A Modest Proposal for the Re-engineering of American Higher Education

A Modest Proposal for the Re-engineering of American Higher Education

By Baylis  ?²

For many years, I have been intrigued with any title that begins with a phrase “A Modest Proposal.” Jonathan Swift’s classic satirical essay from 1729 has conditioned everyone to know that what follows is anything but modest, and possibly bordering on sensationalism. I have deliberately used the phrase “A modest proposal” to get people’s attention. However, the heart of the essay is not a satire. I truly believe that American higher education would benefit from adopting some, if not all twenty, of the suggestions that I make in the body of the essay.

I will also admit that I used another sensational term in the title of the essay. “Re-engineering” grabs people’s attention because it has come to mean radical changes that could affect the entire institution. That’s exactly the idea that I wanted to convey.

1. Education is helping students develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary to move them from where they are to where they need or want to be. There are two actors in this process. Each actor has different responsibilities and roles. Students must come to education with goals. They should know what they want to be. The role of faculty is to identify where the students are and the best route to take the students to where they want to or need to be. Faculty need to realize that the students’ goals are important and they should not unnecessarily impose their own goals on students. Faculty should serve as guides in assisting students along the route to reaching their goals. Students need to realize that education is hard work. It is not an entitlement; it is a privilege.
2. American higher education should adopt a Social Change Model of Education as the foundational philosophy for building its superstructure. The basic tenet of a Social Change Model of Education is that education should be about helping students learn so that they can improve themselves, society, and the community.
3. Within the framework of a Social Change Model of Education, institutions need to focus the educational process on helping students acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to live useful lives in order to better themselves and society. An institution must pay attention to all three areas of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. In a 1978 hit song, Michael Lee Aday, commonly known as Meatloaf, suggested that in the area of personal relationships, “Two out of three, ain’t bad” However, in education, “Two out of three, ain’t enough.”
4. Each institution must have a clearly delineated mission. All individuals involved with the given institution must have a solid understanding of the mission of the institution and a firm commitment to that mission.
5. The mission of an institution must be clearly communicated to all prospective students and the community at large. The leaders of an institution, especially the president, administrators and faculty, must understand the history of the institution and how that affects the current development of the institution and possible future development.
6. Institutions need to hire, evaluate and reward faculty in terms of helping students learn. Good teaching should be measured in terms of student learning. Teaching itself is only a means to the end of learning, not an end in itself.
7. Institutions should consider revamping graduation requirements more in line with competencies instead of credit hours earned in course blocks. What’s more important, the number of credits earned by sitting through the required number of class hours, or what a student knows, can do, and values?
8. Schools need to consider scrapping the current semester, trimester. or quarter systems that are agriculturally based, in favor of a more flexible schedule that allows or even encourages learning anytime and anywhere, possibly in a 24/7/365 format.
9. Institutions should be aware and open to the possibility that curricula will evolve. Some new disciplines will emerge while some old disciplines will become obsolete.
10. Institutions should consider revamping their fiscal model away from the charge for credit hours to one more closely aligned with charging students a credentialing fee based upon completion of competencies.
11. Faculty must be encouraged to study learning theory with an eye to understanding and using different teaching modalities other than just lecturing. Faculty must be encouraged to experiment with educational pedagogies and technologies appropriate to discipline.
12. Faculty must know their students. They must be aware of and account for the varying goals of the students they are teaching. It is not the job of faculty to produce clones of the faculty. The job of faculty is to help students develop the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to improve themselves and society.
13. Institutions should be prepared to provide appropriate learning spaces and resources for faculty and students, including classrooms, laboratories, libraries, and technology.
14. Institutions should consider paying faculty according to their track record of helping students learn or complete competencies, instead of their degrees and years of service.
15. Institutions must be prepared to offer developmental resources to faculty to help them use the most appropriate pedagogies and technologies in their teaching.
16. Faculty should be open to the possibility of unbundling their work. Faculty may have to be open to the idea that faculty governance is too expensive and inefficient.
17. Faculty need to understand that tenure and academic freedom are not entitlements, but are privileges.
18. Faculty and institutions need to be abused of their unattainable illusions of grandeur. Not all institutions can be prestigious, research universities. Institutions must get off the academic treadmill of trying to keep up with the institutions that are their neighbors or competitors.
19. Institutions must realize that not all institutions will look the same. Some institutions will be geared toward a residential clientele. Some institutions will focus on commuter students and some institutions will serve a mixed clientele. Serving these differing collections of student types will mean institutions will have to tailor facilities, curricula, schedules, and teaching modalities to the students they are serving.
20.  Everyone associated with an institution–Board of Trustees, President, administration, faculty, and students–must be held accountable for their part in the well-functioning of the institution and promoting student learning.

I believe the quality academic institutions of the future may look and feel very different from the quality academic institutions of the past. That’s the basis for my modest proposal. We should be ready to embrace the new look of academic institutions and not be afraid of it.