This issue of Trusteeship features articles focused on the challenge of change in higher education. Steve Pelletier calls the academy's habits of "glacial-paced reform, incremental change, or tinkering around the edges" insufficient to meet current needs. Steve Jordan discusses one of those needs, educating and supporting the growing numbers of low-income students and students of color on our campuses "whom higher education historically has not served well." Cathrael Kazin and David Payne examine another need, creating and implementing effective means of assessing student learning, and warn that without this, "the entire postsecondary enterprise rests on a shaky foundation." Scott Cowen offers hard-won lessons of changes made in the wake of Hurricane Katrina through Tulane University's Renewal Plan.
Anne Ponder writes of "the burden and the gift" of our financial crisis, acknowledging the human costs of the cuts to higher education funding as well as the opportunities to clarify thinking and focus on mission. This burden and gift are the board's to shoulder. They must catalyze our institutions and our system of higher education into making the changes necessary to deliver on their promises to society and to meet the needs of the nation. Nothing less will do.
The old saw about change in higher education is that it comes only at a glacial pace. There is truth in that stereotype--and value as well. Higher education's inherent conservatism helps preserve traditions that constitute the pillars of the academy's overall strength. That's not to say that higher education isn't capable of change. Indeed, universities are always evolving.
The lessons Tulane University learned from Hurricane Katrina almost four years ago are proving valuable as we--like other universities around the country--cope with the current U.S. economic downturn.
Shifting demographics, dramatically changing student bodies, and diminishing state funds now are dictating new national priorities for higher education. It's time for governing boards and their institution's administrators to wake up, have a strong cup of reality, and face these challenges head on. Many boards and institutional leaders have received presentations on projected national demographic changes over the past few decades, but given the enrollment and graduation statistics we see today, it is clear that some have not heard the alarm bells--and that much more must be done to meet the needs of the low-income and minority students who will make up a growing part of the college-age population in the near future.
Cathrael Kazin and David G. Payne
"Attend our university, where we're not sure what--or even if--our students are learning. We have dedicated faculty members and great facilities, so we think we're doing a good job, but the truth is that we have no evidence to support that."
Promotional copy like that might draw some double takes, but not many applicants. Yet, allowing for some hyperbole, this is the situation at many well-regarded institutions of higher education.
Financial and student-enrollment issues are now pressing mightily on colleges and universities. Does it seem an odd time to bring up academic affairs as the subject for a T'ship 101 article? No! It is at just such times that governing boards must attend most carefully to their institutions' missions and the quality of learning and scholarly work they provide. Declining resources can threaten that precious quality.
In a trio of executive orders, President Obama has strengthened workers' rights. These actions and emerging federal legislation have significant implications for colleges and universities which, like other employers, are grappling with ways to respond to current downturns in funding, gifts, and investment income, as well as operating budget shortfalls.
Ronald G. Ehrenberg and Joyce B. Main
Women are making slow but steady progress in membership on boards of trustees, but the growth in representation is slower at doctoral than at other types of four-year institutions.
At a time when access to college is increasingly vital to our overall economic well-being, the dire global financial situation threatens to deter more and more people from following that dream. Almost daily we hear reports of colleges and universities around the country forced to consider unwanted options: greatly increased tuition, reduced or capped enrollments, layoffs of faculty and staff members, halted construction projects, scaled-back investments in innovation.
One of the primary responsibilities of a board of trustees is to ensure an institution's ability to pursue its mission for the benefit of present and future generations of students. Doing so during times of economic downturn and uncertainty--as we're seeing today with the financial landscape changing daily--requires a strong, actively engaged, disciplined, and supportive board.
The first misconception is that problem drinking starts before college. That's true for some, but the effect of college on drinking is a very real one. According to our surveys, within six weeks of arriving on campus, abstention drops by 45 percent while high-risk or binge drinking goes up 114 percent. On top of this, college students outpace the drinking of their non-college-going peers--so it's not just a youth issue, it really is a college issue. And despite the myths about "healthier" European drinking, most European countries report higher rates of binge drinking among youth than the U.S. The U.S. ranks 19 of 23 countries surveyed on this measure, ahead of only Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey.
