Many college and university leaders have acknowledged in the past couple of years that, given the public scrutiny of our institutions and shrinking state and federal budgets, some fundamental changes are needed in our higher-education system. But no consensus has emerged about what changes would be most desirable.
As Theodore J. Marchese, executive editor of Change magazine, put it in an editorial a few months ago: “We have much clearer ideas about the need for change and the dysfunctions of the present system than we do about what a new system might be like.” While no one change would magically transform the system, he noted, “the right five or seven might.”
It seems to me that it is not difficult to identify pieces of our current system in which we could make changes that -- while not earthshaking in themselves -- would produce considerable cumulative benefits.
The academic calendar is a good place to begin. Everyone recognizes it for what it is: a relic of an agrarian society in which all able-bodied men and women were needed in the fields at certain times of the year. What are we getting for our reluctance to let go of cherished old customs? On most campuses, we get some faculty members who work 11 or 12 months a year -- because they engage in research or other professional activities during the summer -- but who get paid for only 9 or 10 months. We get others who teach during the summer for a fraction of their regular salaries. We get students whose progress toward graduation and opportunities for on-campus summer employment are curtailed. We get underused facilities during some months of the year and overcrowding during others.
A 12-month academic year divided into three equal segments, or into even shorter modules for some programs, would benefit everybody by promoting a more even use of facilities throughout the year. Students would gain a less crowded campus and would face less competition for part-time jobs during the school year. They still could work full time to earn more money for tuition during any terms they chose to take off. Those who decided not to take any time off at all would be able to graduate sooner, opening up spaces for new students. Faculty members would be able to teach for two segments and then use the next segment to conduct experiments, work on important manuscripts, travel to other institutions, or do other academic work. And because of the additional revenue produced by higher enrollment in the “summer” segment, professors could be paid on a 12-month basis.
Sounds simple and sensible, doesn’t it? Yet this kind of change requires that many constituencies think differently about the system they share. Faculty leaders and administrators surely can restructure academic programs and work assignments around a 12-month academic year. But trustees and legislators need to help by, at a minimum, providing funds to shift faculty members to 12-month contracts before the added tuition revenues from higher summer enrollment kick in. They also need to abandon dated fiscal practices, such as providing support only for the traditional academic year and ignoring the summer term.
If the academic calendar is a relic of the agrarian age, several other pieces of the system are artifacts of the industrial age -- when teachers colleges, land-grant universities, and many of our research universities were developed. Our degree requirements reflect a faith in the efficiency of the industrial assembly line, a concern for product standardization, and a preoccupation with time management that Frederick Taylor, the legendary American efficiency expert, would have loved.
Research findings, to say nothing of the common-sense observations of thousands of faculty members, tell us that this industrial-age system is not working well. In contrast to the middle- or upper-class white male students of an earlier era, today’s students start college with many different learning styles, levels of preparation, and personal goals. They do not fit the academic assembly line, and it makes little educational sense to try to force them onto it.
Most educators agree that communication, critical thinking, and quantitative reasoning are the key elements of an undergraduate education. Movement away from the current emphasis on seat time and credit hours to an emphasis on academic competence -- which students would demonstrate on broad-based exams -- would have several advantages.
Academically talented and motivated students would have a chance to earn a degree in less time than the traditional four years (now often stretched to five anyway). And since grades for individual courses would matter less than proven competence in broader areas of expertise, students would be less likely to seek out easy courses, and professors would be less tempted to try to obtain good ratings from students by watering down course content or grading standards. Less emphasis on the accumulation of credit hours and time in the classroom probably also would reduce the need to expand physical facilities, and thus the need to raise money to do so.
Institutions wishing to move toward competence-based exams could draw on the experience of the assessment movement, now more than 10 years old. From the work done to develop better ways to assess students’ learning, faculty members can learn to articulate appropriate educational goals and develop new ways to measure students’ achievement of them.
Where in higher education can we expect resistance to systemic change, such as credit and degrees based on demonstrated academic competence? Perhaps from faculty members, long accustomed to the allocation of academic resources based on the production of student credit hours. Perhaps from academic administrators, who might find it harder to predict student enrollment or to estimate a semester or two in advance how many classes will be needed or how much tuition will be generated. A system based on competence would be educationally sounder than the current one, but undeniably more unstable in the short term.
Institutions moving in this direction would need strong support from their trustees and, where appropriate, from elected officials. Trustees and public officials would have to work closely with campus leaders to protect institutions against any large fluctuations in enrollment and revenue that might occur during the transition. In public colleges and universities, for instance, the traditional financing formula, based on the number of “full-time equivalent” students, might have to be modified or replaced for a time by block grants, as is commonly done when a new campus or school is created.
Student employment provides yet another point for beneficial change in our academic system. Over the past decade, education researchers -- including Alexander Astin, Arthur Levine, and Arthur Chickering -- have provided plenty of information about why students work and how they use their earnings. Students work to put themselves through college if their families cannot afford to pay or are unwilling to do so. Other students work because they want more spending money, because they want the experience, or simply because they enjoy working.
One hears many complaints about this fact of college life. Faculty members, in particular, note that academic rigor goes by the board when students work more hours than they study. Trustees, legislators, and parents fret about the length of time it takes students to graduate when they have to work as well as study.
Given that most students are employed, why not make employment on campus an integral part of their experience, perhaps even a requirement for graduation? To a large extent, we already do this with graduate students, who assist their professors with teaching and research. Why not apply the same model to undergraduates? Smaller institutions, which might find it difficult to provide part-time jobs for all students, could at least employ all seniors. Larger institutions might be able to find jobs for all juniors as well.
While some undergraduates could be employed by academic departments, as, indeed, many already are, others could work in maintenance, security, administrative services, alumni affairs, and fund raising. Money to pay the students would come from existing jobs -- for example, one full-time support position could be converted into two or three part-time ones.
The jobs would not necessarily be related to the student’s major. In fact, paid employment in unrelated areas might teach students new skills, such as tolerance, conflict negotiation and resolution, and an appreciation of cultural diversity in the workplace.
Would students object to the change? Yes, if it turned out that on-campus jobs paid less than comparable jobs off campus. This change would require administrators to stop using students merely as a contingent work force in less-than- critical jobs. And students would have to stop thinking of on- campus jobs as sinecures, to be abandoned without a moment’s hesitation at exam time or when a friend proposes a trip to the beach. Administrators would have to hold students to their work obligations, because students would be filling -- and sharing -- responsible, reasonably well-paid jobs previously held by full-time staff members.
Students already are working, so why are we not moving more boldly in this direction? On many campuses, administrators and staff members resist the systemic changes that would be required to employ large numbers of students in responsible jobs, because they fear losing their own jobs if fewer full- time employees are needed. Some administrators are reluctant to change job descriptions and hiring practices, citing students’ propensity to disappear at holiday or exam time. This would change, I believe, if campus managers started thinking of, and treating, students as part of their core work force, not as “contingent” workers. And more on-campus employment for students might reduce the demand for more and more financial aid.
Let’s also look at the tortuous paths many students take to graduation. We know that most students do not earn a baccalaureate degree in four years. Many take longer because, among other reasons, they attend more than one institution or change majors. To some degree, all institutions make life difficult for such students. Our rhetoric extols the freshman who stays at the same institution, sticks with one major, does not fail any courses, is not employed, and gets out in eight semesters. Yet the biographies of accomplished men and women tell us that success in life has very little to do with this kind of linear, lockstep progress through the curriculum.
What if students transferred evidence of academic competence instead of credit hours? What if the most general and critical skills -- writing, oral argumentation, and mathematics, for example -- were required in all majors? Transfers or changes of major would not automatically impede a student’s progress to graduation, provided he or she had built up a portfolio of basic academic skills that could be tested by the faculty of the new institution or degree program.
The benefits? Faculty members would be assured of a more consistent level of student preparation, which surely would make teaching easier. Trustees and legislators would, in time, see more students graduating in four years and find the pressure on campus facilities reduced. And students would not lose credits when they transferred or changed majors, as they often do now.
Despite the salutary effects of the changes I’ve suggested, they are sure to draw naysayers. Some students will object to the challenge of mastering an array of skills and taking broad-based exams instead of just passing one course at a time. It is true that they would be required to make intellectual connections that they seldom make under the current credit-hour system. And some faculty members -- even some of those who say they want students with better, more consistent preparation -- will be reluctant to give up their favorite courses or modify departmental requirements.
And what of higher education’s supporters and watchdogs? Proposals for basic changes will test their values and resolve. Will they support the innovators who are trying to imagine new forms of higher education and develop new means of delivering it? Or will they continue to believe that our agrarian-age and industrial-age practices can meet the needs of information-age students?
At both private and public institutions, trustees and legislators are trying to increase accountability, implement new management strategies, and monitor graduation rates, job placements of graduates, and other indicators of institutional effectiveness. And they have become frustrated, as anyone can attest who has attended meetings of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges in recent years.
With few exceptions, trustees and legislators do not yet understand that they are in the driver’s seat of educational Model T’s. Tinkering with the engine to reduce fuel consumption and rearranging the seats to accommodate more passengers do not address public concerns about the quality of education or the productivity of our colleges and universities. Redesign of their institutions might. From the experience of other sectors of society, including business, we know that successful design (or redesign) starts with simple ideas. Why not start with very simple changes, such as the 12- month academic calendar, required on-campus employment for upperclassmen, and competence-based degrees?
Clara M. Lovett is president of Northern Arizona University.