The Chronicle of Higher Education is out with its second annual assessment of trends on campus - a new book that echoes those concerns and on the ten trends highlighted by the Chronicle.
The authors looked at campuses nationwide and noted a fresh wave of attacks on free speech – especially what students are allowed to say in public or through social media, and they saw a growing tendency by governing boards to act without consulting students or faculty. Goldie Blumenstyk is a Senior Writer at the Chronicle and author of American Higher Education in Crisis?
“In the public university sector there is still a lot of concern that the trustees are political appointees," she explains. "In some cases they may be representing the political interests of the people who appointed them and maybe not so much the best interests of the university.”
The Trends report also points to efforts by colleges to combat sexual assault by crafting new cultural norms on campus, and it highlights the need for college leaders to react quickly to events that could spin out of control.
More schools are using metrics to measure faculty productivity, and they’re looking for ways to overhaul the college transcript – to better reflect what students have learned, and what they’re qualified to do.
“Even the parents who are thrilled to send their children to a liberal arts college would like to know that at the end of the day that their students will be qualified for jobs," Blumenstyk says. "Colleges are getting that message in a really serious way. They’re beefing up internship programs a lot. I think the career center has become first stop on the campus tour these days.”
She adds that some schools are offering badges like what kids once got as scouts.
“They're taking some of the discrete things that you’ve learned, and finding a way to recognize those things with little mini-credentials. I think the badge movement is still very much in its infancy, but it does reflect this broader trend that we’re seeing from hiring managers and from others that they want to hire applicants who can show specific skills.”
Then there is the rise of the instructional designer – someone who creates a course that others will teach, often using online learning and new classroom technologies. In her book, Blumenstyk reports less concern with massive open online courses or MOOCs – an issue that led some board members to attempt the removal of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan in 2012.
“There was a lot of attention to the Massive Open Online Courses several years ago," Blumenstyk recalls. " I think a lot of people saw them as a way to save a lot of money in delivering higher education—maybe even democratizing higher education to some degree. It was seen as a symbol that you were with it – you were on the cutting edge of something big. After a couple of years I think people realized that the MOOC hype really was more hype than reality.”
In fact, she adds, 95% of students who sign up for MOOCs never complete them.
“For a lot of people, the drop out rate is high, because the stakes are pretty low. These are not necessarily credit courses. You sign up for free. I signed up for a MOOC when I was working on the book, and I think I took two or three classes, and I said, ‘I don’t have time for this,’ and I had nothing to lose, so I dropped out.”
Finally, the 2016 Trends report says academic research is getting greater scrutiny as readers look for corporate influence or outright fraud. It sees a growing corporate presence on campus as private companies take over core services like the operation of cafeterias, bookstores – even advising and in some cases teaching students, and the report highlights a reliance on better marketing of the universities themselves. I’m Sandy Hausman.