Greatly expanded master’s, doctoral, and professional programs at the post-bacc level.
- The displacement of the traditional liberal arts core made apparent by the rise of enrollments in programs in architecture, business, communication, engineering, hospitality, journalism, nursing, social work, and information technology.
- The rise of the “instrumental university” where the university’s mission shifts from educational to human capital and regional economic development, applied research, and public policy research and advocacy to solve social problems.
- The rise of the neo-liberal university where universities act like private-sector corporations evidenced through their shifting institutional governance, professional enrollment management designed to maximize revenue generation, pursuit of growth in ancillary income, an emphasis on return on investment, and the recognition of students as customers.
- The rapid development and growth of fully online universities.
- The replacement of traditional faculty members with less expensive staffing models.
- The increasing roles of vendors and third-party providers in delivering core institutional functions.
- The decline of the traditional (18-22) college student who attends college full-time and has limited work and family responsibilities.
- The quest for new student markets including international students.
- The increasing division of the faculty in terms of access to tenure, teaching and service responsibilities, and full- and part-tine status.
- The rapid growth of non-teaching professional staff responsible for advising, career services, psychological counseling, learning support, and student life.
- The transfer of costs of higher education to families and the federal government and the increase in student debt burdens.
The list compiled by Dr. Mintz is lengthy and comprehensive. It is not insightful for those who have worked in higher education for decades but it’s impactful for the number of major changes that have occurred in an industry that many claim hasn’t changed in 300 years. There may be a few changes that he didn’t list. However, Professor Mintz’s commentary on the nature of this transformation is spot on. He writes that:
- Earlier changes in higher ed opened access to many whereas the current revolution is producing a far greater range of educational models that target distinct demographic populations.
- The deepening disparity in the education provided by institutions is widening in terms of access to faculty, majors, advising and support services (let’s come back to this later).
- At a growing number of institutions, the undergraduate education function is taking a back seat to other functions (particularly at Research 1 institutions).
- Students at less selective institutions are voting with their feet and concentrating in several broad areas – business, education, and health – with limited enrollments in the humanities or social sciences.
- The relationship between students and their institutions is increasingly transactional with growing numbers of students swirling between multiple colleges and universities.
- Government is assuming a more active role in oversight and accountability, demanding more information about costs, debt, graduation, and employment outcomes.
- High schools are increasing their offerings of early college/dual degree programs and electives that are equivalent to introductory-level college courses while third parties offer certificate, certification, and degree programs separately or in collaboration with existing institutions.
Anyone associated with higher education who reads the list of seven transformational changes compiled by Dr. Mintz and who doesn’t believe any of these are impacting their institution is myopic at best, more likely blind to the world outside their environment.
Dr. Mintz writes that it’s easy to complain (I won’t list the complaints) but complaining will not slow the changes, many of which are here. He proposes a path forward with five major steps.
Step 1: Academics need to speak out more strongly for equity. By equity, he means increased access to higher education for students from low-income backgrounds.
Step 2: The faculty needs to understand that their personal interests and their students’ learning needs aren’t identical. Many undergraduates would benefit from an education that is broader, more skills-focused, more experiential, more interdisciplinary, more project-based, and more relevant and responsive.
Step 3: Accountability isn’t a four-letter word. Universities owe their consumers an accurate and transparent accounting of their mission, programs outcomes, and steps their taking to improve those outcomes. They also need to ensure that faculty members are contributing equitably to their universities’ functioning and mission.
Step 4: Faculty members in the humanities, in particular, need to better adapt to students’ shifting interests. Those granted the great privilege of conducting research in the humanities should focus less on cloning themselves than nurturing the skills, knowledge, and literacies that students who do not become academics will benefit from in later life.
Step 5: Let’s liberate access to advanced education and make it more broadly available to non-students. Higher education is too valuable to be monopolized by the young and post-bacc education shouldn’t be limited to retraining and upskilling. Learning should be lifelong but not merely technical, practical, and vocational.
I like the five steps that Professor Mintz proposes. I would link or integrate Step 1 with Step 3. There is no purpose in increasing access for low-income students if there is not transparency for program outcomes and the ability of those low-income students to access programs with reasonable expected earnings.
Step 2 is clearly long overdue, and Step 4 is closely aligned with it as well. For the first time ever, I believe that very few high school graduates should begin college if they haven’t taken a gap year to pursue an interest or gain a perspective on what careers they might be interested in. Most general education courses as offered today are a waste of time and money for many students. It’s time we add value for all required courses, not just English composition and college math.
Step 5 as outlined by Dr. Mintz is much more aligned with older people (I’m not calling them students as he chooses to do). It appears to relate to learning as conceived by the supporters of our humanities and liberal arts programs. I think many MOOC options provide us with this at a low cost. Based on the examples provided by Dr. Mintz, I think he’s looking for arrangements where learning is more personalized and in person. It’s a nice idea, I’m not sure it’s necessary.
There was an item in Dr. Mintz’s long list that I commented about coming back to later. The statement – “the deepening disparity in the education provided by institutions is widening in terms of access to faculty, majors, advising and support services” – is true but also very complicated. I believe that we have misuses of data by many who are quick to criticize as well as praise our higher education institutions.
It has long been known by higher education insiders as well as college students (although the awareness for a student may not occur timely enough) that not all degrees lead to the same career outcome. Back in my undergraduate days, many of my Duke classmates who were not engineering or nursing majors attended medical school, law school, or graduate business school for an MBA. A few went to more traditional graduate schools to earn their PhD’s. I remember hearing that approximately 70 percent of my class went to graduate school.
The difference today is that college is much more expensive than it was four decades ago. Tuition, room and board, and other costs for four years at a school like Duke is approximately $300,000 without financial aid or scholarships. Add to that the cost of graduate school, and your investment in college is huge. The high-cost elite colleges and universities have made some adjustments. It’s almost impossible to find an elite college that offers an undergraduate degree in education. Many of them have graduate schools of education, but it appears that the stretch is too great to ask someone to pay more than $70,000 per year to earn an average starting salary of $41,000 (and that’s an average, many states are lower).
There are few examples of differential pricing among undergraduates unless they’re enrolled in engineering or nursing programs. When we reach accurate and total transparency, colleges should either eliminate programs that lead to low paying jobs or reduce their tuition and fees to match those outcomes. It’s not likely to happen soon which is why I added my comment when I listed Dr. Mintz’s comments about the nature of the transformation.
During these transformative decades, colleges have passed on huge increases in tuition and other costs to families, forcing many to borrow money in order to attend. Years ago, there was little transparency about the differences in earnings outcomes based on programs majored in. “Go to college and you’ll earn more” was the mantra. As more data on earnings versus debt incurred are disclosed, it’s no surprise to me that fewer freshmen are enrolling than expected. To change the current perception of the return on investment for attending college for all but the most privileged, we need a revolution and not a transformation.
