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Here, I’d like to reflect on some recent articles in the higher ed press.
“The Triumph of ‘Equity’ Over ‘Equality’”
I recently had the chance to review the experience of Harvard’s Black law students during the early 1970s, when, in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination, the university explicitly affirmed a commitment to affirmative action with a specific goal of an entering undergraduate, graduate school, and law school class that was 10 percent Black—a figure the campus failed, at the time, to come close to reaching.
While the number of Black law students rose—doubling over five years—their treatment by the faculty and classmates at the law school was despicable, and their experience was, in many respects, abysmal. (Keep in mind, at the time there was just one Black law professor, Derrick Bell, at any major law school.) Anything but welcomed, the Black law students experienced isolation and negativity and open expressions of derision and disdain.
And yet, their success was extraordinary, with many achieving prominence in academia, business, and politics—Kenneth Chenault, American Express’s CEO, Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke and Patricia Williams, a Columbia University law professor, just to name a few.
My takeaway is simple and straightforward: What these students needed, above all, was access. Their talents and resilience won out—despite the obstacles they faced. Our most selective institutions need to do much more to expand access, partly by increasing enrollment but in other ways as well: through early college high schools, like Bard’s; expanded bridge programs, afterschool programs, Saturday academies, and summer programs; and cross-campus collaborations.
From my vantage point, our goal should be fairness. We may not be able to ensure equal outcomes, but we can certainly take aggressive steps to address disparities in access and opportunity. Our institutions need to do everything they can to remove the systemic and structural barriers to success. They should undertake equity audits to understand why talented diverse students decline admissions offers; why certain classes have disproportionately high DFW (drop, fail, withdrawal) rates; and why underrepresented groups, including women, steer clear of certain majors.
Then, too, they should implement policies to help all students, regardless of their background or personal circumstances, succeed to the best of their abilities by taking into account students’ learning, financial and other needs.
“Can Colleges Foster Civil Discourse?”
Can colleges promote civil discourse on deeply divisive and emotionally charged topics, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Should they even try—or is this simply a recipe for frustration and dissatisfaction?
I’d urge all institutions to emulate the examples of Dartmouth and Emory: Provide forums where faculty can facilitate dialogue, provide academic context, promote empathy and active listening, encourage reflection, and model civil discourse—to those students who want such an experience.
Also, bring in experts in mediation and collective bargaining to discuss the strategies they use to handle conflicts. Typically, a first step is to acknowledge the parties’ lack of trust, power imbalances and unrealistic expectations, and to recognize, up front, that mediation is a process that may or may not result in a resolution. Then, identify each parties’ underlying needs and interests, encourage reframing and perspective taking, and brainstorm short-term and longer-term options. Only then is it possible to consider various compromises or accommodations or collaborations.
“Increasing Diversity Without Affirmative Action”
Is it easier to achieve racial diversity by using race in the admissions process? Of course it is. Are there alternatives? Absolutely. There’s Texas’s Top 10 Percent approach, automatically admitting students from the top of their high school graduating class. There’s also a holistic admissions process that looks at indicators of high academic potential and takes account of distance traveled.
Such approaches can diversify an entering class—but only if coupled with aggressive recruitment and outreach, developing community connections, providing scholarship support guarantees for students from low-income backgrounds, and fostering a welcoming campus climate.
“The University of California Is Reversing Course on Its ‘Data Science’ Admissions Standard”
What level of mathematical, statistical and data literacy should a college student achieve to function knowledgeably in our increasingly data-driven society? I take the view that in our increasingly data-driven society, a foundational level of mathematical, statistical, and data literacy is essential for college students, irrespective of their major.
But what does that mean in practice? A course in college algebra? A class in data science? Or distinct math pathways aligned with specific majors?
One way to think about this is to focus on essential outcomes. We surely want all of our students to understand the basic mathematical operations, fractions, decimals and algebraic expressions that are crucial for solving everyday problems and understanding more complex mathematical and statistical concepts. All should have a grasp of ratios, proportions and percentages and their applications in various contexts, such as financial calculations and risk assessment. Every graduate should be able to apply mathematical concepts to interpret, analyze and solve real-world problems, including those related to budgets, taxes and personal finance.
In addition, every student should graduate with a basic level of statistical literacy. They should understand measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode) and dispersion (range, variance, standard deviation) to summarize and describe data distributions. They should also grasp the basics of probability, hypothesis testing and confidence intervals to make predictions or inferences about a population based on sample data. Then, too, they should be capable of accurately reading and interpreting graphical representations of data, such as histograms, line graphs, pie charts and scatter plots, and assessing the validity, reliability and potential bias of statistical findings presented in media, academic research and other sources.
In terms of data literacy, they should understand where data comes from, including primary and secondary sources, and be able to assess the credibility and relevance of data sources. I think they’d also benefit from familiarity with organizing, cleaning and manipulating data using basic software tools and presenting data effectively. Students should also appreciate how these various skills apply across various fields, from social sciences to natural sciences, business, health care and technology.
My conclusion: We can foster these competencies in a variety of ways. Through traditional math classes but also through workshops and experiential learning opportunities and by embedding mathematical, statistical and data literacy across the curriculum.
“Teaching Evaluations Are Racist, Sexist, and Often Useless”
It’s certainly true: Student course evaluations tend to be popularity contests and are biased to boot. Because ratings correlate with grades, evaluations incentivize faculty members to reduce their grading standards and rigor.
But what’s the alternative? How else can we ensure accountability, instructional efficacy and responsiveness to student needs, and encourage ongoing professional development and pedagogical innovation?
Peer evaluation makes sense—but only if the peers take this responsibility seriously and are equipped to rigorously evaluate pedagogy, instructional activities and assignments, student engagement, classroom management, and assessment strategies. Self-assessment also strikes me as reasonable. Asking instructors to regularly reflect about their teaching philosophy, methods, challenges and successes can become formulaic, but it can also prompt faculty members to ponder their pedagogical approach.
I’d recommend campuses engage in a bit of outside-the-box thinking.
- Look—obviously with great care—at how many students take subsequent classes in the discipline and see how well they perform in those courses.
- Collect feedback from graduates and alumni and ask them to identify the instructors who had the biggest impact on their education.
- Emphasize objective measures of engagement with teaching, such as participation in professional development, use of new pedagogical approaches, creation of new instructional materials and contributions to curricular development.
“Authoritarians Come for the Academy”
In a recent letter to The Chronicle, Jim Gray, an associate vice president at Smith College, argues that we should not only be concerned about legislative overreach in states like mine (Texas), but the threats “to free thought, free expression, and diversity of opinions from within the academy itself, and the relationship between these two threats.”
Although I think that letter exaggerates the degree to which campuses have purged “unorthodox political thought,” or the extent that “extreme liberal bias” has provoked a political backlash, I do think that leading faculty members need to reaffirm certain liberal principles, that:
- The classroom should be a place for open inquiry, informed debate, critical engagement and diverse opinions.
- Readings should present multiple viewpoints to encourage critical analysis.
- Instructors have a responsibility to provide an inclusive and respectful learning environment.
- No student should be discouraged from expressing dissenting opinions or be penalized for holding views that differ from their instructor’s.
In addition, campuses should offer workshops and training sessions on inclusive teaching practices, managing classroom discussions on controversial topics and encouraging a diversity of viewpoints. Our job is to educate, not to shield students from “discomfiting ideas” or to encourage students to embrace “counterfeit clarities” and “Manichean binaries” (in the words of Jonathan Rieder). And that requires an open classroom environment, critical engagement with course materials and a multiplicity of perspectives in our classes.
“Vital to Solve Transfer Challenges Faced by Community-College Students”
About 80 percent of community college students express a desire to earn a bachelor’s degree. However, only about 14 percent successfully transfer to a four-year university and graduate within six years of their initial enrollment in community college. Of those who do manage to transfer, only 42 percent complete their bachelor’s degree, which is significantly lower than the 60 percent degree attainment rate of students who start at public four-year colleges.
What needs to be done?
- Ensure credit transferability—and make sure that those credits apply to gen ed and major requirements.
- Adopt joint advising (and consider joint enrollment) to make certain that students from feeder schools plan their academic trajectory efficiently.
- Remove obstacles to transfer student success, including delays in transcript evaluation and course registration and arbitrary degree and major requirements that require students to repeat classes or treat community college courses as electives.
- Treat transfer students like native students, with equal access to honors, research and scholarship programs.
If four-year institutions fail to implement these reforms forthwith, there is one other option: Make it easier for two-year institutions to grant bachelor’s degrees.
“Higher Ed Can’t Neglect Nontraditional Students”
Alex Hernandez, the president of Champlain College, has it right: The vast majority of the nation’s 3,900 colleges and universities must change to survive. Why? Because of sagging enrollments, spiraling costs and swelling budget deficits. Because of mounting competition and market saturation and escalating student needs and expectations. Because roughly half of their graduates find work in jobs that don’t require their degree.
And because, too often, we fail to recognize that most of our students are nontraditional. They commute. They work 15 or more hours a week. They have family responsibilities.& They transfer from a community college. They speak a language other than English at home. They have a disability.
While we should certainly offer alternate routes to a meaningful credential—paths that are cheaper and faster and job-market aligned—let’s not jettison what colleges offer: the face-to-face interaction between students and credentialed experts. But if we are to truly deliver “college for all,” then we must adapt.
Adopt block scheduling. Expand active, experiential, and inquiry and project-based learning opportunities. Create thematically aligned and career-oriented learning communities. Embrace data-driven advising. Respond to student needs proactively. Offer more coherent degree pathways. Embed career identification and preparation across the curriculum.
Just do it.
As microcosms of society, college campuses inevitably reflect and amplify society’s diversity, disparities and controversies. As such, they have become arenas where societal issues converge and demand attention.
The diversity within our colleges extends beyond demographics to encompass a broad spectrum of socioeconomic challenges and educational backgrounds. Colleges are thus compelled to address various needs, from food insecurity and homelessness to learning disabilities and academic preparation gaps.
Like it or not, meeting student needs, whether these are cognitive, emotional and psychological, or economic and social, has become among college’s central responsibilities. Post pandemic, it’s clear that we have yet other obligations: To help students with their executive functioning and their ability to socialize and collaborate effectively.
Given the enormous gaps in our society’s safety net and support structures, colleges inevitably must stand alongside K-12 schools at the forefront of efforts to provide a more equitable and supportive environment for all students. We must not only prepare them academically but help them define a path forward and learn how to navigate life’s challenges.
Whatever you think about current diversity, equity and inclusion efforts on college campuses, faculty, staff and administrators have a collective responsibility to ensure that every student not only succeeds academically, but also finds a clear path forward in their career and is well prepared to deal with life’s challenges. That will require us to redesign our curricula, reimagine the faculty role, and make mentoring a much higher campus priority. Only by taking these steps can colleges truly meet the moment and fulfill their mission as purveyors of a liberal education, producing students well-equipped to participate in today’s unstable, uncertain, unpredictable and extraordinarily diverse global environment.
