If the role of higher education is to prepare citizens to engage in critical thought, lifelong self-development and, by so doing, enhance an ever-evolving world, then the academy must also evolve. Higher education, as it is currently configured, was designed to serve a homogeneous student population in a far less complex world.
The quality and quantity of change from that less complex world to this 21st-century reality with its knowledge economy, shifting demographics and graying phenomenon, among others, require an elastic postsecondary paradigm that anticipates change and rises to each opportunity. From pedagogy to venue, curriculum to funding, the paradigm has shifted, and the academy must look forward and learn how to meet new needs.
Some attention to this need for change is evidenced in ways such as new Carnegie classifications for institutions whose curriculum requires community engagement, more focused attention to improving access for urban and rural communities and an increased conventional wisdom that even “traditional” students are not likely to complete an undergraduate degree in four years.
However, these changes alone cannot achieve the systemic shifts that must occur before citizen, then community, then nation move forward as an educated democracy.
And what of those institutions whose mission is committed to the service of new populations entering higher education — adult learners, part-time students, English as a second language learners, heads of household, single parents, populations of color and others? How will those institutions be assessed by governing bodies whose focus on retention and graduation, in “non-elastic” terms, does not comprehend the new students’ commitment to “persistence” over “finish-in-four” based on life circumstance? And as “mainstream” institutions seek this burgeoning student market, how will they ensure the creation of learning environments that will recruit, retain and graduate?
If the American academy is to prepare new and “traditional” populations for new questions based on new perspectives, then the institutions that facilitate that preparation cannot be penalized for not adhering to past measures of institutional success. Specifically, if colleges and universities are assessed and allocated resources based on standards established to assess a homogeneous student population, then those institutions that serve the 21st century’s heterogeneous student population will be penalized.
