Many have chalked up the well-documented decline of public confidence in American higher education to causes like “cancel culture,” or administrative bloat — but the clearest culprit may be the impossible task that university presidents and chancellors have of simultaneously pleasing multiple, often contradictory, constituencies.
Many university presidents and chancellors are given an endless to-do list. Win football games. Lobby politicians for funding. Make statements on everything that happens in the world. Raise the institution’s profile in meaningless rankings. Conduct groundbreaking research. Manage multibillion-dollar endowments. All while also showing up at every campus event.
Somewhere in that list of priorities is the education and welfare of undergraduates, and, while many folks would say it’s the most important goal, many individual groups spend more effort pressing other short-term wants. But it’s time for research universities to get back to the place where the public understands that undergraduate education is a top priority.
Meanwhile, many institutions — including HBCUs and regional public colleges — have achieved buy-in around undergraduate education but haven’t been given the resources they need to achieve the kind of success they are capable of.
We have some strategies that we think can help universities get there.
In 1998, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching commissioned a report titled “Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities,” assembled by the Boyer Commission (a panel of distinguished scholars and higher-ed leaders). Times have changed since 1998, necessitating a reconsideration of those same issues.
Think about it: In 1998, according to the Pew Research Center, only 41 percent of American adults said they used the internet. Mobile phones were still a novelty, and smartphones and tablets were years away. Streaming video was unheard of, and meetings or classroom instruction via applications like Zoom were the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. The world was a very different place.
This is why, over the last year, the two of us plus a panel of outstanding leaders produced an updated Boyer Commission report. As the report notes, we must adapt advances in technology and improvements in our understanding of effective pedagogy to the ongoing problems of guaranteeing not only excellence in undergraduate education but its inextricable link to equity.
The last few years in American life have drawn extraordinary attention to the underrepresentation of marginalized groups in various organizations and institutions — including higher education. The original Boyer Commission called for better representation, and we have made some real improvements in that regard. But there remains a large disparity in outcomes related to future employment, and to the attainment of desired degrees, between historically advantaged groups in higher education and historically disadvantaged groups (including students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, those from lower-income families, and first-generation students). The Boyer 2030 Commission report focuses on one core idea: Reducing this disparity is essential to improving undergraduate education for all students.
It may seem strange that the two of us are the ones making this case. One of us runs one of the most influential research journals in the world, and the other leads a premier organization for the promotion of research in American higher education. But we are worried that both the reality and the public perception of our institutions as failing to prioritize undergraduate education will create a dangerous situation for research universities. Yes, research universities are responsible for most of the technological and societal advances that we enjoy, but the public experiences undergraduate education more directly than research success.
Indeed, in a recent poll that AAU sponsored, 66 percent of respondents said “preparing students for future careers” should be a top priority for colleges. In the same poll, “poor job preparation” was the third-most-frequently cited problem with leading research universities (cited by 29 percent of respondents). The public is uncertain about the extent to which top research universities are actually preparing their undergraduate students for real-world careers.
One way to respond to those public concerns is to double down on world readiness for our undergraduate students. These students and their families expect a university education not only to prepare them for their first job, but also to teach them how to be a lifelong learner. They expect a high-quality undergraduate education to empower students for citizenship, social impact, and personal growth while positioning them for an evolving work-force and long-term-career success.
There’s only one solution. Every research university needs to commit, state publicly, and make good on the idea that undergraduate education and student welfare are top priorities. That may make winning games, climbing in the rankings, and sending out statements less important. But regained public confidence in universities’ core mission will allow research universities to more effectively pursue other critical goals, like delivering groundbreaking research that benefits their communities and the world.
How will we know if this works? When every university president is able to say in response to some query something like, “I appreciate your concern and hope to work on it, but I need you to understand that it’s not as important as our success at undergraduate education.” And for those who have achieved that goal to have the resources to do so.
Let’s get there.
