Today, however, one can argue that
"evolving" isn't enough. In policies, programs, and processes--to say
nothing of perspective and mindset--many universities appear
insufficiently prepared to respond to the profound challenges of our
times. Stark economic realities, a dramatic evolution in demographics,
and the emergence of the global marketplace constitute a new world
order. In this context, the academy's traditional approaches to
adapting--glacial-paced reform, incremental change, or tinkering around
the edges of campus programs--may all constitute inadequate responses.
Profound
changes in society demand profound changes in institutions. Colleges
and universities, through their governing boards and top administrative
leadership, must find ways to embrace change more fully, readily, and
agilely than they have in the past, say leaders and policy analysts who
have studied the issue. True reform is needed, they say--change that
reaches deep into the heart of an institution and results in
significant shifts in thinking, actions, and culture.
One can
argue that there is, in fact, some urgency around the need for
large-scale, big-picture, systemic, cultural, transformative change in
higher education. There are practical, productive ways to make that
happen--and key roles in that process for governing boards to play.
Why Change?
Many factors drive the need for transformative change in higher
education, but several are particularly compelling today. Current
financial models are not sustainable, say many policy and financial
analysts. Our universities are not yet adequately serving students from
fast-emerging demographic cohorts. For example, the National Center for
Public Policy and Higher Education's Measuring Up 2008 report, dubbed
"the national report card on higher education," reports that while 59
percent of white students currently complete a bachelor's degree in six
years, only 47 percent of Hispanic students, 41 percent of African
Americans, and 39 percent of Native American students do so.
Universities in the United States lag behind institutions abroad in
preparing students in areas critical to success in the global
workplace. According to a November 2008 report by the Council on
Competitiveness, for example, the United States ranks 17th globally in
the proportion of its college-age population that earns degrees in
science and engineering, down from third several decades ago, and ranks
26th in earned mathematics degrees.
Speaking to these challenges, William (Brit) Kirwan, chancellor of the
University System of Maryland, says that higher education's
conservatism has been a strength, helping to stave off fads and to
preserve "the integrity and the quality of the enterprise." Still, he
argues, today's specific concerns call for more transformative change
in the academy.
"The cost of education is rising at a rate that is, quite frankly, just
not sustainable," Kirwan says, so colleges and universities "are just
going to have to find lower-cost ways of providing high-quality
education." Transformative change is needed to hardwire
cost-consciousness into higher education's DNA, he says. In addition,
Kirwan believes that to better serve tomorrow's college students,
universities must move to "work in a more collaborative and productive
way with the K-12 sector to reach out and provide educational
opportunities for populations that historically have not been served
well by higher education."
Dennis Jones, president of the National Center for Higher Education
Management Systems, offers an even more direct prescription. "The
country and almost all states have a need for higher education to
produce many more graduates than the pocketbook can afford if we don't
do business differently," he says. In the main, Jones says, "that's
going to mean being successful with students who have historically not
been very successful in higher education." In that context, he argues,
"it's almost a national imperative that higher-education institutions,
individually and as a collective, find ways to be much more productive
than they have been."
Change in Action
Look beyond the cliches about change in higher education and you will
find universities that have capably recast themselves in significant
ways. A few notable examples show that even if it's not the norm,
transformative change is indeed possible.
In the early 1990s, Olivet College, a private, liberal-arts
institution in Michigan, redefined its academic direction to
incorporate a distinctive focus on students' developing an ethic of
responsibility. Under the theme "Education for Individual and Social
Responsibility," students integrate learning from both inside and
outside the classroom. They are required to take a highly active role
in their own education, and they are expected to develop competencies
in such areas as reasoning, individual and social responsibility, and
communication.
Portland State University completely redesigned its undergraduate
program to offer students a cohesive program of integrated learning
experiences. Among other emphases, the program stresses group
collaboration, the development of problem-solving skills, and helping
students apply their knowledge in real-world settings.
Charged by its board of regents to contain costs but still promote
affordability, access, and quality, the University System of Maryland
developed a system-wide initiative to help its universities operate
more effectively and efficiently. Started in 2004--and now part of the
system's culture--the program to date has saved more than $100 million,
officials say.
Based in Orlando, Valencia Community College decided to make itself
more collaborative and learning-centered. In a transformation that took
several years, the college moved from seven discipline-specific
expectations of students to four required core competencies, under the
rubric of "think, value, communicate, and act." Those concepts were
integrated into a new curriculum, faculty development, and student
assessment. In addition, Valencia developed a comprehensive new
advising system to help students navigate both the academic and social
aspects of college life, develop education and career plans, and
acquire study and life skills. The overall effect of these and other
changes has been what a campus document called a "sea change in
institutional culture."
Transformative Reform
What makes some institutions capable of large-scale, transformative
change? One of the first criteria is that there has to be recognition
that change is needed. Close on the heels of the first criteria comes a
second--the need for courage to start down the path toward reform.
The impetus for transformative institutional change can come from
within a university, but is perhaps more likely to come from outside.
"Very few institutions are going to be self-starters on the change
agenda," Dennis Jones believes. "In the normal course of events, it's
almost inevitable that the change agenda, in some form, will be imposed
externally." The current economic turmoil provides a compelling outside
impetus for change, Jones notes, giving university boards and leaders
the incentive to ask, "Can we do business differently?"
Another facet of transformative change is that it frequently takes a
visionary, persuasive leader--often the institution's president--to drive
the effort. Findings reported in a seminal publication from a national
project on transformational change in higher education, conducted by
the American Council on Education ("On Change V: Riding the Waves of
Change, Insights from Transforming Institutions," see Resources, p. 13)
underscored the importance of effective leadership in institutional
transformations. That project found that successful leaders of major
change were driven by principle, took a long-term view of reform, and
knew how to regulate the pace of change. Moreover, they had the
requisite skills to engage their campus in new ways of thinking and in
different kinds of conversations, and often turned to experts off
campus for ideas.
The importance of consistency in transformative leadership cannot be
underestimated. Turnover in top slots is one of the most notable
impediments to successful reform. "There's no substitute for
leadership," Jones says, and "no substitute for leadership that sticks
around long enough to implement" planned changes.
Judith A. Ramaley was president of Portland State when it embarked on
the effort that resulted in a transformed University Studies
general-education program. She's still an agent of change in her
current role, as president of Winona State University. While Ramaley
believes that transformative leadership is indeed a predicate for
transformational change, she says it doesn't necessarily have to come
from the president. "Leadership can come from anywhere in your network
of people who care about your institution, including your trustees, who
have a vision of what you could do together that no part of your
institution could do separately," she says.
Ramaley acknowledges that the literature on change debates the ultimate
source of the spark for reform. In her experience, though, she has
found that it "usually comes from a situation, most frequently external
to the institution, that is so uncomfortable that something different
looks more attractive than the familiar." The American Council on
Education (ACE) project found, in fact, that external pressures for a
university to change actually invested institutions with a certain
creative freedom and energy for reform.
Change can also be set in motion on campuses, Ramaley says, "by people
who have a clear sense of what the future might be like." Paraphrasing
a colleague, Ramaley says that "during a crisis, some people have the
courage to push the reset button." The crisis "sets in motion a
different way of thinking about the institution, how its assets are
used, what its future might look like, and what its highest hopes might
be," she says.
A key part of successful large-scale change comes from a willingness to
go outside your comfort zone, to stop relying on traditional ways of
responding to what's happening in the environment around you, Ramaley
says. "I honestly don't think you can be comfortable with
transformative change," she adds. "You can convince yourself of its
value. You can see the real consequences in human as well as
institutional terms. But transformational change is always unsettling."
Change agents have to accept a certain level of discomfort, she
suggests, until "you're deep enough into it to see that this is, in
fact, better than what was happening before."
Some institutions have become practiced in what might be called
superficial change, but that does not mean they are accomplished in
making systemic changes. Adrianna Kezar, an associate professor of
higher education at the University of Southern California, says that in
the last decade or so institutions have conducted "all sorts of small
tinkering" in such areas as collaborative learning, assessment, and
technology, but without "the underlying, fundamental changes" that
could ensure the reform will have a deep and lasting effect.
Fundamental changes might manifest themselves, for example, in closer
alignment of goals and reward systems. Too often, Kezar says, colleges
that proclaim a.desire to improve undergraduate education have reward
systems that "continue to focus on grant-seeking and doing research."
Jones also sees a rewards disconnect, at the policy level. "If the
public-policy environment doesn't reward continuous change, then it's
very unlikely to happen," he says. States are beginning to experiment
in this regard, he reports, citing a program in Indiana that pays for
students' course completion rather than enrollment and in proposals
elsewhere that would base state allocations on students enrolled at the
end, versus the beginning, of a semester.
Focus and intentionality are cited as other core characteristics of
successful transformative change, or as various sages have indicated,
the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. One of the
challenges in transformative change, Kezar observes, is that
"institutions have far more options for change than they can
effectively implement." The.key, she suggests, is focus: "It goes back
to how you select which improvements and.innovations are going to best
serve the.institution."
Transformative change comes about when institutions decide
intentionally to undertake reform on a large scale, and take pains to
create processes and practices that foment reform. Every institution
has a strategic plan and can say that it is progressing toward
well-defined goals, Kezar says. Yet in talking with campus
administrators during her research studies, she regularly finds stories
of failure to execute plans and achieve strategic objectives. Processes
go awry for many reasons, she says, including "lack of buy-in from the
bottom, turnover of leadership at the top--lots of things make a poor
environment." The ACE project found that successful change efforts paid
as much attention to the process of change as they did to their
substance--choosing the right time to address the right topic for an
institution, for example, and committing institutional resources to
activities that would advance the change agenda.
Perhaps a final criterion for change is that institutions recognize
that reform is not "one size fits all." Successful efforts toward
transformative change typically grow organically at each college or
university, reflecting that institution's distinctive culture, values,
and ways of working.
The Board's Role
Governing boards have an important, perhaps crucial, role to play in
helping institutions accomplish substantive, transformative change. An
institution's volunteer leadership might start, Jones suggests, by
asking such key questions as, "How productive are we right now?" and
"Can we become more productive?"
"Boards can deal with the questions of what and whether," Jones says,
and can monitor progress and hold people accountable, but shouldn't
address "the question of how." Jones says, however, that boards need
staff support, including key data, to be able to recognize when
transformative change is needed.
Boards play a "huge role" in leading change, Kirwan agrees, and in
"insisting and ensuring" that change does, in fact, occur. As an
example, he cites the board of the University System of Maryland in the
system's effort to improve effectiveness and efficiency. "Quite
frankly," Kirwan says, "I don't think we would be nearly as successful
as we have been without the role of the board taking this on as a
system initiative, expecting me and the presidents [of the system's
universities] working together to produce results and holding us
accountable for those results."
Jones offers another insight. "The role of trustees, in many ways, is
to represent the needs of students, not necessarily the needs of the
institution," he says. "In the broader context of higher education and
service to individuals in society," Jones suggests that trustees should
ask, "How do we maximize our service?" rather than "How do we maximize
our status?" In most institutions, he says, governing boards are the
only entity that can play that role.
In an era of regular turnover in top administrative positions, boards
can also help ensure institutional consistency. Too often, Jones
observes, "presidents are hired to overcome the shortcomings of the
prior one." That has the effect, he says, of putting an institution
"into total fibrillation as far as consistent pursuit of an agenda." To
prevent that confusion, he says, boards can play an important role in
setting expectations for a new president that build strategically on
the institution's recent accomplishments.
Transformative change is not easy, but it can happen in higher
education. And current realities--be they economic, demographic, or
geopolitical--strongly suggest that change on a substantive scale not
only is needed in higher education today, but perhaps is imperative.
"I am very concerned that higher education is trying to move into the
future looking at what has worked in the past," Kirwan says. Rather
than emulate practices that have helped institutions advance over the
past several decades, he says, "we need to be spending more time
thinking about what the next decade is going to look like, both
fiscally and demographically, and building strategies that will be
responsive to those realities." In other words, he suggests,
universities working to position themselves for the future ought to be
mapping their own version of transformative change right now.
Elon University: Transformative Change in Action
Few institutions can demonstrate the longevity of ongoing, significant change that Elon University can. A private, comprehensive college in North Carolina, Elon saw its dramatic improvement during the latter decades of the 20th century documented in the 2004 book Transforming a College: The Story of a Little-Known College's Strategic Climb to National Distinction, by the late George Keller, a respected higher-education author, scholar, and academic strategist. More recently, under the leadership of President Leo Lambert, Elon has continued to transform itself almost continuously. Among countless advances, Elon has added new schools
and programs, improved its academics, constructed buildings and purchased land to expand the campus, and raised the academic caliber of its student body.
In part, Elon's fast-track climb has been possible because the campus has inculcated something of a transformation mindset. Institutional self-confidence is one component part, Lambert says, dating back to when his presidential predecessor and the board and faculty at the time "summoned the courage to take that great leap of faith to develop a much more prestigious, academically solid, beautiful campus that would eventually gain a national reputation." The campus community embraced that ethos, which continues to define the school's culture.
Vision also plays a role. Lambert says the college defines itself by a sense that "there is a destiny out there for Elon that is not yet realized." Also part of Elon's transformative culture is the notion that change is a constant: Elon is "very change-oriented" and "a restless place," Lambert says.
And board engagement has been a vital part of Elon's metamorphosis, he adds. The board insists that the college's strategic plan be an active document: "Our board members will not tolerate wishy-washy goal statements and language. They're always asking, 'How are you going to know that you got to where you wanted to get to?'" The board and leadership hold themselves and staff accountable for execution of the institution's plans.
Lambert says the board keeps its focus--and thus Elon's as a whole--on a long-term vision, "making sure that we're accountable to our strategic plan, making sure the strategic plan is current, swinging for home runs." Importantly, too, he says, the board recognizes "in a profound way that the institution is not going to get any better than the board" and works to regenerate itself with high-quality appointments.Resources
Extensive literature exists on change in higher education. Here is a sampling of resources tied to experts whose ideas helped inform this article.
- "On Change," a series of papers from ACE's Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation and the Kellogg Forum on Higher Education Transformation. See www.acenet.edu.
- "Good Policy, Good Practice: Improving Outcomes and Reducing Costs in Higher Education: A Guide for Policymakers," by Patrick M. Callan, Peter T. Ewell, Joni E. Finney, and Dennis P. Jones (November 2007). Available online at www.highereducation.org/reports/Policy_Practice/index.shtml/.
- For more information about the "Effectiveness and Efficiency Initiative" at the University System of Maryland, see www.usmd.edu/.
- "Moving Mountains: Institutional Culture and Transformational Change," by Judith A. Ramaley. Chapter in Field Guide to Academic Leadership, edited by Robert M. Diamond (Jossey-Bass, 2002).
- Taking the Reins: Institutional Transformation in Higher Education, by Peter D. Eckel and Adrianna J. Kezar (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003).
- Transforming a College: The Story of a Little-Known College's Strategic Climb to National Distinction, by George Keller (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
