“Politics is the slow and strong boring of very hard boards.”
If only….
Weber's essay on politics suggest that the ideal political leader is animated by an “ethic of responsibility.” He or she understands their vision for a better world may not, and probably won't, be fully realized but persists in the face of opposition and after setbacks. Leaders do so because their idealism is tempered by realism about what is possible and what the effects of their efforts on others and society will be.
Weber was not naive about politics. He knew about the bargaining, rhetorical maneuvers, sleights of hand, and pandering. But he saw these tactics, carefully executed, as part of the process, reasonable means to ideal ends. However, he was highly critical of politics as seeking “ultimate ends,” which too often devolves into pursuing power for its own sake or as a path to self-aggrandizement. The political leader taking that path leads society down an erratic and potentially self-destructive course.
It is tempting to call out Trump and blame him for the sad state of our politics. And he deserves much of the blame. However, he is an amplification, admittedly a dramatic one, in trends going back decades that are far removed from an ethic of responsibility. One need only look at the acquiescence of his party. Practically, no matter what he says or does—if it gets us in power and keeps us there, it's okay. And, no, the parties are not equivalent in this, though it would be interesting to see what the Democrats would do in a parallel situation. Finally, the media has contributed to this degradation, from its obsessive concern with polling to its—until very recently—false equivalencies, and its hyping politics as ongoing entertainment (“Breaking News!”).
In short, the situation is more bread and circuses, complete with gladiatorial combat, than slow, strong boring. If only it were boring and even “boring” in the usual sense.
The situation is perhaps better in the narrower contexts of professions, institutions, and local communities (see https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/reinventing-america/556856). The articles in this issue provide some examples of efforts that are clearly animated by an ethic of responsibility. They also provide some cautionary admonitions about being too eager to embrace broad and grand promises.
Four articles in this issue describe initiatives ranging from departments and institutions to the national level. Each case reflects “boring” in that they involve steering steady change with a clear end in view. They all suggest greater professional and personal development, a version of the ethic of responsibility, as a key driver of reform efforts.
Kathleen Foote and her colleagues discuss their research and case studies on what promotes successful innovation in STEM teaching—in this case, the adoption of studio classrooms. They emphasize that in their surveys and interviews, “multiple respondents talked about a ‘serendipitous’ combination of events that promoted smooth implementation of Studio.” This does not mean that successful reform was a matter of chance, a “precipitating event” that provided an opportunity for change. Advocates for Studio had made “strategic moves [that] preceded the precipitating event that enabled successful change” by assembling “a combination of administrative support, availability of resources, appropriate space and faculty champions.” Foote and her colleagues offer several rules of thumb abut preparation, connections, and timing. “Successful change agents have the patience and perception to notice and seize strategic opportunities to build on these initial beginnings when the time is right.”
In a similar vein, Jose Mestre and his colleagues at the University of Illinois investigated why “evidence-based instructional practices that were adopted by some departments were spreading to other departments … given that the spread of instructional innovations among departments is rarely observed.” Through social network analysis they discovered that a combination of local reform teams and professors who served as bridge connections to other departments were critical for the spread of reform. Specifically, these networks and professors promoted evidence-based instructional pedagogy (EBIP) under the banner of “teach the way you do research.” The results have been impressive, “231 faculty and teaching professionals from 28 departments at the University of Illinois have implemented EBIP to transform 58 introductory courses in 13 STEM departments,” reaching over 1,700 students each year. They conclude by offering several suggestions about building networks promoting reform.
A broader, institution-wide effort is described by Chantal Levesque-Bristol and her colleagues at Purdue University. They note that although there is widespread attention to the need for increased student success, there has not been enough emphasis on improving the quality of teaching across an institution as promoting student success. Purdue's “Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation” (IMPACT) initiative “is a comprehensive multi-year campus-wide collaborative effort designed to achieve greater student-centered learning environments by incorporating active and collaborative learning as well as other student-centered teaching and learning practices and technologies into courses.” The key is Faculty Learning Communities that are guided by self-determination theory, which suggests “tailoring course changes to faculty and student needs—including the necessity of cultural change [and] the need to be flexible in the implementation of the transformation models.” Here, too, the results have been impressive—321 faculty from every part of the university have participated, and faculty and student surveys have been extremely positive.
The above articles focus on building communities to improve teaching and learning primarily in academic endeavors within an institution. But the university has a broader mission and challenge to address issues in the larger community and nation. The article by Lynn Pasquarella and her colleagues at the Association of American Colleges and Universities describes an initiative, Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT), that “seeks to unearth and extinguish the deeply held, and often unconscious, beliefs created by racism—the main one being the belief in a ‘hierarchy of human value.’” Funded by the Newman's Own Foundation and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and partly modeled on international truth and reconciliation efforts (e.g., in South Africa), AAC&U is establishing ten campus centers, with an ultimate goal of 150, that will develop “summer institutes, implementation and design guides, evaluation frameworks, communications guidelines, and technical support for action plans.” The central activity of these centers, which includes the involvement of local community groups, is “racial healing circles,” “an inclusive forum for sharing personal truths to help begin the process of transforming hearts and minds by focusing on our common humanity.” Although one may hear criticism about this initiative being “political,' in my opinion (voiced here on several occasions), this is political in the best and highest sense of bringing forth the truth and helping society advance.
As these positive “boring” efforts advance, several articles in this issue warn us about being lured into other less productive endeavors and remind us how far we have to go in higher education reform. The lead article by David Johnson notes that as technology has transformed teaching, particularly online, there have been some negative consequences, with more to come. A longtime online instructor and reviewer for quality assurance certification of online courses, Johnson notes a disturbing development. For faculty members teaching online, “There is a growing and inexplicable trend among professors to voluntarily fade into the online pedagogical background.” They become “pedagogical bystanders.” In three types of online courses—“YouTube Courses, PowerPoint Courses, and Publisher Courses”—“some professors are moving even further away from actual teaching with online courses and letting someone—or something—else do the teaching for them.” This not only has the pedagogical consequence of limiting student-faculty engagement, it also presents the possibility that faculty will be dispensable—“should we feel so secure if we continue to allow other entities to teach for us?” Johnson offers a number of suggestions about engagement, interaction, and feedback to enhance online teaching.
The article by Nidia Bañuelos also offers warnings about misdirected thinking and changes, in this case the “dangerous metaphors” of higher education as just another consumer good. She traces the history of this idea, first embraced in the Higher Education Act of 1972 when the definition of a higher education institution was expanded to include for profit colleges and universities (FPCUs), making them eligible for federal support. The argument then was that FPCUs could be more attuned to the market and consumers who could hold them accountable, more efficient than their nonprofit counterparts, and thus deserving of being put on an equal footing with traditional educational institutions. Banuelos critiques the main elements of this argument and notes that these flaws led to increasing regulation under Obama. Unfortunately, the current Secretary of Education is invoking these same arguments to roll back regulation. “As we work toward innovation, equity, and quality in higher education, we can no longer operate under the misguided notion that paying for college is analogous to buying a car. So long as DeVos and others use this metaphor to slowly dismantle protections for students, higher education leaders must speak out against it.”
The perspectives piece on presidential spouses by Peggy Apple and Karen Whitney provides a much more specific instance of somewhat misguided thinking in higher education. “[The] traditional familial stories of male presidents married to a woman” whose role is ill-defined (and typically unpaid), they argue, no longer fits the reality of “increasing numbers of presidents who are women, single, single and dating, single with children of various ages, divorced, cohabitating, parents of young/school-aged children, with no children, multiracial, multi-generational and, as represented by the authors of this article, LGBTQ.” They recommend the development of a spousal policy and describe the process that they (particularly Apple) were involved in that created a policy for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. They make a number of recommendations about such a policy and the role of various stakeholders in its development and implementation.
Finally, while we rightly point to the many efforts at improvement in higher education, especially at the institutional level, we should also be constantly aware of how we are doing, in the common lingo, “at scale.” Brian Prescott's Playing the Numbers feature article “looks at trends in educational attainment, participation, and postsecondary finance and affordability in the recent past. It illustrates the progress we have made but also highlights persistent gaps that exist along racial/ethnic lines that hold back progress.”
Areas of progress include “steady growth in the share of the working-age population (ages 25–64) with a college degree … for all individuals regardless of race/ethnicity,” and “[t]otal enrollment in Title IV institutions has quadrupled in the last 50 years.” At the same time, however, ethnic/racial gaps in attainment between white non-Hispanic and underrepresented minority groups actually grew over the last decade or so. “This growing gap is all the more troubling because of demographic trends that show the rapid growth of traditionally underrepresented groups as a share of the population, together with data that the educational attainment gap is even wider among younger working-age adults (aged 25–34).” There are other concerns as well—states continue to decrease support, and expanding populations at public institutions means that public money is spread thinner. Prescott warns that this continued shifting of the cost burden to students may be “outstripping our families' ability to pay,” especially with underrepresented populations and income gaps growing.
Staying the course of reform is not easy, especially when there are many attractive and even seemingly reasonable “disruptive” ways to improve. The articles by Johnson and Banuelos suggest caution about new instruments and ideas, while the other articles offer ideas about steady improvement. The latter are an important counterweight to the former. We should be open to radical possibilities, “disruption” that is balanced by a clear-eyed view of what is possible and where we want to be, both locally and nationally.