-----Original Message----- From: Teaching Breakfast List on behalf of Greenberg, James ([log in to unmask]) Sent: Tue 1/13/2004 7:59 AM To: [log in to unmask] Cc: Subject: Higher Education's Changing Environment - Teaching Breakfast Posting by Jim Greenberg (a bit long) Folks: The posting below gives an overview of the history and changing environment of higher education in North America. It is from Chapter 1: A Current Perspective on Adjunct Teaching, in Success Strategies for Adjunct Faculty by Richard E. Lyons, Faculty Development Associates. Copyright © 2004 Pearson Education, Inc. For related titles and support materials, visit their online catalog at www.ablongman.com. Reprinted with permission. My apologies for the length of this posting.... Higher Education's Changing Environment Historically, North American colleges and universities have embraced the traditions of the British and German models, including "academic freedom" that has empowered professors to pursue their research interests freely, and the tenure system that has protected instructors' ability to work long term in what many have regarded as an ivory tower immune from external checks and balances. They established high standards for admission that has focused on applicants' standardized tests scores, high school class rankings, and other "objective" predictors of student success. The integrity of their practices was regularly confirmed through their own internal reviews, as well as through assessments by their peers at other institutions through the regional and discipline-specific accrediting bodies. While establishing a culture of quality in the minds of internal stakeholders, many potentially outstanding students came to perceive these practices as rigid and exclusionary, and lacking the support resources to reduce their barriers to admission, they did not try to pursue their educations immediately after high school. Beginning nearly a century ago with John Dewey (1916), an initially small but courageous number of educators challenged the higher education community to extend the full potential of a democratic system by serving a larger share of those within our society. They lobbied extensively to change the goal of admissions "gate-keeping" from one of exclusion to one of inclusion, arguing that colleges should employ a wider range of admissions criteria that did not penalize "late bloomers," those from working-class families, or others who did not meet the "standard." The first community colleges, which from their infancy largely served marginalized students, were an outgrowth of their efforts. After the victorious close of World War II, military veterans used the GI Bill to be the first from their families to kick open college and university doors, and in the process, they established themselves as role models for others who had been bypassed by higher education, as well as for their own children. As the first wave of veterans completed their degrees, they left college and university doors ajar for those empowered through the civil rights movement-minorities, women pursuing nontraditional careers, recent immigrants, and other-to stream through in increasingly large numbers. In recent years, the historical chasm between academia and our mainstream society has eroded markedly. It is now commonplace for esteemed professors to appear on television news shows to provide perspective in political debates and to discuss other matters of concern to an increasingly informed populace. In the process, they often promote their latest books, private consulting practices, or latest research projects. Meanwhile, institutions began to promote their sports teams widely to broaden support among the general population and to attract upscale niche markets to on-campus theatrical and musical productions. They also developed and promoted more intellectually oriented activities such as professor-accompanied tours of foreign countries and Elderhostel programs. Each of these initiatives was undertaken, in part, as a strategy for increasing institutional prestige but also to boost student enrollments and to mitigate declining public funding for quality enhancement initiatives. As a college degree has become widely valued as a ticket to upward mobility, enrollments have increased significantly, and must of the mystique of the ivory tower has evaporated. To meet the demand for courses by those fully employed by day, an increasing number of colleges and universities have expanded their course schedules into evenings and weekends-hours during which many full-time faculty members do not prefer to teach. Although many institutions have employed a small number of adjunct instructors through the years, as well as some of their staff members (e.g., the college attorney), to teach a few highly specialized courses per term, the expansion of course offerings into nontraditional hours dramatically drove the increased employment of part-time instructors. Because evening and weekend students are largely part time, a common bond has developed between the "new" students and their adjunct instructors that has fueled further growth in part-time enrollments (Lyons, Kysilka, & Pawlas, 1999). More recently, powerful external stakeholder groups, followed by proactive citizens, have imposed a template of college-as-business-enterprise on higher education. The increasing number of college presidents hired from outside academia (Basinger, 2002), the growing number of closings and mergers of less profitable institutions (Van Der Werf, 2002), and other factors reinforce this paradigm. Although significant differences between higher education and business enterprises (Birnbaum, 2000) will always remain, this public perception parallels that imposed on other societal institutions (e.g., health care, organized religion, and philanthropic organizations), which historically seemed insulated from society. As with other entities, the higher-education-as-business-enterprise paradigm invited society's consumer mind-set into academia. Students, as well as their parents and employers who reimbursed their tuitions, began to demand increased value from their investments, and most institutions installed student ratings of faculty and courses. Since student ratings have an especially significant impact on adjunct instructors, they will be addressed in greater detail in Chapter 13. Once reserved for instructional decision makers, student ratings information has become increasingly more widely disseminated, in both official and unofficial print versions, and more recently online to increasingly technology-savvy student-consumers. For a number of years, U.S. News and World Report and other have published highly popular guides that rank institutions and their faculty members initially resisted consumer-driven incursions into their cultures, an increasing number now embrace such comparative evaluations for their own benefit. One need not look far to see U.S. News' ratings featured in institutions' print and online marketing efforts, with the objective of differentiating their "product" from those of others in the increasingly competitive higher education marketplace. Over the past few years, for-profit institutions have begun to have a dramatic effect on the delivery of higher education. Employing a "skimming" strategy, they typically target the most lucrative market segment-the increasing number of bright working professionals who are older than traditional students and who are willing to juggle an array of responsibilities as they pursue degrees in highly popular disciplines such as business, technology, and health care. They more successful for-profit institutions have developed "campuses" in suburban office parks, where they offer classes, often in an accelerated format that students interested in rapid achievement perceive as more convenient and manageable. Courses of the for-profits are typically highly standardized and display few gaps or overlaps in content from one course in each curriculum to the next-thus reducing the instructor's preparation time and achieving other productivity gains. Classes at the for-profits are facilitated overwhelmingly by adjunct professors, most employed full time in their areas of specialization, a factor that most of their student-client view as an advantage over traditional institutions. The for-profits typically invest heavily in developing the instructional skills of their part-time instructors, unlike many traditional institutions, which often play down their numbers of adjunct faculty members, and have been very slow to invest in the development of their teaching and classroom management skills. Students at for-profits typically expect their courses to mirror the fields in which they work or aspire to work more closely than courses at traditional institutions do. Learning from instructors who were "on the firing line" earlier in the day helps fulfill that expectation. Because of the high regard in which they are held, ongoing professional development, and nature of the students, many adjunct instructors have come to prefer the environment of the for-profits to that of traditional institutions (Lyons, McIntosh, & Kysilka, 2003). The success of the highly competitive for-profits, especially measured by student enrollment in the most popular degree programs, has been nothing short of phenomenal (Borrego, 2001). Many traditional institutions have benchmarked their marketing and course delivery strategies, including the employment of highly qualified adjunct faculty. In addition more than 2,000 businesses-largely dissatisfied with the applicability of coursework available to their employees, whose tuition reimbursement represents a significant investment of company resources-have established corporate universities (Meister, 2001). As the for-profits, corporate universities rely on those most current with the best practices of business (adjunct instructors) to deliver the majority of their courses. As other products and services in the economy have become available 24/7, demand for quality college instruction that can be delivered to time- and place-bound students have also increased. Many institutions, led by the for-profits, require faculty facilitators. One of the larger for-profits, The University of Phoenix, employs 7,000 adjunct instructors to deliver its online courses alone, and has expanded the number of students it served by tenfold over the past five years (Olsen, 2002). Prodded by their constituents armed with data on such wasteful practices as high dropout rates in expensive programs and excessive credit hours accumulated by students (Lovitts and Nelson, 2000), state legislators and institutional boards of trustees are being increasingly asked to justify tuition increases, to provide more effectively taught classes and more comprehensive student supports services, and to improve articulation practices between institutions (Ewell & Jones, 1994). The legislatures of more than thirty states have implemented significant accountability measures, including "performance-based budgeting," into their public higher education systems (Schmidt, 2002). More recently, the Federal Department of Education has begun demanding that colleges and universities whose students draw federally supported financial aid retain and graduate students in a more effective and timely fashion with the tacit message being that their eligibility to continue awarding student financial aid hinges on their improving their performance (Burd, 2002). Although varied in their approaches, the measured mandated by state governments tend to focus on the following objectives: 1. Increasing accessibility to higher education to all citizens who can benefit from it, as a strategy for expanding the tax base and reducing the costs of social services (Waller, et al., 2000) 2. Improving productivity by limiting students' accumulation of excessive credit hours, through more effective advising and "seamless" articulation between institutions and though improving student retention, graduation, and placement rates (Selingo, 2001) 3. Dovetailing higher education funding and review processes with states economic development objectives, especially workforce development (Schmidt 2001) 4. Deregulating public higher education by strengthening consumer information bout factors of institutional performance (Wellman, 2001) Among private colleges and universities, members of the boards of trustees, especially those with business backgrounds, have become more active in their institutions' decision making, with the objective of promoting standards of accountability for their alumni, benefactors, parents, and other stakeholders. Increasingly, private colleges and universities are scrutinizing investments of institutional resources that were once rubber-stamped. In their increasingly visible roles, trustees seek to ensure the achievement of their institutions' widely communicated missions and to reinforce their institutions' image among their especially demanding stakeholders (Ehrenberg, 2000). Lastly, the regional accrediting associations-the entities that confirm overall institutional quality-have ratcheted up their role. With so much riding on the results (e.g., students' ability to get financial aid to pay rising tuition costs, students' ability to transfer credits earned to other accredited institutions, and institutional prestige, among others), accreditation processes are instituting an array of changes to foster institutional effectiveness and accountability. These include a shift in primary focus from "inputs" and "must statements" relative to educational processes such as the academic preparation of professors, number of resources in campus libraries, and so on toward a focus on student outcomes and related indicators of quality within their specific missions. The accrediting associations are thus playing perhaps the leading role in e defining institutional effectiveness (Eaton, 2001) and are therefore examining more closely than before institutions' policies toward employment and development of their adjunct faculty members. The widening circle of external stakeholders in higher education appear fully committed to win out over traditionalists who seek to hold on to those arcane practices that appear to benefit only those on the inside. In the process, we are likely to see a reduction in the bifurcation between full- and part-time faculty that has historically plagued many colleges and universities and contributed to so much angst for part-timers (Gappa & Leslie, 1993). References Burd, S. (2002). "Accountability or Meddling?" Chronicle of Higher Education, 49, no.4 (September 20), pp. A23-25. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan. Eaton, J. (2001). "Regional Accreditation Reform." Change, 33, no.2, pp. 38-45. Ehrenberg, R. G. (2000). "Private College Trustees Must Control Costs." Chronicle of Higher Education, 47, no.5 (September 29), p. B14. Ewell, P.T. & D.P. Jones (1994). "Pointing the Way: Indicators as Policy Tools in Higher Education." In S.S. Ruppert, ed., Charting Higher Education Accountability: A Sourcebook on State-Level Performance Indicators. Denver: Education Commission of the States. Gappa, J. & D. Leslie (!993). The Invisible Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Lovitts, B. & C. Nelson (2000). "The Hidden Crisis in Graduate Education: Attrition from Ph.D. Programs." Academe, 86, no.6 (November/December), pp. 44-50. Lyons, R., M. Kysilka, & G. Pawlas (1999), The Adjunct Professor's Guide to Success: Surviving and Thriving in the College Classroom. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Lyons, R., M. McIntosh, & M. Kysilka (2003). Teaching College in an Age of Accountability. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Olsen, F. (2002). "Pheonix Rises." Chronicle of Higher Education, 49, no.10 (November 1), pp. A29-31. Schmidt, P. (2002). "Most States Tie Aid to Performance, Despite Little Proof that It Works." Chronicle of Higher Education, 48, no.24 (February 22), pp. A20-21. Schmidt, P. (2001). "State Higher-Education Leaders What to See Improvements in Job Training." Chronicle of Higher Education, online daily news (August 1). Selingo, J. (2001). "Pennsylvania Rewards Fast Graduation, but Public Colleges Cry Foul." Chronicle of Higher Education, online daily news (August 3), http://www.chronicle.com/daily/2001/08/2001080301n.htm. Van der Werf, M. (2002). "Many Colleges will Close or Merge, Standard & Poor's Predicts." Chronicle of Higher Education, 49, no.16, p. 34. Waller, C., R. Coble, J. Scharer, and S. Giamportone (2000). Governance and Coordination of Public Higher Education in All 50 States. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research. Wellman, J. (2001). "Assessing State Accountability Systems." Change, 33, no.2, pp. 46-52