As I write this in midsummer, higher education, and the country generally, faces the twin challenges of the pandemic and widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism. By the time this is in print, things may have changed dramatically on one or both of these fronts. Nevertheless, what else is there to talk about?
Without slighting the latter crisis in the least, colleges and universities have responded to racial issues before, certainly since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s almost too familiar: institutional statements are issued, task forces convened, administrative positions created, new forums for dialogue developed. Criticism of these efforts is not uncommon and not surprising, suggesting that these well-intentioned efforts will not change much. They may very well be “toothless” (https://www.chronicle.com/article/Higher-Ed-s-Toothless/248946).
In our defense, and unfortunately, the same can be said for national responses to periodic racial upheavals. There is over a century’s worth of commission reports that offer similar, if updated, analyses of upheaval and violence sparked by racism. The results have been similarly small, “toothless,” which is why we find ourselves facing these issues yet again—even as we say, “This time is different.” (See John Oliver on policing, around the 30-minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf4cea5oObY.)
The pandemic, on the other hand, is unprecedented. The emptying out of campuses and the switch to online education was certainly unanticipated. Colleges and universities finished their semesters’ work, although we do not know whether and how much the quality of education suffered. Most institutions will be reopening, although we have little idea how safe and sustainable a residential campus will be. Nevertheless, even at this early stage of dealing with the pandemic, there are currently several things worth noting.
First, for all the talk about higher education’s inertia and unwillingness to change, institutions responded quickly and successfully enough to complete the year’s work. It is not clear that other sectors or industries did much better. Clearly though, some, especially governments and most notably at the federal level, did worse. I hope higher education will continue to be nimble and evidence-driven, unlike governments, as it reopens.
Second, and similarly, as colleges and universities prepare to reopen, they are quickly taking on an expanded set of responsibilities. To oversimplify, but not by much, they are necessarily becoming healthcare facilities engaging in testing, tracing, and quarantining—doing many of the things we might expect the healthcare system to do. It is too early to tell how well this will work, but it speaks well of institutions that they are moving so quickly in this direction. At the same time, it suggests how inadequate and even insane healthcare is in this country, both in general and in response to the pandemic. I leave it to others to apportion the blame between healthcare providers and governments, but the absence of any coherent national response to the crisis is palpable and inexcusable.
Third, not surprisingly, there is a lot of rhetoric about things never being the same after this, a parallel to “This time it’s different.” As in the racial crisis, such pronouncements may be premature. It’s fair to say that in many areas, most obviously the use of technology in instruction, things may shift for the better and perhaps for good. But as indicated by the general determination to reopen, the traditional framework and mode of operation still has its appeal. How much innovation and change the pandemic will provoke or require remains to be seen. Change will publish a special issue in January on innovation that will include updates and speculation about how the pandemic has affected innovation in colleges and universities.
The articles in this issue cover a very broad range of topics—from pedagogy to organizational culture to money and mission. As we move through, and hopefully beyond, the pandemic, these are the kinds of issues that will need to be revisited. Almost all the articles in this issue can be read as portending either a return to normalcy or a shift in the direction of innovative policies and practices.
Whether the shift to online classes is permanent or temporary, and to what degree, we will continue to examine and hopefully understand and improve our pedagogical practices. Two articles in this issue address questions of best pedagogical practices and evaluating teaching and its role in the university. The lead article, by Jonathan Gyurko and Meghan Snow, notes that the shift to online instruction “revealed, perhaps unavoidably, a lack of preparation… . [T]raining was stopgap, often focused on the basics of online instruction.” For several years they and their colleagues at the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) have been developing an online faculty development program in effective pedagogy leading to credentials in teaching. The program is now being evaluated, and the evidence is very positive. “Overall, we find that faculty are eager to learn about and implement evidence-based teaching practices. When they do, their students learn more and achievement gaps close.” ACUE may have to modify its program in light of the pandemic, but it clearly shows great promise in providing training for improved teaching.
As greater thought and attention are devoted to teaching, this will necessarily lead to reexamination of the roles of faculty members, especially in research institutions. The article by Marco Molinaro, Norman Finkelstein, and their colleagues discusses how the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) and discipline-based education and research (DBER) affect our understanding of faculty roles and expectations. They argue that the emergence of these fields requires a reexamination of expectations for faculty in terms of the balance of teaching and research. Equally important, they suggest that the scholarship associated with SOTL and DBER should also be viewed as scholarship in its own right, and they offer an interesting typology of faculty roles/work and associated expectations. “Our hope is that the framework can encourage productive discussions around teaching and research expectations while promoting consistent measures applied across all relevant titles for teaching and research activities.”
As we develop and improve our teaching practices, we must also be mindful of the organizational culture and personal interaction, whether online or not. Three articles address this issue in varying ways. The first, by Margaret J. Finders and Terrence Kwame-Ross, is especially timely as institutions are being called on to redouble their antiracism efforts. The authors describe “White Talk Moves,” “Language deflection strategies … to protect White status and comfort … specific discursive moves that Whites make that lead faculty, staff, and students of color to feel marginalized and their voices ignored.” For example, “tone policing” responds to pointing to racist speech or actions by condemning the tone in which the criticism is delivered instead of the substance of the critique. Naming these moves can help respond to them by calling them out publicly “to disrupt, at the moment of utterance, unexamined dominant speech acts and to sound and make real the proverbial call for a diverse, equitable, and inclusive campus.”
A broader call for cultural change is offered in the article by Adrianna Kezar and Susan Elrod. They argue there is too little celebration, appreciation, and recognition (CAR) in higher education. Indeed, “the climate of critiquing, incivility, and bullying might be working against the development of CAR.” Changing the climate is important because “[t]here is a vast body of research that demonstrates that CAR improves motivation, morale, and performance within organizations.” They suggest a number of ways for increasing CAR, including surveys, departmental CAR programs, faculty development, asset-based performance reviews, and forceful responses to bullying. Institutional leaders need to bring CAR efforts to the fore, particularly in their mission statements and strategic plans. They conclude, “Given higher education’s mission and societal goals, it is time for leaders to rethink the campus workplace environment as one that provides CAR on a more regular and widespread basis.”
A Perspectives piece by Maulshree Gangwar provides a more personal, yet global and optimistic, take on cultural issues and higher education. She describes her educational trajectory from studying science in the United States to teaching in a school in India rooted in the postcolonial system with rote pedagogy. This led her to reject the “banking model” of education and move to a more inquiry-minded, student-centered International Baccalaureate school. She embraced a more global perspective “where teaching methodology, curriculum, student learning, and so on can be transferable between countries.” Her journey has led her to return to the United States and work on education at Columbia University. She has concluded that education should aim to create a global citizen, a “‘member of the global community who accepts all cultures while preserving [his/her] own identity, fosters harmony amongst people, believes in global humanism, is a well-rounded individual with a flexible and broad point of view, with interests aligned with that of the world.’”
In all this of course there will also be basic questions of resources and purpose, from the most concrete to the most abstract. In a new feature column for Change, “From the States,” David A. Tandberg and Christian K. Anderson make the case for a change in the funding model for public higher education. They note that as other social institutions—“organized religion, unions, social clubs, private civic and humanitarian organizations”—have declined, colleges and universities have continued to expand both in enrollments and roles. “[W]hat we as a country expect from higher education appears to be ever increasing, even including fulfilling roles expected only of governments.” These include providing “small business development services
… low-cost artistic, cultural, and sporting events … critical agriculture and rural development services” and “the sole healthcare providers.” States simply cannot do this alone, and therefore the authors propose a federal system that would provide matching funds for specific purposes up to certain limits. “In light of COVID-19 … the time has come to reconsider how we fund higher education.”
As always, the various conversations above often return to basic issues of what is higher education’s mission. Mary Huber reviews two books with diametrically opposed visions. One, by Johann N. Neem, argues a traditional view that colleges should “be places where students and professors consistently practice the life of the mind” and not try to serve utilitarian purposes. He goes so far as to recommend the elimination of professional majors such as business, since “[a] traditional liberal education is useful enough.” Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s book takes the opposite view, suggesting “collegiate purposes can be best fulfilled not by pulling back, but instead by reaching out.” Higher education has wrongly made the “critical thinking that forms [its] center … negation rather than creation of ideas and institutions.” Changing this requires, as the book’s title suggests, “generous thinking.” Academics need to reach out to each other and a variety of audiences and institutions in more open and constructive ways. She offers the example of extension programs as a model of how generous thinking can work in practice.
Huber notes about these two books, “Although published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the issues they raise are even more timely amid the difficult choices that colleges and universities are faced with today.” The phrase “amid the difficult choices that colleges and universities are faced with today” can be applied to all the articles in this issue. We can only hope that our commitment to logic, reason, and evidence will help us, and society, get through these hard times.
—David C. Paris