higher education in 21st century essay

AUTHORS’ NOTE

Higher education in the twenty-first century; what's the mission.

Kate Abramowitz is a Research Assistant at Project Zero in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. She has published in the journal Law and Human Behavior.

Wendy Fischman is the Project Manager of Project Zero in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. She is the author of The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be (with Howard Gardner, 2022) and Making Good: How Young People Cope with Moral Dilemmas at Work (with Becca Solomon, 2004).

Howard Gardner , a Fellow of the American Academy since 1995, is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University. He was a founding member of Harvard Project Zero in 1967 and held leadership roles at that research center from 1972 to 2023. He is the author of several books, including The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be (with Wendy Fischman, 2022), The App Generation: How Today's Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World (2021), and Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter (2020).

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Kate Abramowitz , Wendy Fischman , Howard Gardner; Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century; What's the Mission?. Daedalus 2024; 153 (2): 301–315. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_02082

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The “mission” of a sector of society can encompass a range of possibilities. Sometimes, the mission is broad. Sometimes, it is narrow. Sometimes constant, sometimes changing. Missions serve as guideposts. They articulate a central purpose or goal, which should help to structure decisions and actions: as examples, who should be served, exactly what should be done, how the work is carried out, which measures can determine whether the mission is actually being realized, and, if not, how a course can and should be corrected.

Whole sectors or spheres can have missions. Broadly speaking, the health care sector works to provide physical and mental well-being for individuals and society. Within the sector, one encounters a range of professionals (researchers, nurses, doctors, pharmacists) as well as settings (hospitals, offices, laboratories, clinics). Some personnel are focused on a particular area, illness, or demographic group, while others are generalists. Some institutions are private; others are public; a few are composite. The direction or foci may shift as the needs of individuals change, or societies evolve, or as the leadership across organizations changes. But the fundamental purpose of restoring or maintaining health is not-and should not be-obscured or lost.

This might seem straightforward so far.

However, as we turn to the sector of higher education, the concept of mission becomes more vexed. As early as the sixteenth century, the Jesuits used education as a way of defining the word mission-to educate and spread the word of Christ. But as colleges and eventually universities spread throughout the world, the mission broadened from religious purposes-for example, preparing young people for work in secular professions, training scholars in the sciences and other disciplines, or giving members of certain demographic groups an opportunity to meet peers, as well as individuals from other, more diverse backgrounds. 1

In the United States, the missions of the earliest institutions of higher education were rooted, at least in part, in Christian (Protestant) values. Universities sought to respond to a need for a learned clergy; indeed, roughly half of Harvard College's earliest graduates went on to become ministers. Over time, however, the religious mission of American universities began to fade. Modeled after German institutions that focused on training students for specific professions, higher education increasingly centered on preparing citizens for work and contributing to society, notably in science and technology. In these ways, the sector broadened its mission to meet new needs. By the nineteenth century, universities began to feature a plethora of professional schools, along with a broader, more secular curriculum. And as the twentieth century unfolded, increased funding for public education attracted more citizens with varied backgrounds, interests, and aspirations. 2

Today, as evidenced in this volume of Dædalus , tertiary institutions all over the globe exist for a range of purposes-to provide professional training, to teach and conduct research in an ever-expanding array of disciplines, to educate underserved populations, to focus explicitly on globalization, climate change, the arts, and/ or to cultivate specific political viewpoints and orientations. Indeed, many of the institutions have different stated missions. Even within one country or region, institutions of higher learning may be “all over the map.”

Like health care organizations, educational institutions within and across countries may not have precisely the same mission. But we contend that, at the very least, each institution and its stakeholders should have clarity about its own central mission.

Our own extensive research focused on liberal arts and sciences (hereafter, “liberal arts”) at universities in the United States provides a troubling perspective, one that might come to pass soon for others around the world. We have observed and documented a disturbing lack of consensus among key stakeholders about the purpose(s) of higher education, both within single institutions and across the sector.

Based on in-depth interviews of more than two thousand individuals across ten disparate campuses, we have found striking dissociations. Most notable, while students, parents, alums, and trustees view university primarily as the necessary path toward a future job, most faculty and administrators believe that the university experience is an opportunity for intellectual transformation, the time and place to prepare students for lifelong learning and citizenship.

We suggest two reasons for this major misalignment.

One explanation is what we call mission sprawl -the promotion of multiple missions on a single campus. Rather than a set of focused goals, we find that institutions that invoke the liberal arts attempt to pursue a myriad of goals for too many disparate groups of people, thus obscuring their own primary reason(s) for existing. As examples, in their mission statements, many institutions of higher learning trumpet keywords such as leadership, globalization, career preparation , and social and ethical services. As shown in the word cloud in Figure 1 , the list goes on! While an entire sector may be able to address this gaggle of promises, it is difficult-indeed impossible-for a single institution to take this all on, in addition to intellectual development. In an effort to please its customers, a vast number of institutions of higher learning have lost a sense of the who, what, where, and why, as each relates to their mission.

Common Terms in Higher-Education Organizations’ Mission Statements

A second explanation for these misalignments among stakeholders involves universities that not only try to do too much, but also appear to be conflicted about what they are trying to do. Sometimes, single institutions promote explicit missions, clear and accessible statements of intent often found on their website and in their brochures, alongside implicit missions, underlying messages that all too often conflict with what is stated publicly. These inconsistencies and conflicts are signaled by placement of buildings on campus, decisions about securing and allocation of resources, and/or the ways in which “success” is publicly defined (for example, by employment statistics and salaries of graduating students).

Our own university exemplifies this tension. Harvard College (for undergraduates) has long promoted Veritas , or truth, as its motto and on its logo (the Veritas shield). However, this word does not appear in the official mission statement (nor does it appear in the mission statements of any of Harvard's other graduate and professional schools). If you talk with any Harvard student about his or her college experience, rarely, if at all, would you hear the word “truth,” nor would you likely hear it from a parent or a member of one of the governing bodies. It is fair to say that at this institution, “truth” is overlooked, or even, taken for granted. 3 Further, as recent events have documented, various constituencies have strikingly different aspirations. 4

In what follows, we place the mission of higher education under a microscope. Specifically, we identify four key dimensions of a mission for higher education: audience, content, place, and intended impact. One might call this a journalistic or interrogative approach, an attempt to gather the key parts of a school's story-the who, what, where , and why we mentioned above-with the ultimate goal of helping individual institutions, as well as the overall sector, to achieve clarity on missions in general.

The institutions described in this volume provide illustrative examples of how one might consider missions. While it may be easy to answer just one of these questions (that is, focusing entirely on “who?” or “why?”), a more challenging task for leaders in higher education would be to identify where their institution lies along all of these dimensions. If institutions of higher education can answer these four questions, we believe they will be well equipped to align stakeholders around their priorities and to hold themselves accountable to their goals. But identifying and articulating a clear mission is just the first step. It is also important to consider how to demonstrate and measure progress toward achieving it, as well as identifying barriers and attempting to remove them.

Like any business trying to understand its customers or clients, institutions of higher education cannot realize any sort of goal for their students without a deep understanding of who is on campus. Indeed, most universities include a word in their mission statement about an intended audience -a group of individuals that the institution aims to serve. This dimension of mission is crucial, not only in guiding students who are making decisions about where to matriculate, but also for universities as they think about how to address their population's specific desires and needs.

In the United States, a number of institutions define their audience in terms of a particular demographic or geographic group. Historically Black colleges and universities, women's colleges, and Hispanic serving institutions are clear examples of institutions that have an explicitly stated mission to serve students of a particular identity. For this type of school, the audience is the defining or distinctive feature of the mission, a characteristic that sets it apart from other institutions of the same size and selectivity level.

Serving a particular target audience can also be a driving force for many schools around the world. In some cases, entire universities are founded on the premise that they will cater to a specific population or demographic group. Sometimes, these are populations facing societal barriers, such as unequal access to higher education and/ or to positions of leadership.

Take the example of the Asian University for Women (AUW), a private university located in Bangladesh. As described by Kamal Ahmad, AUW is designed to serve female students in different parts of Asia who would not otherwise have access to an undergraduate degree. 5 Founded as an antidote to gender-based discrimination in many parts of Asia, AUW's mission focuses on empowering women who have been economically or socially marginalized by society. In order to align its audience with its goal of promoting intercultural understanding, AUW recruits students who demonstrate particular characteristics in their application-for example, tolerance and a desire to combat injustice. While the school is still meant to serve an international student body and has now reached women from seventeen countries, AUW homes in on an audience that is more narrowly defined than that at most other institutions.

Alternatively, other institutions take a deliberately wide-ranging approach to their audience, seeking students from a multitude of ethnicities, socioeconomic levels, and/or geographic regions. A textbook case is New York University Abu Dhabi (NAUAD), a collaboration between NYU and the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. A liberal arts university, NYUAD is part of NYU's global network of schools and one of its three degree-granting campuses.

In her case study, Mariët Westermann describes how NYUAD's undergraduate student body has been designed to be quintessentially international, representing students from one hundred twenty-five countries. 6 While Emerati citizens make up more than one-fifth of the student body, the overall student population is meant to represent a wide range of nationalities, languages, and ethnicities, with no majority group. As with AUW, NYUAD's admissions officers look for certain qualities in prospective students that align with the school's broader goals, such as a desire to learn alongside individuals from different countries who carry differing backgrounds and opinions.

The school's focus on attracting an international audience is an important piece of NYUAD's broader goal of educating global citizens and fostering intercultural understanding. Despite the school's distinctively international audience, other dimensions of the school's mission, such as its particular location, have come to the forefront of public discourse. The decision to place the institution in a region with a difficult history of human rights has long proved contentious among some faculty members and students at NYU's home campus. 7 Though the school has assured these parties that NYUAD will maintain the same level of academic freedom that exists in New York City, this is a case in which different dimensions of missions have the potential to clash or diverge. What does it mean for such an internationally diverse audience to study and take courses in a country that places constraints on freedom of academic expression? This factor signals possible tension between the school's audience, the who , and the content that is allowed, the what.

In addition to audience, a mission might also refer to the content, or subject matter, an institution focuses on. For some institutions, a content-centered mission may revolve around a particular educational program or set of courses. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology focuses on educating students in science and technology. St. John's College, which contains campuses in both Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, is best known for its distinctive curriculum focused on great books. Indeed, at the center of many of the innovations described in this volume is the curriculum-crafted and shaped to meet identified needs pertaining to specific knowledge and/ or skills, economies, and political contexts.

The recently launched London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) foregrounds a mission that is driven by its innovative curriculum and pedagogy. The school addresses a seeming shortcoming in the UK higher-education system-a lack of courses that cut across disciplines and a discrepancy between what students are learning in the classroom and the problems they might wish to address in their future careers. As its name signifies, this school embraces a deliberately interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning, one that pushes students to explore issues in technology, climate change, and other contemporary problems from a variety of angles. Notably, the institution distinguishes itself from schools with a liberal arts mission by emphasizing practices of integration and synthesis. According to Carl Gombrich and Amelia Peterson, students at LIS learn how to make the fields “speak to each other.” 8 Whether graduates will ultimately pursue distinctive careers or do so in innovative ways remains to be determined.

Minerva University is another example of a school that is driven by a distinctive general education program. Like The London Interdisciplinary School, Minerva University was designed with the goal of preparing students to address and perhaps contribute to the solution of complex contemporary global problems. As described by Teri A. Cannon and Stephen M. Kosslyn, Minerva's curriculum addresses this goal not only by exposing students to a variety of academic areas, but also through a strong focus on the development of particular skills and capacities. 9 Minerva's courses aim to provide students with cognitive tools, such as “habits of mind”-critical thinking techniques that become internalized over time. So far, its graduates are an impressive lot. Time will tell whether Minerva can catalyze other such educational entities.

In considering the question of what , course offerings and curricula are not the only answers. Many institutions of higher education-including some with religious underpinnings-center on the dissemination of particular values, principles, and beliefs. What Isak Frumin and Daria Platonova describe as the socialist model of education was founded with the explicit goal of shaping a “new Soviet person.” 10 In the wake of Soviet nation-building in much of the twentieth century, higher education was meant to produce individuals with a deep understanding of Marxism as well as a commitment to the collective state good. Although values-based (or “class-based”) education was a core pillar of Soviet education, it can also be found to varying degrees in other models of higher education. As Frumin and Platonova note, a focus on character development-or what is sometimes now referred to as “formative education” -has grown in popularity around the world.

Universities will also be shaped by the location in which learning is taking place: the where. In most cases, a university will operate statically in its home country, the region in which the school was conceived. In other cases, universities may intentionally operate outside of their home country, providing students with opportunities to learn in new cultural, political, and economic contexts-ones connected organically and organizationally, or set up on an ad hoc basis.

Consider the case of Northwestern University Qatar (NU-Q). For this institution, geographic location is a paramount part of the mission. As described by Marwan M. Kraidy, the campus is a part of Education City in Doha, Qatar, a multicultural city with a large number of expatriates. 11 Northwestern's decision to form a partnership in this region was deliberate; the school has a specific mission of developing research and teaching capacity in the Global South, a phrase that refers to economically disadvantaged nations within the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Furthermore, NU-Q views the Global South not as a geographic region but as an “intellectual space”-an area in which to develop scholarship that may well be distinct from that of the West. This commitment to the Global South may show up in other dimensions of its mission. For instance, the curriculum intentionally features authors from Arab, African, and Asian countries.

Notably, NU-Q enjoys support from its host country in carrying out its mission. The project grew out of a partnership between Northwestern University and the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. As demonstrated earlier by the case of NYUAD, however, a school's values and aims for students can sharply conflict with the agenda of those in power in the region. Additionally, what it means to serve the “Global South” remains unclear-as does how that constituency relates to BRICS. 12 The degree of economic development or opposition to Western developed or democratic societies and values needs to be clarified.

A stark example of these challenges is Hungary's recently shuttered Central European University (CEU). As described by Michael Ignatieff and Ágota Révész in separate contributions, CEU was Hungary's last independent university in Budapest. 13 Founded and funded by Hungarian American philanthropist George Soros, who sought to create a top-tier research university that could serve as a “hub” for students in the Central-Eastern European region, CEU was designed to be a center that would promote critical thinking on complicated issues and foreground the values of an open society.

Despite the university's laudable reputation in Europe and in the world, the institution was ultimately shut down by Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. An autocratic leader, Orbán saw the institution as a threat to Hungarian national sovereignty and perhaps to his own increasingly authoritarian rule. This governance decision, which sparked large protests in Budapest, demonstrates the push and pull that can emerge between an institution's locale, on the one hand, and defining aspects of missions for liberal education, such as the principle of academic freedom, on the other.

Going beyond a specific location, online forms of education are becoming increasingly popular. These offer learning opportunities, degrees, certificates, and other types of credentials to students of all ages, including a growing number of adult learners. In his essay, Richard C. Levin describes the outpouring of online offerings, from university-led courses held remotely to start-up platforms focused on the acquisition of vocational skills. 14 This mode of education has already made an enormous impact on the sector, primarily by expanding access to faculty-led courses around the world and broadening the province and scale of higher education. We cannot predict how education will be affected in the long term by large language models and other AI-supported tools, but they hold the possibility to both promote and distort current approaches to teaching and learning.

Missions for higher education can and, we believe, should illuminate a university's greater purpose, footprint, or influence in society. While the what may drive an institution forward, it can also beg the important question of “for what?” What is the larger impact the school is trying to create in the world or in a given community? What will student learning lead to? This dimension of mission may in fact be the crux of our journalistically inspired framework. Institutions must be able to shape and clarify a raison d’être, or a strong sense of why.

One way to conceptualize an institution's impact is by considering the influence of the university on individuals. Hardly worthy of debate, one fundamental purpose of all institutions of higher education should be the learning that takes place in the classroom. Indeed, mission statements for universities frequently include phrases such as “intellectual discovery” and “transformation.”

Documenting students’ intellectual growth throughout the university experience is one way to understand a school's impact. Several tools can help, such as oral or written exams, public performance, and standardized tests administered and scored by external entities. Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia describes an innovative way of understanding students’ learning trajectories today-during a time in which they are increasingly gathering information from online sources. 15

Specifically, the PLATO (Positive Learning in the Age of InformaTiOn) research program seeks to understand how students navigate and acquire knowledge online, as well as their capacities for skills such as “Critical Online Reasoning.” PLATO stands out as a noteworthy effort to investigate what most institutions of higher education seek to accomplish (that is, student learning), or at least what many say they prioritize. And, importantly, it documents the numerous forms of mislearning across fields of study-and how they might be addressed.

An additional way to conceptualize impact is by examining the role of higher education in furthering national interests. Traditionally conceptualized as a public good, universities have been seen by some countries as instrumental in driving economic growth or global influence. 16 For example, in his essay on higher education in India, Jamshed Bharucha describes how a sizeable youth population has been seen as a “source of economic hope” for the country. 17 Hence, new policies in the country have sought to expand higher education to reach a greater proportion of the university-aged population in India. As another example, Frumin and Platonova describe how Soviet education was traditionally seen as a way to develop a “state good,” which meant that universities were viewed as a mechanism (or “engine”) for advancing communist ideals, aspirations, and accomplishments. 18 Although the Soviet system, once supported and nurtured, no longer exists, its methods and goals can still be seen in many places.

Beyond individual students and countries, higher education can also aspire to improve society and the world. A number of schools have begun to examine their broader impact by concentrating on climate change and sustainability. For these schools, intended impact does not focus on enriching individuals, but rather on enriching the greater good.

The University of Tasmania in Australia, cited by Fernando M. Reimers in this volume, has an explicit mission of centering rigorous climate action efforts. 19 One way of capturing this kind of influence is through the Times Higher Education impact rankings, a measure of how well universities address the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs). As Reimers notes, the SDGs have been integrated into the missions of several institutions of higher education around the world, but their short-and long-term effects remain unknown.

Notably, problems can emerge when there are misalignments or disagreements within an institution around the school's sense of why. Such misalignments seem to have played a role in the dissolving of Yale-NUS College, a short-lived but noteworthy endeavor born out of a partnership between Yale University and the National University of Singapore (NUS). At the project's inception, Yale and NUS shared a clear impetus for the partnership: to expand liberal arts education in Singapore. Despite this mutual intention, the project proved to be rife with challenges. The Yale administration was viewed in Singapore (and perhaps elsewhere) as trying to impose a set of political values on the institution. Simultaneously, faculty members on the home campus worried about the preservation of academic freedom in a context that was vulnerable to Singapore's nationalist trends and policies. As the partnership dissolved, NUS demonstrated a different vision for the school-one emphasizing specialization (with a few common courses) over the broad liberal arts agenda that Yale had embraced.

As Pericles Lewis, the founding president of Yale-NUS, writes in this volume, “in any institution, multiple goals are pursued by multiple constituents.” 20 When these goals are too far away from one another, however, we find that institutions will be troubled. Alignment around the question of why is instrumental to institutional success-and may even be necessary for its ultimate survival.

In this essay, we have provided one possible framework for thinking deeply about missions in higher education. Specifically, we tease apart four essential elements of a mission: audience, content, place, and intended impact. If institutional leaders seek to define their university's central purpose-and hold their institution accountable to that purpose-this framework may prove a helpful place to start.

But articulating a central mission is just one piece of the puzzle. As the value of higher education is being currently questioned, doubted, and scrutinized around the world, we believe that it is crucial for institutions not only to think deeply about mission, but also to align stakeholders around the facets of the mission. Alignment occurs when the expectations and goals of all stakeholders (in this case, students, professors, administrators) are in sync with one another and when they are mindful of the priorities of the institution and of the broader sector. Based on our own earlier studies of how professionals in various domains carry out high-quality and socially responsible work, we have found that alignment of the key parties is critical to the health of any sector of society. 21 When reflecting on the alignment within an institution, university leaders might ask themselves: What are the goals of this university? What are our students’ goals? Does the faculty body share these goals? If not, what can we do to address these discrepancies?

Writing in early 2024, we realize that alignment has become an especially critical goal for the United States. Indeed, situated at Harvard University, we can confirm that disagreements surrounding the central mission of higher education are all too evident. In the midst of a series of high-profile presidential resignations at universities nationwide and fierce attacks on universities from many political corners, the purpose of higher education-or the why for the sector-has become a contentious issue. At the extremes, some constituents posit that the university should focus primarily on the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion, while others argue with equal fervor that institutions should prioritize free speech, argument, and debate above all else.

Though the goal of creating strong alignment around the mission of higher education may be a lofty one, we believe that the pursuit of common ground is essential-not only for the flourishing of individual institutions of higher education, but for the thriving (and indeed, survival) of the sector at large.

As the essays in this volume suggest, missions for higher education are wide-ranging. Many institutions focus sharply on serving a particular audience, while others focus on specific skills and areas of knowledge that students should acquire. Some institutions craft a mission that centers on their schools’ respective geographic locations, while others are preoccupied primarily with their university's larger footprint in the world.

Our discussion of the fourth dimension addresses the impact and influence of mission-the why of higher education. Both Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia and Reimers focus on the effect of specific academic programs on students-in one case, how students process new information (and misinformation), and in the other, how students come to care about climate change. 22 But as social scientists, we know that demonstrating the overall impact of the higher-education experience is extremely challenging. At the same time, it is important to find ways to demonstrate its “value add”-the ways in which it can and should make a difference for individuals and society.

In the United States, there have recently been efforts to assess the impact of the standard four-year education in the liberal arts. As an important example, the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) was launched in 2000. In this standardized test, students are not probed for content knowledge, but rather for skills involving critical thinking and problem-solving. Analyses of the CLA point to disappointing results from students-sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa found that 45 percent of students indicate little to no significant change over the first half of the undergraduate experience. 23 Other efforts to measure impact have been more encouraging. In 2021, social psychologist Richard Detweiler published an empirical study affirming positive outcomes of higher education across one thousand individuals. 24 However, while he collected promising and rigorous data, the study was based on retrospective accounts of the undergraduate experience from ten, twenty, and forty years earlier. We do not know whether these graduates are truly different-and if they are, why. Nor do we know whether similar effects could be documented today.

In our own national study of higher education in the United States, we put forth a new measure called Higher Education Capital (HEDCAP). 25 This instrument aims to focus assessment of intellectual capacities over the course of the undergraduate experience. Accordingly, HEDCAP denotes the ability to attend, analyze, reflect, connect, and communicate on issues of importance and interest.

Specifically, we blind-scored one thousand student interviews about higher education, looking for evidence as students discussed the university experience. Among the varied responses, we considered as evidence any questions that clarified or lent insight to our understanding of students’ experiences; connections between different questions throughout the interview; clear articulation of a point of view with coherent examples; and/ or description that included comparison and contrast of their own perspectives to others’. In brief, we assessed their ability to engage in and carry on a conversation about something they knew well! We used a simple scoring method, ranging from little to no HEDCAP to a lot of HEDCAP. Importantly, we found that while most students across ten schools show evidence of “some” HEDCAP, in comparing first-year students to graduating students, across all schools, the data show “growth” over the duration of their university education. But more important, HEDCAP improved much more on certain campuses than on others. Determining the reason(s) for this pattern would be crucial to replicate this result elsewhere.

HEDCAP is our own attempt at demonstrating that higher education can-and should-make a difference in the subsequent lives of its graduates. Some of the national and international ranking systems also attempt to do the same, by comparing the academic “quality” of institutions. But as Gökhan Depo points out, rankings are not only flawed-they do not capture what we think should be one of higher education's primary goals. 26 One might even assert that rankings contribute to mission sprawl! Indeed, while the Times Higher Education World University Rankings are widely regarded around the world, their criteria prioritize research productivity, citations per professor, and industry income-rather than student learning, which HEDCAP and the CLA at least seek to address. According to the criteria featured in the rankings, one might assume that the sector promotes individual prestige, productivity, and profit, rather than intellectual capacities and growth.

To prove its worth beyond jobs and employment for individual gain, we need to be clear about the original educational aims of higher education and hold institutions and stakeholders accountable to delivering on what the mission promises. And to use the example of our own home institution, if seeking “truth” represents the key purpose of an institution of higher learning, every stakeholder-including faculty and administrators on campus-should be able to easily articulate that mission and ultimately embody it.

To be sure, change and innovation are necessary for any sector. If a sector is to educate a diversity of students from around the world so that they can address new health, environmental, and political challenges, constant adjustments need to be made. As several essays in this volume testify, new institutions have been developed to educate those individuals who have been underserved and did not have access to a quality education, new teaching pedagogies and academic programs have been created to engage students in “real world” problems, and even the physical boundaries of buildings and classrooms have been stretched to new places-online and across the globe. However, especially at this time of change, we need institutions to double down on the central animating idea of mission and make their own mission clear and verifiable. And, to put our cards directly on the table: we hope to preserve what has, at its best, been special and distinct about higher education-providing for all students a rich intellectual experience, one that should last a lifetime and contribute to a larger collective good.

We are grateful to the Kern Family Foundation for supporting our research on higher education and to Christopher Stawski for his helpful wisdom and support.

Julie Reuben, The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

William Kirby, Empire of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2022).

Howard E. Gardner and Wendy Fischman, “Does Truth Have a Future in Higher Education?” Studies in Higher Education (Dorchester-on-Thames) 46 (10) (2021): 2099-2105, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2021.1953332 .

Aden Barton, “How Harvard Students Got So Stressed,” The Harvard Crimson , November 30, 2023, https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/11/30/barton-harvard-student-stress ; and Derek Bok, “Why Americans Love to Hate Harvard,” The Chronicle of Higher Education , January 4, 2024, https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-americans-love-to-hate-harvard .

Kamal Ahmad, “Up Close: Asian University for Women,” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 167-177, https://www.amacad.org/publication/close-asian-university-women .

Mariët Westermann, “The International University in an Age of Deglobalization,” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 36-47, https://www.amacad.org/publication/international-university-age-deglobalization .

Sarah Maslin Nir, “NYU Journalism Faculty Boycotts Abu Dhabi Campus,” The New York Times , November 7, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/nyregion/nyu-journalism-professors-abu-dhabi-campus.html .

Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, “Global Education without Walls: A Multidisciplinary Investigation of University Learning in Online Environments across Disciplines,” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 238-246, https://www.amacad.org/publication/global-education-without-walls-multidisciplinary-investigation-university-learning .

Teri A. Cannon and Stephen M. Kosslyn, “Minerva: The Intentional University,” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 275-285, https://www.amacad.org/publication/minerva-intentional-university .

Isak Frumin and Daria Platonova, “The Socialist Model of Higher Education: The Dream Faces Reality,” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 178-193, https://www.amacad.org/publication/socialist-model-higher-education-dream-faces-reality .

Marwan M. Kraidy, “Northwestern University in Qatar: A Distinctive Global University,” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 63-67, https://www.amacad.org/publication/northwestern-university-qatar-distinctive-global-university .

BRICS is an organization comprised of government representatives from Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and as of January, 2024, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. Initially founded in 2009 for private investors to fund their interests in the regions, BRIGS transitioned in 2015 to a geopolitical coalition focused on wide-ranging policies that emphasize mutual benefit and noninterference between the member countries.

Michael Ignatieff, “The Geopolitics of Academic Freedom: Universities, Democracy & the Authoritarian Challenge,” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 194-206, https://www.amacad.org/publication/geopolitics-academic-freedom-universities-democracy-authoritarian-challenge ; and Ágota Révész, “The Pandora's Box of Fudan Hungary,” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 207-216, https://www.amacad.org/publication/pandoras-box-fudan-hungary .

Richard C. Levin, “Online Learning & the Transformation of Global Higher Education,” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 262-274, https://www.amacad.org/publication/online-learning-transformation-global-higher-education .

Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, “Global Education without Walls.”

Philip Altbach, Global Perspectives on Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016).

Jamshed Bharucha, “India's Realignment of Higher Education,” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 143, https://www.amacad.org/publication/indias-realignment-higher-education .

Frumin and Platonova, “The Socialist Model of Higher Education,” 185.

Fernando M. Reimers, “Educating Students for Climate Action: Distraction or Higher Education Capital?” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 247-261, https://www.amacad.org/publication/educating-students-climate-action-distraction-or-higher-education-capital .

Pericles Lewis, “The Rise & Restructuring of Yale-NUS College: An International Liberal Arts Partnership in Singapore,” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 59, https://www.amacad.org/publication/rise-and-restructuring-yale-nus-college-international-liberal-arts-partnership .

For our earlier studies, see The Good Project at https://www.thegoodproject.org . See also Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalhi, and William Damon, Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet (New York: Basic Books, 2001).

Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, “Global Education without Walls”; and Reimers, “Educating Students for Climate Action.”

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses , (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Richard Detweiler, The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2021).

Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner, The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2022).

Gökhan Depo, “The Role & Rule of Rankings,” Dædalus 153 (2) (Spring 2024): 286-300, https://www.amacad.org/publication/role-rule-rankings .

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THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE 21 st CENTURY: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

2024, GAP iNTERDISCIPLINARITIES A Global Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, (ISSN - 2581-5628 ) Impact Factor: SJIF - 5.363, IIFS - 4.875

In the ever-evolving landscape of 21st-century higher education, this article delves into the transformative role technology plays in reshaping how we acquire, disseminate, and apply knowledge. From the traditional chalkboards to interactive screens, the evolution has been revolutionary, woven into the fabric of our daily lives. The exploration draws on scholarly sources, navigating through digital tools, platforms, and strategies, from classrooms to online environments, and from augmented reality to artificial intelligence. The literature review assesses the remarkable transformation catalyzed by digital technologies, examining themes such as digital natives, blended learning, immersive technologies, adaptive learning, and data analytics. It uncovers both opportunities and challenges, addressing issues of equity and ethical considerations. The research questions focus on technology's impact on student engagement, learning outcomes, and equitable access. Objectives include elevating student digital literacy and enhancing teacher proficiency in online pedagogy. The methodology combines a comprehensive literature review with practical interventions and data analysis. The article concludes by emphasizing the dynamic nature of technology in education, acknowledging challenges, and calling for ongoing research and critical evaluation to shape the future of learning.

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The dominant roles that digital connective technologies have in the 21st century are causing profound changes in all domains of life, which signal that we have reached a new age: the digital age. Education is one of the fundamental domains of life re-engineered to adopt to the changing landscape of what it means to function in this new age. The school paradigm which rests on the conditions and requirements of the industrial age appears to fall short in terms of meeting the needs and demands of the 21st century learner. The emerging digital connective technologies and the educational innovations they triggered such as open educational resources (OER), massive online open courses (MOOCs) and learning analytics are disrupting the learning processes and structures of the industrial age such that it is now an imperative to develop a new educational paradigm. These new innovations enable learners to extend learning outside the boundaries of traditional learning institutions through informal and enriched learning experiences using online communities on new platforms such as social media and other social platforms. The digital innovations aforementioned also free the learners from the shackles of time so that learners can, not only access but also create knowledge through social interaction and collaboration. The age we live in is ripe for unprecedented fundamental changes and opportunities for higher education (HE). Therefore, policymakers involved in education need to rethink the implications of digital connective technologies, the challenges and opportunities they bring to the educational scene while developing value-added policies regarding HE. This paper addresses the learner, instructor, learning environments and the administration dimensions of HE and how the digital connective technologies are impacting on these dimensions in the digital age. The paper also offers, as a conclusion, a road map for HE to better function in this age.

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Higher Education in the 21st Century

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Higher Education in the 21st Century is a large-scale national study that is documenting how different groups think about the goals of college and the value of a course of study emphasizing liberal arts and sciences. In recent years, there have been numerous changes on college campuses and in the broader landscape of higher education. The study seeks to understand how the chief constituencies of campuses — incoming students, graduating students, faculty, senior administrators, parents, alumni/ae, trustees and job recruiters — think about these changes and how they may impact the college experience in our time. The preservation and transformation of liberal arts and sciences is most likely to be effective if such efforts build upon knowledge of the perspectives of all the stakeholders on a range of campuses. Ultimately, the study aims to provide valuable suggestions of how best to provide quality, non-professional higher education in the 21st century.

Aligned Programs for the 21st Century

In effort to strengthen educational outcomes in the liberal arts and sciences, Aligned Programs for the 21st Century (ALPS21) aims to identify exemplary programs in higher education—courses, programs, and co-curricular activities—that bridge different perspectives among major stakeholders on college campuses. ALPS21 is part of a larger empirical study, Liberal Arts and Sciences for the 21st Century (LAS21), which investigates how students, parents of students, faculty, administrators, trustees, young alums, and job recruiters conceive of the purposes, goals, best practices, and most challenging features of undergraduate education in the United States. ALPS21 will disseminate strategies, approaches, and examples of programs on college campuses that effectively bring constituencies into better alignment.

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Clark Kerr's World of Higher Education Reaches the 21st Century

Chapters in a Special History

© 2012
Sheldon Rothblatt 0

, Dept of History, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, USA

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First detailed analysis from multiple perspectives connecting Kerr's work to comparative higher education policy making nationally and internationally
Provides portraits of a complex and supremely honest man
Places Kerr’s life, thinking and policy initiatives in the broader context of the evolution of higher education systems and structures since 1950 or 1960
Uniquely examines the dilemmas, contradictions and outcomes of higher education planning policies and structures in differing national contexts

Part of the book series: Higher Education Dynamics (HEDY, volume 38)

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This volume consists of original essays by academic leaders and scholars connected to Clark Kerr’s life and work. He was arguably America’s most significant higher education thinker and public policy analyst in the last 50 years of the 20th century and renowned globally. However, little thoughtful attention has been devoted to assessing the whole of his work. Some commentators misunderstand the man as well as his ideas. The California Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960 was one of his famous undertakings, as was his part in shaping the multi-campus University of California towards global eminence. He coined the word “multiversity” to describe what he called the “uses” of the university, but began to think it had become much too “multi”. Some of his most important work was as director of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education and the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education, which laid the foundation for sophisticated policy-making. The contributors honor the achievements of a remarkable man and provide portraits of him, but of equal importance are their critical discussions of the sources of his thinking, his attempts to balance access and merit in mass higher education circumstances, the policy issues that he confronted and the success of their resolution. For many of the contributors, Kerr’s work is the starting point for understanding policy issues in varying regional and national contexts. Often thought to be a social scientist eager to keep abreast of trends, Kerr was actually au fond a moralist and surprisingly old-fashioned in his personal values.

Education beyond the Gove Legacy: The Case of Higher Education (1)

Education beyond the gove legacy: the case of higher education (2) — ideology in action.

Higher Education: The Nature of the Beast

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academic leadership
access issues
higher education planning
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student transfer

Table of contents (9 chapters)

Front matter, clark kerr: two voices, clark kerr and the carnegie commission and council.

Arthur Levine

The Perils of Success: Clark Kerr and the Master Plan for Higher Education

Patrick M. Callan

The California Master Plan: Influential Beyond State Borders?

David W. Breneman, Paul E. Lingenfelter

Parallel Worlds: The California Master Plan and the Development of British Higher Education

Michael Shattock

Contrary Imaginations: France, Reform and the California Master Plan

The disintegration of higher education in europe, 1970–2010: a post-humboldtian essay.

Thorsten Nybom

Pragmatic Reformer as Romantic Radical? Clark Kerr and the University of California at Santa Cruz

Ted Tapper, David Palfreyman

Clark Kerr: Triumphs and Turmoil

David Pierpont Gardner

Back Matter

Editors and affiliations, bibliographic information.

Book Title : Clark Kerr's World of Higher Education Reaches the 21st Century

Book Subtitle : Chapters in a Special History

Editors : Sheldon Rothblatt

Series Title : Higher Education Dynamics

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4258-1

Publisher : Springer Dordrecht

eBook Packages : Humanities, Social Sciences and Law , Education (R0)

Hardcover ISBN : 978-94-007-4257-4 Published: 24 June 2012

Softcover ISBN : 978-94-007-9683-6 Published: 18 July 2014

eBook ISBN : 978-94-007-4258-1 Published: 23 June 2012

Series ISSN : 1571-0378

Series E-ISSN : 2215-1923

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XX, 252

Topics : Higher Education , Educational Policy and Politics , International and Comparative Education , Social Sciences, general , History, general

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — College Education — The Multifaceted Importance of College Education in the 21st Century

The Multifaceted Importance of College Education in The 21st Century

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Intellectual empowerment, experiential learning, social integration, career development.

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How Technology Is Changing the Future of Higher Education

Labs test artificial intelligence, virtual reality and other innovations that could improve learning and lower costs for Generation Z and beyond.

By Jon Marcus

This article is part of our latest Learning special report . We’re focusing on Generation Z, which is facing challenges from changing curriculums and new technology to financial aid gaps and homelessness.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Cruising to class in her driverless car, a student crams from notes projected on the inside of the windshield while she gestures with her hands to shape a 3-D holographic model of her architecture project.

It looks like science fiction, an impression reinforced by the fact that it is being demonstrated in virtual reality in an ultramodern space with overstuffed pillows for seats. But this scenario is based on technology already in development.

The setting is the Sandbox ColLABorative, the innovation arm of Southern New Hampshire University, on the fifth floor of a downtown building with panoramic views of the sprawling red brick mills that date from this city’s 19th-century industrial heyday.

It is one of a small but growing number of places where experts are testing new ideas that will shape the future of a college education, using everything from blockchain networks to computer simulations to artificial intelligence, or A.I.

Theirs is not a future of falling enrollment, financial challenges and closing campuses. It’s a brighter world in which students subscribe to rather than enroll in college, learn languages in virtual reality foreign streetscapes with avatars for conversation partners, have their questions answered day or night by A.I. teaching assistants and control their own digital transcripts that record every life achievement.

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Context Diversity: Reframing Higher Education In The 21st Century

One of the enduring challenges for higher education during the 20th century was learning how to accommodate the increasing demand for education from populations that had been excluded from pursuing a college degree in the past. Social movements and legal mandates such as the GI Bill, Civil Rights, and Affirmative Action pressured institutions to incorporate educational equity for the greater good of our society. But progress has been slow, and an inherent reluctance to modify systems that sustain traditional academic cultures has diffused efforts for institutional change.

So far, the results for achieving diversity have been mixed. There are increasingly more women than men going to college and graduate school today than ever before. But despite the efforts, many segments of our national population remain grossly underrepresented, especially in our science, math, technology, and engineering programs. And as we enter the 21st century, our national government is backtracking on the progress made toward advancing diversity in higher education. Academe faces a dilemma; some say it is a crisis, and we have become stalled at a cultural crossroad unable to determine which direction to go. However, around the turn of the century, higher education encountered developments in distance learning technology that could change its ways forever. The development of the Internet forced institutions to consider new ways of teaching, learning and doing research. As so-called "virtual universities" emerged, many have had more success in attracting diverse populations than traditional colleges and universities. Despite their for-profit business models, their missions and Internet-based degree programs are grounded in core values emphasizing social change and community engagement that is highly attractive to historically underrepresented groups (Ibarra 1999b). In fact, evidence is mounting that academic programs or institutions that emphasize people-oriented relationships, family/community engagement, supportive psychological environments, working in groups, and collaborative learning environments, to name a few characteristics, are not only attractive to underrepresented populations, they also provide conditions for them to thrive and achieve academic success in fields where they have been traditionally unsuccessful in the past (Bowen & Bok 1998, see also Ibarra 2001, Treisman 1988).

The dynamics of diversity has changed over the last decade, and a new paradigm is emerging that I call Context Diversity, which could provide solutions for achieving equity without relying on traditional methods of affirmative action. To begin solving our conundrum, we must first understand the three-dimensional nature of Structural, Multicultural, and Context Diversity.

Dimensions of Diversity: Structural, Multicultural, Context Diversity

The concept of cultural diversity as we know it today assumes that we need do little more than recruit and retain people of different gender, heritage or ability to achieve equity in our institutions. Since 1965, affirmative action encouraged us to create equitable access for those who previously lacked admission to our institutions. This concept, often called Structural Diversity , is characterized as compliance-oriented and recruitment driven, and is measured mainly by increasing the number of minority or underrepresented groups of students, faculty or staff. The solution for increasing diversity was to create special programs for recruiting, retaining and remediation of minority populations, to help them overcome barriers to access and success.

Accomplishing structural diversity seemed simple: refine and expand support operations and business functions of our institutions to accommodate diverse populations. This strategy rested upon three basic assumptions: (1) A critical mass of underrepresented populations was needed to achieve diversity; (2) Underrepresented students were disadvantaged and needed remediation; and (3) Underrepresented populations would eventually assimilate into the culture of our institutions. The policies were derived from a deficit-thinking model; that is, minorities lacked skills, experiences and resources, and needed additional help to adjust to the system.

While the number of underrepresented populations increased gradually on our campuses over the years, these programs rarely achieved projected outcomes. Because structural diversity emphasizes human resource functions such as access, support and remediation, diversity initiatives were often marginalized in our institutions as business operations far removed from the main business of academic work. In time, diversity initiatives simply became a human resource function?hiring faculty and admitting students to achieve a critical mass of underrepresented populations. Although increasing critical mass can be achieved, just having more women or minorities or people with disabilities in an organization, does not necessarily change the way of doing business. It does not guarantee a diverse environment nor does it assure institutional cultural change. This model cannot alone achieve its implied outcome. Consequently, structural diversity has limited applications for influencing academic culture change, but it is still a vital and necessary part of our current diversity paradigm. Consequently, structural diversity is the primary source for providing Best Practices models.

Multicultural Diversity is a dimension of campus diversity introduced during the 1970's and 80's to infuse cultural customs or gender issues (multiculturalism) into our institutions. Underrepresented populations were valued for their potential to recruit and retain others and to contribute toward making institutions more aware of multicultural issues. The problems it addressed were the negative campus climates for women and minorities, the lack of multicultural awareness and embedded institutional discrimination. The solutions involved various activities: introducing campus-wide minority action plans, increasing the number and type of student service programs and creating new cultural awareness initiatives, and most importantly, creating new ethnic and women's studies programs. The objective was to change campus attitudes toward more positive views on ethnic, gender and racialized issues. The focus was on student affairs, with some attention to curriculum change, but little if any attention was directed toward enhancing academic affairs?the primary educational arena of higher education.

Diversity initiatives remained predominantly support functions or Human Resource functions, and the strategy was, as before, to strengthen educational support for recruitment/retention programs. The only notable change over the years was the shift from a negative perception of student remediation to more positive approaches toward student academic preparedness. Although ethnic/racial studies programs can influence academic core requirements, the increases in underrepresented populations on campus have been slow to materialize.

Rethinking the Problem

A major problem for achieving diversity today lies in the origin of academic cultures. The context of higher education in the U.S. is locked into a centuries old German research model imported from Europe and clamped on a British colonial college system. The predominance of a particular and preferred learning environment tends to exclude all the others, and thus defines the cultural context of higher education today. The outcome is not only a Euro-centric learning community, but also a hidden dimension of cultural context that has been invisible and ignored until now. Today, we must look beyond operational models based on outmoded ideas about one-size fits all educational pipelines and focus instead on changing the cultures of organizations to accommodate new kinds of populations that are attracted to applied or community-oriented education. There has always been a realization that educational systems need to change, but what has been lacking is a model for doing it.

Context Diversity describes an emerging transformative paradigm that emphasizes reframing rather than reforming academic cultures to address the needs of all populations, and especially underrepresented groups. Context Diversity strives to create a learning community with myriad ways to attract diverse populations, and have them thrive in an academic or workplace environment. The concern for access is still vital, but it is not the main problem. The lack of underrepresented populations (low critical mass) is a symptom, but not the problem. Underperformance issues and conflict over the cultural context of higher education surface as major problems. The solutions involve finding creative ways to change campus climate and academic culture, with the emphasis on systemic change. One strategy is to reframe (expand/shift) pedagogy and curriculum without giving up good educational practices. Another is to shift diversity initiatives from current concepts about recruitment and retention to concepts that emphasize attracting and thriving . Results are measured not only by how well we attract diverse populations, but also by how well we enhance our campus cultures to improve upon the academic and work performance among all students, faculty and staff.

Rather than focus on just using structural models for increasing diversity, we should focus on ways to study, apply and eventually build diversity into the context of our higher education system, our learning communities and beyond. This vision correlated directly with the concept of embedded engagement described in the 20th Anniversary Visioning Summit framing essay by Barbara Holland and Liz Hollander for the Campus Compact.

Multicontextuality

Associated with the new diversity paradigm is a critical theory for changing academic culture I call Multicontextuality (Ibarra 2001). The concept, derived from research done since the 1960's (Hall 1984, Ramirez 1991), is based on a set of dynamic principals of cultural context and cognition that can be incorporated into the fabric of our institutions (see Ibarra 2001). A growing number of individuals entering higher education since WWII, (and not just the Millennial generation born after 1980, Oblinger 2003), bring with them a mix of individualized characteristics described as their cultural context that is quite different, and even at odds with the cultural context of academe and college/university life. These learned preferences influence how they interact and associate with others, use living space , perceive concepts of time , process information , respond to various teaching and learning styles , perform academically or in the workplace, and include many other cognitive factors that were imprinted on them from birth to maturity by family and community, and that continue to help shape their world view.

Researchers identified a variety of national origin cultures that exhibit Specific or Low Context tendencies that include Northern European populations, such as English, German, Swiss, and Scandinavian people. Other groups exhibiting Generalized or High Context tendencies include Asians, Arabs, people from other Middle Eastern and Mediterranean-based countries, Africans, Latin Americans, and native North American Indian groups. US populations, derived from voluntary and involuntary immigrant groups exhibit to varying degrees the low or high context imprinting of their heritage origins. However, mainstream American culture, including higher education, is primarily low context, and North American men are generally, but not always , more low context than North American women. But research among Latino graduate students and faculty in the 1990's, found they were neither high nor low context but instead Multicontextual — a learned ability to survive in low context academic environments while maintaining high context characteristics in other aspects of life. Though academically successful, the consequences of this dual-world existence lead to conflicts, compromises and even underperformance issues in academic life, which Bowen and Bok described in their book, The Shape of the River (1998).

As critical theory, Multicontextuality explains how the composite of peoples' experiences throughout their lives affects their experiences and performances in higher education. But we pay little attention to the fact that institutions also have their own imprinted cultural contexts — a predominantly Euro-centered research model steeped in rational scientific methodology that favors basic science over applied science and civic engagement. For many, this is out of synch with the needs of students and faculty today, and as a result, it is an incomplete learning institution. But rather than have people adjust to the system, the system needs to adjust to the people. The new objective for increasing diversity is to reframe and balance the various principals of cultural context found within the current organizational ways we do scholarship in order to create a more inclusive and better teaching, learning and working environment for attracting diverse populations to higher education, so they may thrive. However, producing students trained to conform to the traditional university model produces people unprepared to function at their best in an increasingly high context or multicontext world. In other words, the reward systems within academic institutions are not adapted to the kinds of rewards that will encourage success in a world that is different in almost every possible way from the nineteenth century European world that created the modern university system. As a result, few minorities, especially Latinos, are attracted to the traditional world of academe.

Context Diversity and Community-Based Learning

If a new diversity paradigm is emerging, how can we detect it? Anecdotally, many colleagues working with diversity initiatives, or in minority programs, would tell you about the important association between community-oriented academic work and their success in attracting underrepresented populations. Some research suggests that differences in cultural context could provide a logical alternative to explain why capable minority undergraduates tend to transfer from majors in science, engineering, math or technology to pursue degrees in the humanities or social sciences (Ibarra 1999a). But the data from faculty surveys collected by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) offer the best clues for observing the differences between the cultural contexts of diverse populations of faculty and the educational context of our colleges and universities on the issue of community-based learning. For example, data in Tables 1 and 2 below are taken from the HERI Faculty Survey 1995-96 and are the most recent data disaggregated by gender and ethnicity (from Ibarra 2001, 210-217). From approximately thirty-four thousand respondents, (22, 000 males and 12,000 females), approximately 1,800 were minority males 1,100 minority females.

Table 1: Instill Commitment To Community Service (Important Value Question)

Majority Males		Majority Females	42%
African. American Males	54%	African American Females	57%
American. Indian Males	44%	American Indian Females	50%
Asian American Males	32%	Asian American Females	47%
Latino Males	46%	Latino Females	43%

Table 1 shows the percent of faculty who believe it is important to instill a commitment to community service in undergraduate education. From previous analysis derived through preliminary inter-rater reliability tests, this question was considered an element that differentiated cultural context (Multicontextuality) between ethnic and gender groups (Ibarra 2001). Majority males, notably the largest tenured population in the survey, represent the benchmark group, simply because their predominance in numbers over time has allowed them to set standards for performance and preferences for educational pedagogies. In the survey they appear to be the least interested instilling commitment to community service among all the groups responding. In fact, the differences between the Majority Males and all others are often twenty or thirty percentage point spreads, and they are significant enough to suspect that such differences play an important role in faculty evaluations, promotions and tenure for underrepresented populations. Table 2, however, shows a very different picture. Despite the fact that female and minority respondents highly valued community service as a component of undergraduate education in Table 1, a scant number of them actually required it in their classes. In fact, the differences found in Table 1 almost disappear in Table 2. Although it cannot be determined from the data exactly why this occurs, one can suspect it is a consequence of limited time, space and resources. Despite the high value placed on community service, apparently few instructors can make it a class requirement for their undergraduate students. If so, one hypothesis is that an important experience for undergraduate education is likely being stifled in its application by the cultural context of our educational system that cannot provide multiple contexts (i.e. time, space, etc.) to allow for community service experiences. However, further research is needed to validate this hypothesis.

Table 2: Community Service In-Courese Required (Teaching Methods Question)

Majority Males		Majority Females	4%
African. American Males	5%	African American Females	11%
American. Indian Males	6%	American Indian Females	7%
Asian American Males	1%	Asian American Females	3%
Latino Males	3%	Latino Females	4%

The Challenge for Educational Access in the 21st Century

The Campus Compact is now celebrating 20 years of educating students for active citizenship, and building strong learning communities among scholars and academic leaders. The 20th Anniversary Visioning Summit framing essay by Barbara Holland and Liz Hollander includes a focus on bridging the opportunity gap by improving educational access and success for minority and immigrant populations throughout the nation. But higher education faces a major crisis, and it apparently cannot find solutions to the dilemma of diversity facing it today. The traditional residential university, its buildings and classrooms could become "relics" in the next twenty years according to predictions from the late management and business guru, Peter Drucker (Lenzer & Johnson 1997, 122). Those comments were predicated on the continued disregard for the impact of rising educational costs, for the rapid developments in distance learning technology, and for a total disbelief that for-profit Internet-based institutions could compete with traditional institutions in the future.

Only time will tell the outcome, but the implications seem clear. Traditional institutions are too slow in dealing with major crisis's, and may be incapable of making necessary course corrections in time to tackle fast-paced world events. The risk of rethinking the system could undermine the foundations that have guided universities for the past century and a half. Academic organizations react against change agents by accommodating them and co-opting their innovative programs in ways that will not lead to the destruction of the university itself. This is the failure of reform. Can Campus Compact's focus on access and success develop breakthrough strategies to address complacency and resistance to change? Perhaps reframing and not reforming is part of the strategy. Reframing suggests expanding, not necessarily eliminating or reforming those ways in which we teach, learn, and do research.

To strike a balance with traditional learning and community service means accommodating more than one cultural context. This does not mean that colleges and universities should change from low- to high-context institutions, but that they must become multicontextual in order to align with and effectively educate learners of all types. We start the reframing process within the divisions of Academic Affairs where both business and educational support functions take place. Affirmative action models tend to thrive in Student Affairs programs and Human Resource offices. But the academic units are the controlling systems of the institutional culture, and they are often devoid of diversity initiatives.

If it is possible to reframe the context of Academic Affairs; that is, to rethink what we have ignored for over a generation of developing diversity programs, then Campus Compact will have a real breakthrough strategy. It will change the "faculty factory" model for producing the professoriate toward a model that helps contextualize faculty teaching and research. We can then generate new templates for our educational systems, all the way from k-16 to graduate school and beyond. We will be able to create new templates for business schools, government, and for science as well. Ultimately, the university itself could reclaim its place as an institution of civic engagement. To fundamentally change the operations of our current structures we need to move away from the outdated and inadequate German research model of disengagement. We must implement new diversity models that reconnect with our civic entities rather than dictate to communities how to behave.

In short, it is time to reframe the Ivory Tower, and that is the challenge for Campus Compact in the 21st century.

References Cited

Bowen, W. G., and Bok, D. 1998. The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in college and University Admissions . Princeton, NJ,: Princeton University Press.

Hall, E. T. 1984. The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time, 2nd ed., Anchor Press/Doubleday Books, Garden City, New York.

Ibarra, R. A.1999a. Multicontextuality: A New Perspective on Minority Underrepresentation in SEM Academic Fields . Making Strides , (American Association for the Advancement of Science). 1, no. 3, (October): 1-9.

Ibarra, R.A. 1999b. Studying Latinos in a "Virtual" University: Reframing Diversity and Academic Culture Change . Julian Samora Research Institute, Occasional Paper, No. 48, October, proceedings from Latinos, the Internet, and the Telecommunication Revolution , East Lansing, MI: Julian Samora Research Institute.

Ibarra, R.A. 2001. Beyond Affirmative Action: Reframing the Context of Higher Education . Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Ibarra, R.A. 2006. "Campus Diversity in Transformation." Anthropology News , February, 47: 2, pg. 29.

Lenzer, R., and Johnson, S. S., 1997. Seeing things as they really are. Forbes , March 10, 1997, pp. 122-128.

Oblinger, D. 2003. Boomers, Gen-Xers & Millennials: Understanding the New Students. EDUCAUSE review , July/August; pp 37-47.

Ramírez III, M. 1991. Psychotherapy and Counseling with Minorities: A Cognitive Approach to Individual and Cultural Differences , Pergamon Press, New York.

Treisman, U. P. 1988. A Study of the Mathematics Performance of Black Students at the University of California, Berkeley, in Changing the Culture: Mathematics Education in the Research Community . N. D. Fisher, H. B Keynes, and P.D. Wagreich (eds.), CBMS Issues in Mathematics Education, Vol. 5, American Mathematical Society.

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DOI: 10.1080/03057640050005762
Corpus ID: 67848262

Back to the Future: The higher education curriculum in the 21st century

Published 1 March 2000
Cambridge Journal of Education

175 Citations

Understanding the higher education curriculum in the 21st century, critical and reflective practice in education.

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"Professional Development of Higher Education Teachers, - Can Distance Education Make a Difference?"

Introducing online learning in higher education: an evaluation, internationalisation and curriculum development: why and how, a curriculum philosophy for higher education: socially critical vocationalism, education in the 21st century – towards a “university of the future”, grappling with the complexity of undergraduate degree program reform: critical barriers and emergent strategies, using the past to predict the future: what futures are documented for higher education, knowledge and the curriculum in the sociology of education: towards a reconceptualisation, 22 references, enterprise and liberal education, the new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies, transferable skills: a philosophical perspective, university of london institute of education, the consequences of modernity, towards a higher education for a new century, anthony smith and frank webster (eds.) 1997. the postmodern university contested visions of higher education in society, modularization and semesterization: ringing the changes, related papers.

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Politics & Elections
Harris Doesn’t Think You Should Need a 4-Year Degree

The vice president’s remarks at a recent rally reflect a broader conversation, in the Democratic Party and nationally, about who needs a degree and why.

By Sara Weissman

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Kamala Harris gestures in front of a podium.

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris tells a crowd in Wilkes Barre, Pa., that she’ll ensure Americans have routes to well-paying careers beyond four-year degrees.

Chip Somodevilla/Staff/Getty Images News

Vice President Kamala Harris wants to build more homes and expand the child tax credit as part of her vision to create a so-called opportunity economy. As of last Friday, that plan now also includes ensuring “good-paying jobs are available to all Americans, not just those with college degrees,” she said, highlighting the latest shifts in how Democratic lawmakers think about postsecondary education.

“For far too long, our nation has encouraged only one path to success: a four-year college degree,” Harris told a crowd last Friday at a rally in Pennsylvania, to uproarious cheers and applause. “Our nation needs to recognize the value of other paths, additional paths, such as apprenticeships and technical programs.”

She also vowed to nix unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs and challenged “the private sector to do the same,” arguing degrees aren’t necessarily a proxy for skills. Her opponent, former president Donald Trump, similarly issued an executive order in 2020 to eliminate degree requirements for some federal jobs.

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Harris’s remarks reflect a broader, national conversation about nondegree pathways to well-paying jobs and a policy shift for the Democratic Party, which once put a premium on students getting bachelor’s degrees and in recent years emphasized proposals to make college more accessible. The comments were also a glimpse into Harris’s higher ed agenda —details of which have been scant. She has touted, on her campaign website , the Biden administration’s efforts to forgive student loans and pledged to make higher education more affordable “so that college can be a ticket to the middle class.”

Now she appears to be advocating for alternative routes to the middle class, which higher ed lobbyists say they don’t see as a threat but rather an opportunity for colleges to keep growing their offerings. Skeptics of nondegree credentials, however, have expressed trepidation about her rhetoric and the overall shift it represents. Employer-focused groups welcomed the plan, which comes at a time when more employers are embracing a skills-based hiring approach and Americans over all are increasingly questioning the cost and value of higher education.

Friday was the first time Harris has emphasized the importance of nondegree pathways on the campaign trail, said Maria Flynn, CEO of Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit focused on the intersection of education and the workforce. But it isn’t the first time Harris has shown interest in such issues. In 2019, as a senator, she introduced the 21st Century SKILLS Act, which didn’t pass but would have expanded funding pots for workers and job seekers to use for training programs.

Still, Flynn sees Harris’s pledge as representative of a move away from the “college for all” era to a more widespread embrace of other career training options, by Democrats and Republicans alike.

A bipartisan push for alternatives is “a relatively new and I think encouraging dynamic,” she said. “It is becoming more of a both-and conversation rather than an either-or conversation, which I think is kind of where we were 15, 20 years ago.”

A Bipartisan Issue

The notion that learners need alternative training options might be one of the few points Harris, Trump and their respective parties can agree on.

Trump’s executive order shifted federal hiring processes to focus on skills over degrees, and the 2024 Republican Party platform promises to support “additional, drastically more affordable alternatives to a traditional four-year college degree.” Meanwhile, the Democratic Party platform calls for free community and technical college and refers to past and future investments in registered apprenticeships and career and technical education. The platform also notes, “Four-year college is not the only pathway to a good career.”

The move away from degrees is happening at the state level as well.

At least 16 states, either through legislative action or governors’ order, no longer require a degree for most state jobs, the National Conference of State Legislatures noted in a 2023 brief . Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, was the first to shed degree requirements in 2022, and then a slew of governors across the political spectrum followed suit, including in Alaska, California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah and Virginia.

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Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, joined that list in October 2023, ordering the state’s employment agency to develop a hiring process that “emphasizes skills and work experience,” with degrees “as a minimum qualification only as necessary.” Former president Barack Obama praised Walz for that decision on the Democratic National Convention stage last month, noting, “College shouldn’t be the only ticket to the middle class.” (As president, Obama called for every American to have at least one year or more of higher education or career training.)

Federal and state lawmakers are wise to zero in on alternative modes of training, because polls show skills-based learning and hiring matter to voters on both sides of the aisle, said Robert Espinosa, CEO of the National Skills Coalition, an organization focused on access to skills training.

A poll of 1,000 registered voters that his organization published in March found that 91 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Independents want to see increased public investment in skills training. Meanwhile, 83 percent of Democrats, 57 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Independents reported they’re more likely to support a candidate who champions funding for skills training. Similarly, a Morning Consult survey of 2,045 voters, conducted on behalf of Jobs for the Future, found that 84 percent of voters over all said encouraging employers to embrace skills-based hiring over degrees was somewhat or very important to them this election cycle.

Espinosa said Harris’s remarks reflect “where we are as a country.” At the end of the day, job seekers’ experiences cross party lines.

“I think people recognize it … in our families and in our communities, our workers want access to good jobs, and they don’t always pursue the four-year degree, or it remains unaffordable, and so removing these unnecessary requirements creates a different economic picture for them,” he said.

Wesley Whistle, project director for student success and affordability at New America, a left-leaning think tank, said that while he agrees four-year degrees shouldn’t be required when unnecessary, he worries about all the rhetoric pushing nondegree credentials, given that the economic benefits of many of these programs remain unclear.

Faster, cheaper routes to well-paying jobs sound great “on paper,” he said. But “how many of the nondegree pathways lead to those good jobs? What we’ve seen is that a lot of existing certificate programs have mixed outcomes.” Alternative credentials “can lead to these good-paying jobs, but it’s not a guarantee, and we don’t necessarily have a lot of consumer protection around them.”

He added that research shows students in college still see value in their education. And for most politicians touting nondegree pathways, “their children are going to four-year schools,” Whistle said. “They went to four-year schools and often beyond.”

Implications for Higher Ed

Some higher ed leaders say a shift away from bachelor’s degrees might seem like a challenge to their institutions, but they see it as recognition of higher ed’s expanding role.

Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, said bachelor’s degrees still come with a proven earnings premium and valuable skills. He noted that Democrats’ focus on proposals like student loan forgiveness and free college seems to have given way to a stronger emphasis on multiple pathways to careers.

But he believes most college presidents and educators agree that degrees shouldn’t be the only option, yet “the way our workforce is, the way our workforce is going, you need some level of postsecondary education,” whether that’s an associate degree, certificate or workforce training program. He said plenty of institutions, such as regional public universities, are already offering or developing those alternatives to meet student and employer needs.

“The framing is often, is this sort of proposal a threat to higher education?” he said. “And on the contrary, I think colleges have been doing this for a long time and would like to do more of this and are open to the kinds of students who want to explore those possibilities.”

Harris’s promise to nix degree requirements “doesn’t undercut the idea that Vice President Harris supports the value of higher education—we’ve seen comments from some other politicians that do,” Fansmith added. “It’s just more an embrace of the way that higher education has to serve people in different ways.”

Growing national interest in varied credential pathways bodes well for community colleges, which largely offer nondegree options already, said David Baime, senior vice president for government relations and policy analysis at the American Association of Community Colleges. He pointed out that some institutions are also adopting competency-based education models, which give students college credits for their work skills and experiences.

“Our colleges would welcome a continued focus on job readiness, job skills, career-oriented preparation and industry-directed training,” he said, though he added that transfer to universities remains a “huge part” of community colleges’ mission.

He also stressed that skills training programs are more expensive to provide than your classic liberal arts courses, given they can require buying expensive equipment and offering higher instructor wages to compete with industry salaries. So, he hopes political rhetoric in favor of nondegree pathways results in more state funding to produce these programs.

Flynn similarly said she’s heartened by references to alternative credentials in both party platforms, but she’s eager to see how that translates into policy plans from the two presidential candidates.

“The federal government has a critical role to play in making more investments in navigational supports, really looking at how do we best provide financing to nondegree options,” she said, noting that legislation to expand Pell Grants to workforce training programs remains stalled in Congress. “It’s exciting to see this be a hot topic, but I think the next question is going to be, what are the specific proposals that will be put forward?”

A low-angle view of a teacher and his students learning in a classroom. A little boy in red is sitting at a desk showing the group his work on the computer.

Raising Up Black Male Teachers

Among the obstacles Black men face in their pursuit of higher education, a lack of representation

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The Right to Education in the 21st century: How should the right to education evolve? The Right to Education in the 21st Century Background paper for the international seminar on the evolving right to education As a contribution to the Human Rights Day 2021, UNESCO is holding an International Seminar to foster a global dialogue around the evolving dimensions of the right to education.
Career Pathways
Higher Education Career Pathways Find information designed to help you acquire challenging academic and technical skills and be prepared for high-skill, high-wage, and in-demand occupations in the 21st century global economy.
Harris joins calls for nondegree pathways
Harris's remarks reflect a broader, national conversation about nondegree pathways to well-paying jobs and a policy shift for the Democratic Party, which once put a premium on students getting bachelor's degrees and in recent years emphasized proposals to make college more accessible. The comments were also a glimpse into Harris's higher ed agenda—details of which have been scant.