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Peer Review, Winter 2004
Greater Expectations and Learning in the New
Globally Engaged Academy
By Andrea Leskes, vice president for education
and quality initiatives, AAC&U |
The beginning of the twenty-first century is continuing to
challenge the capacity of individuals across the globe to
deal with change. Current wisdom holds that change is the
only constant in our fast-paced, globally-interconnected,
information-based society. Changes arise from and produce
varied pressures. While the institution of the university
has a long and distinguished history, individual colleges
and universities evolve over time in response to both internal
and external circumstances. Their histories tell fascinating
stories of new directions, growth, retrenchment, and improvement,
often related to the external environment. What have been
the recent pressures on higher education, and how have institutions
responded? What more revolutionary transformations might we
envision in the very concept of the university?
At the most macro level, economic globalization, fueled by
the transformative power of modern communications, reaches
into every aspect of life. So too, do the new world order,
the emergence of young democracies from the former Soviet
sphere and in parts of the developing world, and a reshuffled
balance of power leaving the United States as the single remaining
superpower. No country can any longer exist in isolation,
nor can its citizens ignore realities in other parts of the
world. New diseases arrive by airplane, and global warming
threatens us all.
- While colleges and universities, like any societal institutions,
are affected by changes of this order of magnitude, they
also face more local challenges. The following are among
the specific external pressures affecting American colleges
and universities:
- The opening of college doors to more students, more highly
diverse students, and differentially prepared students who
now continue their studies after high school
- Chaotic attendance patterns as students stop out, change
institutions, hold jobs, and attend to the needs of their
families
- Technological advances leading to distance learning and
a new concept of the classroom
- A quantum leap in the quantity of information available
to individuals and a shift away from the university as the
principal repository of knowledge
- The needs of a changing workplace that include higher-order
thinking and practical skills, global knowledge, and the
ability to adapt to change and work constructively in diverse
teams
What changes have these pressures engendered on campuses?
While some critics may argue that American higher education
has stagnated and reinforced walls isolating it from the larger
society, developments at many AAC&U member campuses suggest
a very different picture. The stories in this issue of Peer
Review illustrate the dynamism of American higher education.
The term "evolution" seems appropriate to describe the process
of change in individual colleges and universities. We are
not talking simply of generic change, but of adaptive change
made over time in response to external pressures and changing
environments. In this environment, learning itself is changing.
Of specific interest, then, is learning-driven adaptive change.
If innovations find their way into the heart of institutional
functioning, such evolution can become transformational.
Greater Expectations
What sort of college education will most effectively prepare
students for a contemporary world characterized by change
and global interconnections? What should be the central aims
of the academy, and how will changes affect structures and
processes, institutional missions and identities? These questions
led AAC&U, in 2000, to create the Greater Expectations
initiative. The initiative's influential and widely distributed
report, which resulted from the work of a national panel,
was published in September 2002. Greater Expectations:
A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College*
scans the external pressures on higher education and describes
the academy's responses. It proposes that the education most
effective in preparing students--all students, no matter their
aspirations, chosen careers, or fields of study--for the contemporary
world is liberal education. However, far from being an ossified
liberal education out of touch with reality, this is a contemporary
liberal education reinvigorated by becoming both more practical
and more engaged. Such an education celebrates its usefulness
in the largest sense, and by doing so, helps everyone understand
the power of rigorous, challenging higher learning.
The adjectives "practical" and "engaged" refer both to the
content and to the process of learning. Students in the New
Academy described by the Greater Expectations vision would
learn practical and intellectual skills that are useful for
them individually and also useful for society. Colleges and
universities would foster such learning in all students by
employing teaching methods that actively engage them in their
learning and with real societal problems. Classroom interactions
would become enriched by complementary non-classroom experiences
in the world of work, in the community, or in cultures around
the world.
The Greater Expectations report also describes the central
aims of such an education as preparing all college students
to become intentional learners, integrative thinkers who can
transfer their learning from one context to another and apply
it to newly encountered or "unscripted" problems and environments.
Such intentional learners are empowered through the
mastery of intellectual and practical skills, informed
by knowledge from many disciplines, and responsible for
personal and social values.
The Greater Expectations internal scan of higher education
reveals many disconnects that interfere with providing such
a powerful, engaged, and practical liberal education to all
college students. Practices and structures are still evolving.
Even as the report recommends principles for changes at many
levels--principles of "intentional practice"--it celebrates
the diversity of institutions in American higher education
as a real strength. While offering a compelling vision of
a New Academy, transformed to focus on learning and improved
student achievement, it stresses how this vision builds on,
reflects, and will be reached through evolution at colleges
and universities of all types. The recommended principles--of
learning outcomes, effectively designed curricula, powerful
teaching methods, authentic assessments--will become manifest
in very institution-specific ways. These variations on a theme
will help distinguish one campus from another, even within
the context of a shared commitment to improved student achievement.
This issue of Peer Review provides snapshots of
the work proceeding at six very different colleges and universities.
While each story is unique, they all share elements and themes
that can help illuminate the larger universe of adaptive learning--driven
changes occurring across the country and, indeed, across the
world. Collectively, these stories reveal progress toward
turning the vision of a New Academy into reality.
At the core of an individual institution are its mission
and identity. Although neither of these characteristics changes
often or easily, colleges and universities created in one
environment may turn out to be less competitive, insufficiently
attractive to students, or simply inadequate for a drastically
changed set of circumstances.
In the United States, we tend to act as if college education
is primarily a private good--a credential to land a better
job or begin a successful, lucrative career. The more broadminded
among us also recognize how college study enriches an individual's
quality of intellectual life. Yet despite the very dependence
of a democratic society on an educated populace--one able
to weigh alternatives, make informed decisions, and undertake
appropriate action--our country still largely ignores higher
education as a public good, whether one interprets "public"
locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally. Several
of the articles in this issue remind us of how education serves
the public good as well as the private goals of individual
students.
Preparing students for a globally interconnected world involves
empowering them with the capacity to work in diverse groups
and communicate in more than one language; informing
them with knowledge of the world's cultures; and developing
responsibility for others through sensitivity to
cultural difference. All of our six featured campuses are
evolving to improve students' global preparedness.
The Global Context
Just as no country can any longer thrive in isolation, this
issue examines the changed role of the academy both in the
United States and abroad. In 1998, the United Nations Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) convened a
World Conference on Higher Education and five years later
took stock of progress. The commitments to higher education
for all and education as a public good--commitments central
to Greater Expectations--engaged educators from many countries.
Cristovan Buarque, Brazil's minister of education, provided
a visionary look at the role of the university itself as a
societal institution and urged major change. Excerpts from
his address are included in this issue. Rather than accepting
mere evolution, Buarque makes a case for revolutionary change
to turn the university into the revalidator of lifelong learning.
Further, he advocates for the logical conclusion of an education
focused on outcomes: that time to mastery be flexible. Just
as Greater Expectations calls on all stakeholders in college
learning to join forces, Buarque pleads for worldwide action.
Whether one believes the multiple pressures on higher education
will engender adaptive evolution, transformational evolution,
or revolution, higher learning in this new century promises
to differ dramatically from the past. Hang on for the ride!
The Intentional Learner
The Greater Expectations National Panel recommends that college
graduates be prepared to adapt to new environments, integrate
knowledge from different sources, and continue learning throughout
their lives. To thrive in a complex world, these intentional
learners should also become empowered through the
mastery of intellectual and practical skills; informed
by knowledge about the natural and social worlds and
about forms of inquiry basic to these studies; and responsible
for their personal actions and for civic values.
The empowered learner. The intellectual
and practical skills that students need are extensive, sophisticated,
and expanding with the explosion of new technologies. As they
progress through grades K-12 and the undergraduate years,
and at successively more challenging levels, students should
learn to
- effectively communicate orally, visually, in writing,
and in a second language;
- understand and employ quantitative and qualitative analysis
to solve problems;
- interpret and evaluate information from a variety of sources;
- understand and work within complex systems and with diverse
groups;
- demonstrate intellectual agility and the ability to manage
change;
- transform information into knowledge and knowledge into
judgment and action.
The informed learner. While intellectual
and practical skills are essential, so is a deeper understanding
of the world students inherit, as human beings and as contributing
citizens. This knowledge extends beyond core concepts to include
ways of investigating human society and the natural world.
Both in school and college, students should have sustained
opportunities to learn about
- the human imagination, expression, and the products of
many cultures;
- the interrelations within and among global and cross-cultural
communities;
- means of modeling the natural, social, and technical worlds;
- the values and histories underlying U.S. democracy.
The responsible learner. The integrity
of a democratic society depends on citizens’ sense of
social responsibility and ethical judgment. To develop these
qualities, education should foster
- intellectual honesty;
- responsibility for society’s moral health and for
social justice;
- active participation as a citizen of a diverse democracy;
- discernment of the ethical consequences of decisions and
actions;
- deep understanding of one’s self and respect for
the complex identities of others, their histories, and their
cultures.
* The full text of the Greater Expectations report is
available online at www.greaterexpectations.org, where you
may download a PDF copy or order the printed version.
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