Guardedly Optimistic

At last week’s breakfast meeting with all the department chairs and deans, I talked about the enrollment situation for this semester and this year. A substantial increase in the freshmen class, strong quality indicators, and some of the best retention numbers in our history make for a very positive picture. And a Presidential Debate on our campus next fall, further helps enhance the forecast for next year’s entering class. After finishing these comments, I moved on to discuss Moody’s higher education forecast of January 20, 2012. Moody’s is not always upbeat but their forecasts provide a well grounded assessment of what is and what is likely to be. In this forecast, Moody’s notes that for higher education, there will be greater political scrutiny, more sophisticated consumers and donors, increased price sensitivity on the part of consumers, increasing need for institutions to differentiate themselves, and also an increased need to become more efficient. Moody’s notes the “ongoing bifurcation” of higher education with very strong undergraduate demand occurring at the lowest cost, most affordable, extreme and at the highest prestige, highest quality, extreme. They also point out that there is a notable softening in demand for graduate education. We are all aware of the lack of job opportunities in much of teacher education but there is also a softening of demand for legal education and for graduate business education. Add to this the growth of online education and the weakness of the less selective sector of private higher education plus the fact that increased tuition discounting is not sustainable and you have key points in the picture that Moody’s sees and is reporting on. What does it all mean? Is the glass half or more than half empty? Or with a reviving economy, is the picture more positive than it appears. The answer is yes. We have our challenges but we have an opportunity. As an industry, many of us work very hard to differentiate our products. Many of us work very hard to provide a quality education. Many of us are very sophisticated at recruiting, and we also strive to limit tuition increases to the smallest possible increase. On the other hand, tuition discounting is still becoming more pervasive. It may be unsustainable in the long run but in the short run many of us have no choice but to compete. The increasing consumer focus on the tuition rate in the competition between much of private higher education and much of public higher education especially challenges the private sector going forward. And online education clearly challenges all of us by bringing much more competition just a click away. My generation and others in close proximity in age can be sure that higher education as we know it will continue throughout our professional lives. For future generations of administrators and faculty, the challenges, however, are great. If those of us in influential administrative positions try to coast, much of higher education as we know it will be placed at risk. If we continue to differentiate and make changes that reflect changing times, if we continue to respect core values, if we limit tuition increases and maximize efficiencies, if we can operate in an increasingly online environment, we should be OK. My choice is to not be complacent; if you do the same, we can all be guardedly optimistic.

Target Practice

I think we would all agree that our country is confronting a series of challenges in key areas such as the economy, health care, education, the environment, and national security.  How we handle these challenges will determine whether the United States continues its global leadership role or whether we are eclipsed by other great powers on this globe.  Regardless of your priorities, as we look to secure our future, education has to be a key part of any solution.  But at this moment in time, education and especially schools of education are under attack.

The basis for the attack is that often in K-12 education, our students are not performing up to their potential and no one would argue with that assessment.  The blame for this lack of performance or lack of progress is placed on the shoulders of our teachers and further blamed on the education they have received.  The solutions suggest that a stint with Teach for America or an experience with a museum could provide the same or a greater level of expertise than pursuing a graduate degree in education. The threat is clear— if schools of education don’t change, students will be encouraged to go elsewhere to pursue their graduate education. 

I happen to think that Teach for America is a terrific program and I love visiting museums and always find them to be a valuable learning experience.  There is no question that such programs can enhance teaching techniques and content knowledge.  But what about pedagogy?  What about the learning process? What about a more in depth understanding of the students we are educating? What about the need for a strong liberal arts and sciences background?  No one argues about the need for significant hands on experience for teachers but hands on cannot substitute for the proper educational foundation. Where is there any concrete evidence that teacher education has caused a lack of student performance? 

Clearly student performance is impacted by teaching quality and I’m not sure that that the prevalent K-12 structure sufficiently recognizes merit and the quality of teaching.  Yearly increases, step increases, and lane changes are almost totally tied to quantity of teaching and quantity of credits taken rather than the impact of the teacher. We have an obligation on the K-12 level and in higher education to give merit a more prominent place in the educational equation.  But we also all have an obligation, and that includes our public officials, to recognize that school funding, the student’s family,  the economic status of that family, the educational attainment of the family members, and discrimination all have significantly impacted student learning.  And does anyone think that alternative paths to certification will remedy these issues?

I wholeheartedly support outcomes assessment and efforts to measure the learning that has taken place.  I wholeheartedly support a continuous review of teacher education programs to also assess their effectiveness.  We can do a better job in providing K-12 education and in providing teacher education.  Change is necessary but so is an understanding of all the issues.  Looking for a target, looking for a simple solution to complex issues, won’t solve our problems.  You need to see the issues clearly and completely before significant progress can be made.  As educators we have an obligation to help make that happen.

Leaving the Comfort Zone

Last Saturday, I took my older daughter and her best friend to a performance of Nearly Lear at New York’s New Victory Theater.  The show stars Susanna Hamnett as the Fool.  She also plays every other role in this adaptation of the Shakespeare tragedy and she and Edith Tankus wrote the play besides.  I am a major fan of the work done by the New Victory and have been taking my kids to shows there regularly for the last ten years, but I really hesitated to buy tickets to this show.  I first read King Lear in high school and have seen it performed multiple times.  Tragedies are not my favorite form of entertainment even when the story is brilliantly developed as it is in King Lear.  And for a Saturday excursion with my daughter and her friend, something upbeat tends to create a more upbeat mood and a more fun day. I was going to the show but clearly this was outside of my comfort zone.

Susanna Hamnett was terrific. The show was terrific and with good humor and great talent Ms. Hamnett told the tale from beginning to end playing the Fool, King Lear, Cordelia, Regan, Goneril, and various other parts. Everyone died on schedule but we all laughed throughout.  And this adaptation served to remind me of the mastery present throughout Shakespeare’s work.

Unrelated to Shakespeare, King Lear, or Nearly Lear, I was at a lunch at the beginning this week where one of the participants was a very sophisticated high tech person.  During the conversation, she mentioned that when she found software or hardware that she liked or was helpful to her, she stayed with that product. And she completed the thought by saying she preferred to stay in her comfort zone. And to some extent we all do.  I took my time to make the switch from a blackboard/whiteboard with overhead slides to PowerPoint.  Now I couldn’t even tell you why I hesitated other than I was in my comfort zone.  Human nature prevails.

Higher education is being challenged as never before.  In a weakened economy, there are fewer family resources as well as less government and philanthropic support.  But economies improve and we will in time weather that challenge.  More serious, on-line delivery of education and/or for-profit companies providing education plus more international competition have turned our industry upside down and their presence will not diminish over time.  Business as usual may be our comfort zone but it isn’t our future.  As I have said for a number of years, we need to change, maintaining our quality and our integrity and responding assertively and expeditiously to these changing times.  The last thing we want is to have our industry described the same way we describe the King Lear story.