Fostering Engaged Citizenship and Professional Success: The Role of General Education

University of MontanaOctober 26, 2015

Debra Humphreys, Vice President for Policy and Public Engagement, AAC&U

www.aacu.org/leap; @debrahumphreys

humphreys@aacu.org

Collaborating to Better Serve Society and Our Students

Liberal Education and America’s Promise (2005-present)• a collaborative national initiative that champions the importance of a twenty-first-

century liberal education—for individual students and for a nation dependent on economic creativity and democratic vitality.

• LEAP advocates for a capacious vision of liberal education that is not confined just to liberal arts colleges nor exclusive to liberal arts and sciences disciplines. The LEAP definition of liberal education:

An approach to college learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity and change. It emphasizes broad knowledge of the wider world (e.g., science, culture and society) as well as in-depth achievement in a specific field of interest. It helps students develop a sense of social responsibility as well as strong intellectual and practical skills that span all areas of study, such as communication, analytical and problem-solving skills, and includes a demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and skills in real-world settings.

College Learning for the New Global Century (2007)

“The world in which today’s students will make choices and compose lives is one of disruption rather than certainty, and of interdependence rather than insularity.”

LEAP Asks:• How do we educate students for success in this kind of

world? • What are the Essential Learning Outcomes and set of

educational practices aligned to this reality?

LEAP Vision is Both/And: Education for Responsible Citizenship and Professional Success

Since our founding, we have looked to education—and to higher education—as essential component to building democratic capacity.

• “if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was & never will be”

• “enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body & mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”

• “the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the result of habit and long training.”

--Thomas Jefferson

What Does America Need Today from Higher Education?

A Dangerous Narrowing Of Vision to “Training” for Jobs

“We’re working to … offer the real-world education and hands-on training that can lead directly to a job and career.  We’re shaking up our system of higher education to give parents more information, and colleges more incentives to offer better value, so that no middle-class kid is priced out of a college education.  We’re offering millions the opportunity to cap their monthly student loan payments to ten percent of their income…”

President Barack Obama, 2014

Building Democratic Capacities: What Are They? What Are They For?

“The fundamental task of education in a democracy is the apprenticeship of liberty—learning to be free... The literacy required to live in civil society, the competence to participate in democratic communities, the ability to think critically and act deliberately in a pluralistic world, the empathy that permits us to hear and thus accommodate others, all involve skills [and knowledge] that must be acquired (emphasis added)...”

Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone, 1992

Building Democratic Capacities in a Globally Interconnected World: How Can We Educate

Globally Prepared Democratic Citizens?

Can one be a responsible citizen without knowledge of:

World histories?Global cultures?Political, economic, and social systems and challenges?The ideas and institutions that support constitutional democracy?The great religious and philosophical traditions?America’s own engagement with democracy, diversity, global

problem-solving?

All Civic Learning Must Build Capacity toAddress Big Questions, Meet Global Challenges:

More Than Just Content Coverage/Exposure

At home:

Justice, Racial Inequities, Immigration, Environmental Sustainability, Health, Economic Inequities,

Infrastructure Decay, Illiteracies

Around the world:

global pandemics, war and peace, refugees, migration, dislocation, interfaith conflict, nationalism,

environmental degradation, technology, development, poverty, security, privacy, terrorism

Can We Do Both?

The good news:

The capacities most important for responsible citizenship are the same as those that are most important for long-term professional success.

The bad news:

Our practices—in general education and majors—aren’t well aligned or designed to build those capacities

The Big Economic Picture

“Human work will increasingly shift toward two kinds of tasks: solving problems for which standard operating procedures do not currently exist, and working with new information—acquiring it, making sense of it, communicating it to others….today, work that consists of following clearly specified directions is increasingly being carried out by computers and workers in lower-wage countries. The remaining jobs that pay enough to support families require a deeper level of knowledge and the skills to apply it.”

“Frank Levy and Richard Murnane, “Dancing with Robots” (2013)

Dancing With Robots (2013)

What do Employers Say?

Falling Short? College Learning and Career Success

(Hart Research Associate 2015)

AAC&U has commissioned a series of studies—focus groups/surveys of students and business leaders, see:

www.aacu.org/leap/public-opinion-research

Three in five employers believe that it takes BOTH specific knowledge/skills and broad knowledge/skills to achieve long-term career success.

15%

60%

25%

Which is more important for recent college graduates to have who want to pursue advancement and long-term career success at your company?

Knowledge and skills that apply to a specific field or position

Range of knowledge and skills that apply to a range of fields or positions

Both field-specific and broad range of knowledge and skills

(employers)

College students: Specific 15% Both 63% Broad range 22%

14

21%

29%

33%

32%

59%

Strongly agree Somewhat agree

Employers want broad learning, cross-cultural capacities—in addition to hands-on learning.

Employers’ agreement with statements about college learning aims regardless of student’s chosen field of study

All college students should have educational experiences that teach them how to solve problems with people whose views are different from their own

96%

87%

78%

Every college student should take courses that build the civic knowledge, skills, and judgment essential for contributing to our democratic society

Every college student should acquire broad knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences

All college students should gain an understanding of democratic institutions and values

86%

78%

Students/total agree

94%

85%

86%

83%

87%

All college students should gain intercultural skills and an understanding of societies and countries outside the United States

15

Learning Outcomes that at Least Four in Five Employers Rate as Very Important

80%

81%

81%

82%

83%

85%Oral communication

Working effectively with others in teams

Written communication

Ethical judgment and decision-making

Critical/analytical thinking

Applying knowledge/ skills to real world

Students:very important

for successin workplace*

78%

77%

75%

74%

79%

79%

Proportions of employers rating each skill/knowledge area as very important for recent college graduates to have*

*8, 9, 10 ratings on zero-to-10 scale, 10 = very important

16

How Do We Build Students’ Capacity?High-Impact Practices Both in Gen Ed and Majors

First-Year Seminars and

Experiences 

Common Intellectual

Experiences

Learning Communities

Writing-Intensive Courses

Collaborative Assignments

and Projects

Undergraduate Research

Diversity/Global Learning

Service Learning,

Community-Based Learning

Internships

Capstone Courses and

Projects

Employers say they are more likely to consider hiring recent college graduates who have completed an applied learning or project-based learning experience.

13%

22%

21%

24%

27%

39%

60%

Much more likely to consider Somewhat more likely to consider

How much more likely is your company to consider hiring recent college graduates if they have had this experience?

Internship/apprenticeship with company/organization

Senior thesis/project demonstrating knowledge, research, problem-solving,

communication skills

Multiple courses involving significant writing

Research project done collaboratively with peers

Service-learning project with community organization

Field project in diverse community with people from different background/culture

Study abroad program

94%

87%

81%

80%

69%

66%

51%

Students: morelikely to be hired

95%

89%

76%

82%

85%

87%

71%

18

Both for Addressing Civic and Economic Aims of Higher Education:

Remember Gandhi’s Seven Deadly Sins

• Wealth without Work • Pleasure without Conscience • Science without Humanity• Knowledge without Character • Politics without Principle • Commerce without Morality • Worship without Sacrifice

Fostering Engaged Citizenship and Professional Success

Both General Education and Majors have a role to play!

An Agenda for General Education? Prioritize Integration and Application

• Need Redesign of Curricular Pathways Rich in High-Impact and Applied Practices—both General Education and Majors

• Need to Communicate Early and Often about How General Education Develops Professional and Civic Capacities

• Need Integration of Curricular, Co-Curricular, Work-based learning—advising and career exploration

• Need more problem-based, applied learning• Need New Ways for Graduates to Demonstrate Their

Achievement (e.g. e-portfolios, sophisticated Linked-In pages, etc.)

A Twenty-First-Century Liberal Education

Source: General Education Transformed (Gaston, 2015)

Building The 21st Century Academy: Some Examples

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute—integrated general education courses built around problem-solving both at home and abroad

• Wagner College—general education organized by thematic learning communities with experiential and reflective components

• California State University—2-year/4-year partnership developing thematic general education pathways (with optional ‘minors’ in issues such as sustainability, justice, public health)

• University of Richmond—guaranteeing every student either undergraduate research or paid internship

• UW-Whitewater—engaging student supervisors in work-study to help students reflect on and track their learning outcome from work

• Michigan State University—integrative studies gen ed model built around interdisciplinary global problems

What Students and Our Society Need and Deserve

“In a world of relentless change, all students need the kind of education that leads them to ask not just ‘how do we get this done?’ but also ‘what is most worth doing?’”

College Learning for the New Global Century, 2007