The Narrative University
I'm a firm believer in building change from the bottom up. If the first thing a university does is hire an external consultant, you can be assured that the institution will not be able to adapt to any change it's facing. The second-worst option is to form a large ad hoc committee of faculty and administrators to tell departments and students what to do. Sometimes this approach is necessary, but in the preponderance of instances, top-down change in a university is ineffective. At least from my perspective (which is usually from below looking up). Most faculty (myself included) will merely ignore the top-down decision, and ride out the situation until the next top-down decision is made by a consultant or large committee. Meanwhile, the students will have no idea what's going on and will continue on their way.
With respect to the "sea-change" I described in my last post, there are any number of external and internal factors producing the paradigm shift in Higher Ed we are currently experiencing. We can discuss the plethora of causations as we proceed on this blog. But ultimately the cause of change, and the potential resolutions to change, have to begin with undergraduate education. Before we consider the threats to tenure, the exploitation of adjuncts, the dying academic job market, the shrinking pool of grants... undergraduate education.
The paradigm shift in Higher Ed can be summarized with respect to undergraduate education as follows: a shift from the accumulation of knowledge to the translation of knowledge. Under the old model (under which I myself was educated) all curricula were designed to impart knowledge from professor to student so that the student could "master" a given discipline. Liberal-arts general education requirements existed to make a student a "well-rounded" member of society — a code-word for "civilized." Of course since the 1960s such liberal notions of civilization have been thoroughly deconstructed. And at the same time, technology has reached such complexity that any knowledge can be placed into wide circulation almost instantaneously, without regard to civilization (or its discontents).
Twenty-first century students, who have grown up entirely within the media environment just described, almost instinctively grasp that the knowledge they receive should be placed into motion. This does not mean that professors must give up imparting knowledge, or should become mere "facilitators" of student "excellence" as if they were gurus or motivational speakers. Likewise, this does not mean that the liberal arts education is no longer relevant. To the contrary, a liberal arts education is more necessary under the new paradigm.
For example, say a student graduates with a degree in electrical engineering or computer science, and lands a job in Silicon Valley. That job will very quickly turn into a dead-end if the student remains within the narrow area they have putatively "mastered" as an undergraduate. Their advancement and success relies on being able to pull teams together to address problems that have not quite been formulated, harness ideas from the group to ask and answer questions about those problems, and work collectively to translate ideas into real action. In today's world that student cannot ignore any member of her team, such that her success depends on recognizing her own implicit bias and working around it. In sum, her path of personal and professional growth relies on: A) Mastery of a technical subject; B) Critical judgment sufficient to recognize unforeseen problems and develop questions about them; C) Sociological wherewithal to develop teams within a complex institution; D) Cultural competency sufficient to bridge differences based on race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, and/or disability.
The undergraduate coming into the 21st-century university as a freshman needs to be able to envision the narrative arc of their own personal trajectory, in terms of translating their knowledge into lived practice. They cannot merely be told that they will receive a liberal arts education or that they need coursework in humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences -- even if this is precisely what they require. Such concept like "liberal arts" mean quite little to most students, and their parents who often pay tuition. The new program is this: The new Higher Education Institution is one that is organized to allow students to construct their own experiences and write their own stories.
With respect to the "sea-change" I described in my last post, there are any number of external and internal factors producing the paradigm shift in Higher Ed we are currently experiencing. We can discuss the plethora of causations as we proceed on this blog. But ultimately the cause of change, and the potential resolutions to change, have to begin with undergraduate education. Before we consider the threats to tenure, the exploitation of adjuncts, the dying academic job market, the shrinking pool of grants... undergraduate education.
The paradigm shift in Higher Ed can be summarized with respect to undergraduate education as follows: a shift from the accumulation of knowledge to the translation of knowledge. Under the old model (under which I myself was educated) all curricula were designed to impart knowledge from professor to student so that the student could "master" a given discipline. Liberal-arts general education requirements existed to make a student a "well-rounded" member of society — a code-word for "civilized." Of course since the 1960s such liberal notions of civilization have been thoroughly deconstructed. And at the same time, technology has reached such complexity that any knowledge can be placed into wide circulation almost instantaneously, without regard to civilization (or its discontents).
Twenty-first century students, who have grown up entirely within the media environment just described, almost instinctively grasp that the knowledge they receive should be placed into motion. This does not mean that professors must give up imparting knowledge, or should become mere "facilitators" of student "excellence" as if they were gurus or motivational speakers. Likewise, this does not mean that the liberal arts education is no longer relevant. To the contrary, a liberal arts education is more necessary under the new paradigm.
For example, say a student graduates with a degree in electrical engineering or computer science, and lands a job in Silicon Valley. That job will very quickly turn into a dead-end if the student remains within the narrow area they have putatively "mastered" as an undergraduate. Their advancement and success relies on being able to pull teams together to address problems that have not quite been formulated, harness ideas from the group to ask and answer questions about those problems, and work collectively to translate ideas into real action. In today's world that student cannot ignore any member of her team, such that her success depends on recognizing her own implicit bias and working around it. In sum, her path of personal and professional growth relies on: A) Mastery of a technical subject; B) Critical judgment sufficient to recognize unforeseen problems and develop questions about them; C) Sociological wherewithal to develop teams within a complex institution; D) Cultural competency sufficient to bridge differences based on race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, and/or disability.
The undergraduate coming into the 21st-century university as a freshman needs to be able to envision the narrative arc of their own personal trajectory, in terms of translating their knowledge into lived practice. They cannot merely be told that they will receive a liberal arts education or that they need coursework in humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences -- even if this is precisely what they require. Such concept like "liberal arts" mean quite little to most students, and their parents who often pay tuition. The new program is this: The new Higher Education Institution is one that is organized to allow students to construct their own experiences and write their own stories.
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