Month: March 2019

Higher Education, Return on Investment

Trust

Missy Alexander

As the hand wringing from last week’s scandal in elite higher education continues (oy!), there is an issue that is important to the rest of us.  Public trust in higher education is waning.  Now let’s be clear, we’ve always been both praised and pilloried – praised for the opportunities and experiences we provide, pilloried for our remove from the real world. In our various forms we’ve always been part of the pathway to professional degrees and the creation of new knowledge, but by design, we’re pretty judgmental which is irritating. This makes a love-hate relationship with higher education kind of normal.

What is new is this–as the cost of college tuition increases, more and more families are questioning the return on investment. Tales of wiz kids inventing apps in garages or hitting the big time in entertainment or sports suggest education might not be the only path to fame and fortune.  Stories of students with liberal arts degrees who can’t get jobs (told in the press in wild disproportion to the reality) make some see a traditional degree as a luxurious waste of time.  And there is the misguided notion that everyone should be enrolled in four-year degree right after high school.  When faced with the lived experience of friends and neighbors, this story just doesn’t hold up.

Well, I suppose we have it coming.  I could talk about how decreases in state funding of higher ed has driven much of the high cost of tuition (which is true), but that doesn’t change the experiences of our families who are striving for their children.  I could also insist that people with undergraduate degrees endure the vagaries of our economic cycles much better than those without (also true), but there are lots of jobs right now, so no one wants to hear that. I could remind folks that even those who major in the most traditional of liberal arts degrees (philosophy, literature, history) have better earning power than those with no degrees, and over a lifetime of work and tend to catch up with a lot of the more professionally focused degrees (including some STEM disciplines).  Yet, this is cold-comfort for those most recent grads living at home because they are paying off student loans.

As great as college education is for our economic system, our political system, and the health and well-being of our citizens, we are still describing what we do in unsupported and undifferentiated terms.  We’re asking the public to trust us, rather than making it clear that we have the best interest of our students’ futures in mind.

Well, not really.  This is really just happening in the media versions of college (both in fact-based and fictional genres). Our realities are very different.  We do, in fact, recommend multiple paths to our students.  Good high school guidance counselors are focused on the varied educational experiences available to students (public and private, four-year, two-year, training programs, etc.). Our high schools also still include technical training opportunities, which is a very important option for many.  Choosing from these many distinct opportunities would be easier for families and school districts if people weren’t so obsessed with that prestigious Ivy League experience.

Good colleges and universities also provide real guidance to students.  We work closely with students to get them on the right path. Some start at a four-year university, but find it isn’t a good place for them.  Good college advisors help students transition to the right place–sometimes a community college, sometimes work until the student has a better sense of what they want out of their education. We have also developed programs to help students return to college if their first attempt didn’t go well (Fresh Start Programs, for example).  At a school like mine, students also stop and start for financial or family reasons, so we’re finding structures to help them manage these real-world obstacles to degree completion.

In public higher education, we’ve also worked hard to make transfer from certificate to two-year to four-year degrees relatively easy (I’m not convinced it is seamless yet). We’re not creating a bunch of stackable credentials as part of a new trend in education, we’re helping students see that we’ve had those stackable options all along.  The trick is to help everyone complete something, so that they have the chance to move on when ready. We’ve also created advising supports to try to keep students from amassing too much debt in their pursuit of an education.  We hate seeing students piling on loan after loan without a good outcome.

But this is the real story that we all have to get our minds around.  The emerging economies rely on an educated workforce.  Our graduates have to be ready to learn throughout our professional lives, because job requirements are changing at a pace that no single degree or certificate can keep up with.  We do want everyone to earn post-secondary education credentials, and probably those credentials will lead to degrees, because we want our students to be able to respond to the changing world of work throughout their lives. But we know the path to those credentials will vary.

So, we have to be clear about the benefits and limitations of each type of educational experience available.  We have to match those experiences to the students we are supporting, doing our best to meet their needs in both the short and long-term. We have to be responsive to the need for lifelong learning and continue to build credentials that support that need.  And we have to articulate the value of the more abstract reasoning and cultural competency that comes from all of those courses that don’t have a visible link to a specific career.  Why? Because we know that students with these capabilities do better over time. The evidence for this exists, but we have to tell everyone.

In other words, we have to earn the trust of the public. I’m sure that if people knew just how much higher education pays attention to where students are going, they’d feel better about us.  If we can show them evidence for our claims about what we do instead of asking folks to just trust us, that would also help.  And, if we demonstrate that we are paying attention to students as individuals, mapping their educational experiences to their unique needs, people might feel better about the financial investment they are making.

Then we need to figure out how to get the press to stop obsessing on a single, elite model of education, and tell the rest of the story.

 

 

 

 

 

equity, Higher Education, Inclusion

Are You Kidding Me?

Missy Alexander

Last week, as the news broke about the “admissions scandal,” I thought it was just old news.  The many, many ways that the wealthy have unfair access to, well everything, is just not surprising.  Inside Higher Ed has nicely summarized the list of ways that access manifests itself in higher ed in the article “Wealth and Admissions.” From good K-12 schools, to tutors, to summer programs, to family legacies, to just plain financial wherewithal, there is nothing equal about access to elite higher education.  We save a few spots for new talent (talent from families not already part of the elite) and get on with our protected pathways for those who have already made it to the upper middle class and above.

None of this is new.  None of this is surprising.  Some wealthy people have found a new way of garnering access, but really, what did we expect?  We set up the system this way and it isn’t pretty.

So here’s the “are you kidding me” part. Media outlets spent a week talking about this, as if that proportion of coverage was warranted in the sea of other news we should be attending to. Celebrities were involved, so were sports, so here we go. Meanwhile, legislators are considering ways to rectify the unfair advantages that this scandal unearthed.  The Wall Street Journal reports statements and proposals focused on limiting tax-deductions for university donors who have children attending the school; regulating early-decision since it undermines the ability for students to juggle offers and privileges those who can pay; fining colleges with the lowest proportion of low-income students; and, of course, limiting affirmative action.  Why are we allowing this bluster to go on? These practices have long been scrutinized, to no avail, and they are only focused on the lucky few.

It isn’t that I don’t understand how rigged the system is.  Nor is it that I don’t understand how invested we are in the notion that merit is the way that students get into elite schools. That belief helps us nurture the hope that upward mobility is real and pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps is the clearest path out of poverty.  Of course this belief is true, once in a while.  Some of the students admitted to those elite schools really did work harder than the rest to gain admission with a status of unknown, under-represented, and under-resourced.  I should add that many of the wealthy students enrolled also worked hard and had no idea of the advantages their socio-economic status brought them.  They were honestly engaged in the studying and volunteering and extra-curricular activities necessary for admission to an elite school.

What I don’t understand is why we allow this to pull our attention away from the daily inequities that plague the majority of students in the United States. Approximately 73% of all students in colleges and universities in 2016 were in public universities, and the majority of those institutions are focused on being accessible and affordable. Most of the students in these public colleges come from public K-12 schools.  In every one of these public colleges and universities, a portion of the students is truly struggling with finances or adequate academic support or navigating the mysteries of higher education with no family history of higher education to help them find their way.  Those colleges and universities are trying to manage decreasing funds to support the needs of their students. This is where our attention needs to be.

If legislators want to focus on education at all, then the focus should be on making sure that there is really access to our public institutions.  This means adequate funding from pre-K through 12th grade.  Let’s find ways to truly invest in primary and secondary education so that students from all neighborhoods are adequately prepared for college.  Then let’s reinvest in our public higher education.  The erosion in funding over the last 25 years is making it a challenge to meet the needs of all of the students enrolled. Frequently these gaps in funding hit the neediest students the hardest. This dis-investment needs to be reversed so that when those properly supported K-12 students get to college, the support doesn’t disappear.

You know, public education was one of the best ideas this country has ever had.  It has supported social mobility and, after many a battle, it is becoming inclusive.  But it isn’t perfect yet.  We aren’t meeting the needs of all communities and despite the progress toward greater diversity and inclusion, we are still leaving too many students behind. And we do so at our peril, because many of the jobs in our emerging economy rely on an educated workforce. When we under-fund accessible education, we under-invest in the economic health of this nation.

So, let’s not get distracted by the unfair access to the elite schools.  We can let the courts sort that out.  Let’s get obsessed with meeting the needs of the many instead of the few. Those of us working in public education are out here trying to make the promise of America real, but we could really use some more support.

Dialogue, equity, Inclusion

Graven Images

Missy Alexander

SUNY New Paltz recently announced that they will be changing the names of the buildings in the Hasbrouck Complex.  While the buildings were once named for celebrated founders of the region, their status as slave owners has come to the university’s attention.  After a lot of community conversation and input, the College Council voted to rename these buildings.  The history is no longer something the community can ignore.

I grew up in that neighborhood and went to school with descendants of the families associated with the Hasbrouck Complex. I’m sure that they never thought about, or perhaps even knew about, this part of their family history.  They were like me, just kids going to school comfortable in the knowledge that slave ownership was something that happened elsewhere in the country.  Those days are gone.  While the scale of slavery was different in the north, and many of our ancestors fought on the winning side of the Civil War, our history is in no way pure.  I applaud the bravery of SUNY New Paltz in their tackling of this issue.

This has me thinking about all of the name changes and statue removals that have been occurring as the details of our histories become visible to us. Our understanding of discrimination, in all of its forms, has expanded every decade of my life.  While it is true that there have been enlightened people throughout history who have pointed out our hypocrisies and hideous behavior as they emerged, for the many, identifying the beliefs that have supported our bigotries has taken time. We discover our blind spots, we battle over their meaning, and slowly we change.

In my children’s school district, there is a tradition of studying the monuments in Washington, D.C. and then traveling there to see them in person.  I was a chaperone  on this trip (twice). As I hopped on and off of our tour bus, watching excited children see their monument (each had reconstructed and reported on one of them), it never occurred to me to see those monuments as vulnerable to new understandings of history.  They represented the celebrated leaders and conflicts that underpin our sense of America.  I should have thought about it as we traveled to Mt. Vernon to observe the home of one of our early slave-owning presidents, but I didn’t.  We weren’t in this moment yet.

What I did observe was the small museum tucked away under the Lincoln Memorial.  I wouldn’t have found it, we were focused on the steps and statue above, but two of my charges needed a rest-room.  As we poked around downstairs, I discovered a room full of protest memorabilia.  There it was, the waves of our awakenings to patterns of discrimination.  Marches for African-Americans, Women, LGBTQ, and more are remembered in this small room.  These histories are the moments that mark our readiness for change.  Much more has needed to follow those marches, but they are a record of our move from the enlightened few to movements for change.

As we go through the conversations that precede or accompany the re-naming of buildings or the taking down of statues, there is a sense of loss and conflict.  Some argue that these changes erase history.  I don’t agree.  These changes make the history more visible.  They require us to look more closely at the stories we are telling, and those we are not. Questioning our decisions about who we honor makes us more open to fullness of our histories.

Then there is the other protest… when will it end?  Are we just going to keep taking down names as we discover the faults in our heroes?  Probably.  It is unlikely that anyone we celebrate will be thought heroic forever.  Perhaps we should try to get  our minds around that.  Embracing our fallibility could make us more open to making the changes we need to make.

So, I’m thinking  about the Second Commandment.  The prohibition against graven images is frequently interpreted as a ban on idolatry.  It seems a good caution in today’s context.  We select our heroes at our peril, knowing that they will be fallible and may not bear close scrutiny over time.  Maybe we should avoid these homages to perceived importance and greatness completely.

I don’t think so.  We like heroes and it is important to celebrate greatness, even if our definitions of greatness change over time.  Indeed, we have to make room for the  heroes that emerge as we change, making room for the new values and achievements they represent. But we are going to have to let go of the sense of permanence that accompanies our monuments.  They reflect a moment in time: they are not forever, no matter how massive our tribute.

As for the names of our buildings, I think we should consider the meaning of the word “graven” in the 2nd Commandment. It is frequently translated as etching, and that something that is difficult to erase.  Perhaps, in the spirit of our openness to change, we should stop the etching and move to plaques. They’re much more easily moved.

 

 

 

Higher Education

Snow Days: Time to Breathe

Missy Alexander

It’s March 4th and we have a delayed opening today.  We had a proper snow storm last night, that is,  it was actually snow.  We’ve been plagued with snow/ice storms this year, so nice mushy, good for snow ball fights snow is kind of fun.  I put on my snow boots and shoveled my numerous steps (30 if you want to know), enjoying the feel of the snow and the wonderful silence that comes with it.

I’m old fashioned about snow.  I like that is slows us down a little.  I use a regular shovel because the snow blower is too noisy. It ruins the way that snow dampens sound, helping us hear things that are often drowned out by the bustle of the world around us.  Not the least of this is the bustle of tasks that can’t be done because roads are not yet passable.  For me it is delay to be grateful for… a pause that makes room for thinking.

We need more room for that pause… in our lives and in our classrooms.  In a world that seems to run on overdrive, education is one of the few places where we should make time to think and explore.  As I shoveled, I started thinking about the structure of what we do in higher education.  We’ve organized undergraduate education into 4 years, with 8 semesters and an average of 15 weeks in each.  It seems like a nice amount of time to explore ideas, build some beginning expertise in a major, and develop the habits of mind that will help us continue learning for the rest of our lives. Yet somehow it isn’t.

We’ve over-filled this experience.  So afraid of missing something important, we have bulked up the major requirements so there is less room for exploration of minors and electives. We’ve hidden requirements in the general education curriculum as a way to add more to the majors.  We’ve created new courses for every outcome required by the various accrediting bodies. In some majors, every single course a student takes as an undergraduate is a requirement. There’s no room for thinking and there’s no room for mistakes.

Now consider the fact that students are generally taking five courses in a semester, each with sufficient reading, writing, and application of concepts to merit a true college course, we might be less surprised that our students are having difficulty doing more than skimming their work.  In an effort to cover it all, we’ve encouraged them to be acquainted with concepts instead of trying to really know them. Oh, and they have jobs, and would like to participate in campus life, and maybe do an internship or study abroad!  Whew!

In the last decade, many of us have done curriculum mapping.  We’ve tried to figure out reasonable pathways through majors to achieve the learning we think is essential.  These were good thoughts, a start to an important transition from lists of courses to take, to a vision for what our majors and alumni should take with them as they go.  This curriculum mapping came to us as a series accountability demands that we were not happy about, but in the end a lot of learning came out if it. We started to notice things we hoped for as outcomes, that were not being adequately addressed in our courses.  We closed loops and had retreats and tried to imagine the best for our students.

Well it’s time to revisit those degree outcomes on a larger scale. Instead of just thinking about the major, we need to think about the total undergraduate experience.  We need to ask questions about the kinds of opportunities we want our students to have, not in isolation, but as a whole.  How will their courses influence and inform each other? How will they integrate their work in the classroom with their work and co-curricular experiences?  When will we encourage independence and decision making?  How will we make room for the learning to sink in?

This is the educational mapping I’d like us to consider.  Let’s pull a representative sample of student course schedules, and examine the course requirements.  Is there really enough time to complete the work well, when they are combined?  Is there room for reflection? Is there room for mistakes, confusion, and recovery?  Now, add to those requirements some hours for a part-time job and some hours for clubs or sports or just hanging out.  If what we see is something we can’t imagine completing each week, we will know it is time to design a more holistic curriculum map.

The undergraduate experience has a lot of responsibility for preparing students for life-long learning.  Our graduates are entering a world where they will change jobs numerous times.  Technologies change weekly and their ability to adapt as needed will depend on deeply ingrained skills and habits of mind.  We can’t be distracted by the sheer volume of human knowledge, accelerating at an ever-increasing pace.  It is ever-expanding and easily accessed. Instead, we should be making room for reflection, deep engagement with ideas, and opportunities for some unexpected discoveries.  We need to do less and think more.

The snow storm has passed. The shoveling is done.  The sun shines on the white blanket that mother nature spread last night.  I’m moving back into the bustle of things.  But I’m grateful for the pause and the deep breath it inspires. I’m hoping we can find some ways to build those deep breaths into all that we do at the university.