Higher Education

In first novel, �� scholar explores challenges faced by college presidents

Brooke Donald Gorlick — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 04:37:22 +0000

In first novel, �� scholar explores challenges faced by college presidents

Brooke Donald … Wed, 10/30/2024 - 21:37

�� GSE's Tom Ehrlich explores the relationship between university athletics and academics in his new novel set at a fictional college campus. (Photo: carterdayne/iStock)

Campus Life | Faculty and Programs | Higher Education

Tom Ehrlich, of the Graduate School of Education, tells a tale of academics vs. athletics in his first novel, and prepares for his upcoming memoir.

October 30, 2024

By Brooke Donald

Tom Ehrlich, adjunct professor at �� Graduate School of Education, has served in six U.S. presidential administrations and been university president, provost, and dean at three public and private campuses across the country. As a legal and education scholar, he has written 14 non-fiction books and scores of articles.

Now at age 90, he’s taking on a decidedly different genre: fiction. “It’s a lot of fun,” Ehrlich said. “It’s liberating to be able to say, ‘What if?’”

The first of his two novels, so far, is The Search: An Insider’s Novel About a University President. While the book, which was published last summer, draws on his own experiences at Indiana University, where he was the 15th president, the story explores the timeless friction between athletics and academics and the ongoing debate around the value of higher education and who colleges serve.

His second novel, due to be published next fall, is a murder tale - not at a university, but at an independent living community like the one in Palo Alto, where he and his wife, Ellen, now live. “I’m a big believer in telling stories,” Ehrlich said, “and telling them in ways that reveal something about how we live and learn and engage with each other.”

In between those novels, Ehrlich’s memoir will be published in January 2025. Learn, Lead, Serve: A Civic Life provided Ehrlich with the opportunity to dive deeply into his own stories, from childhood to now, spotlighting his close-knit relationship with his father, and the work he and Ellen did in higher education, government, and nonprofit organizations.

The following interview was edited for length and clarity.

The Search follows the president of fictional Nebraska State University looking for a new football coach/athletic director after the beloved coach suddenly dies on the field at a big game. Why did you take this angle?

You write what you know. And the issue of academics over athletics was starting to roil again. I thought it would be interesting to weave this issue into a novel.

When I was at Indiana University, I was in very public disagreement with the combative basketball coach Bob Knight. I received 10,000 letters about how I was handling or mishandling the situation. One I kept in my office and looked at whenever my head was getting a little swelled. “Mr. President, I’m 84 years old. I’m in a wheelchair. I live for Indiana University basketball. You can take your goddamn bow ties and go back where you belong.”

I was hired at Indiana to strengthen academics while also understanding the role and power of the athletics program. In my novel, the protagonist, Charlie Rosen, was hired at Nebraska State - a fictional school - to do the same.

I tried to give a sense of what it felt like to be president when you were trying to grapple with so many constituencies in a public university. A public university is the “main street” of American higher education, and I wanted to be on that street.

�� GSE Adjust Professor Tom Ehrlich (Photo courtesy of Tom Ehrlich)

College presidents are facing many tough issues these days. Given what you know and experienced, would you encourage someone to go into that role?

Yes! Presidents are facing tough issues, but they’ve always faced tough issues. When I was provost at the University of Pennsylvania, for example, there were frequent sit-ins in my office.

The job is challenging but I enjoyed the chance to strengthen the university. What a wonderful opportunity it was! I like academic planning. To work on what I call “institutional architecture” – making a great university even better – was a privilege. I tried to help strengthen the ways in which students learned, and faculty taught and did research. It’s a challenge to be a university president, but one that comes with a lot of joys as well.

This was your first novel. How did that compare to writing academic papers or nonfiction?

Novels must be interesting and entertaining. I took a creative writing course at ��. I liked it so much that I took two more! There were challenges. I’m used to writing in paragraphs, and people don’t talk in paragraphs so creating dialogue was a challenge. The other big challenge was including many details. You want to know that someone is wearing a pale green shirt and white pants. All those things that make your character a human being in a novel, you don’t worry about in academic pieces. In fact, you might lose points in an academic paper if you put those in! There were many other lessons I learned in my creative writing courses. I had great teachers, and their courses helped.

Your memoir is called Learn, Lead, Serve: A Civic Life. Is that how you’d describe your life?

My editor chose the title, but yes, I really have enjoyed learning, leading institutions, and serving the public interest. And I enjoy teaching. Every year I was a dean, provost, and president, I taught at least one course. I had never taught when I walked into my first course teaching contracts at �� Law School. Initially I could not understand why students found some concepts so difficult, while I found them so simple. Finally, I asked a friend to video several classes, and by studying the videos I began to see where my students weren’t getting the concepts. I learned how to identify and unpack roadblocks and meet students where they were having problems. When I joined the �� Graduate School of Education faculty, that experience led me to teach the course, “Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.” I still believe that doctoral students who are planning to become faculty members should take at least one course that will help them be better teachers.

The memoir focuses on my time in the federal government, as well as my years at ��, the University of Pennsylvania, and Indiana University. In meeting the leadership challenges on those campuses, I tried hard to connect what I learned in one position to do a better job in the next position. I also had great satisfaction working in the federal government – in the State Department when JFK and then LBJ were presidents, as the first president of the Legal Services Corporation, which funds legal aid for poor people, and working directly for President Carter in charge of bilateral and multilateral foreign aid policies. These experiences have made my primary other roles in higher education ones that help prepare college students with the knowledge, skills and attributes to be actively engaged in civic work. It concerns me that so few young people today are interested in public service. Our country suffers as a result.

What is next for you?

I’ve entered a new chapter, so to speak. I’m still a GSE adjunct professor, helping whenever I am asked and advising students, and I hope to remain in that role as long as I am vertical. I am grateful to the school, its faculty and administrators for giving me the chance to be their colleague. Now I also volunteer at a number of community organizations. One, for example, helps immigrants improve their English.

Will there be another novel? I doubt it—but one never knows.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Thomas Ehrlich

When cultural norms conflict in college advising

Carrie Spector — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 12:07:34 +0000

When cultural norms conflict in college advising

Carrie Spector Fri, 03/29/2024 - 05:07

Culturally mismatched behaviors can thwart the relationship between student and advisor. Research by �� scholar Emily Schell uncovers subtle modifications to better support students’ sense of belonging. (Photo: VH-Studio)

Diversity and Identity | Higher Education

�� scholar Emily Schell identified “culturally mismatched” behaviors between undergraduates and advisors, along with more supportive approaches.

March 29, 2024

By Carrie Spector

For many college students, academic advising is about more than navigating course requirements. It can be a critical connection to campus resources and help cultivate a sense of belonging, especially for international, immigrant, and first-generation students.

But institutional norms sometimes conflict with students’ expectations and ways of being — a “cultural mismatch” that can thwart the relationship between student and advisor, impeding students’ access to support and resources for academic success.

In a recent study, Emily Schell, a doctoral candidate at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), investigated the role of culturally mismatched advising in higher education, identifying areas of possible conflict between institutional norms and students’ expectations. Through interviews with 41 Chinese American and Chinese international students and 33 of their academic advisors at four U.S. public and private universities, Schell found that cultural mismatches can occur on several fronts, such as the level of student voice and self-advocacy expected in advising, the value advisors and students placed on exploration, and the emphasis on “passion” to motivate academic decisions.

In a subsequent study, which Schell will present at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association on April 13, she analyzed student journals, interviews, and academic transcripts to explore the role of culturally responsive advising in 20 Chinese diaspora students’ first-year college experience.

From both studies, Schell identified advising behaviors that can create cultural mismatches for some students — as well as subtle tweaks that can better support a sense of belonging and well-being, especially for international and immigrant students, alleviating some of the need for institutions to develop separate programs to address these concerns.

“Cultural mismatches are often unintentional and hiding in plain sight, because European American norms are so deeply embedded in the structure and functioning of much of U.S. higher education,” she said. “By surfacing some of these mismatches and making some simple modifications, we can do more to support our students during their first-year transition and journeys through college.”

Emily Schell

Shifting assumptions

Schell, whose dissertation focuses on culturally responsive advising to support international and immigrant students, said her interest was ignited by her own background in East Asian studies and experience teaching elementary schoolers in China and Taiwan.

“I would ask my students what made them choose a particular extracurricular activity, and they would say, ‘My mom or dad wanted me to,’ or ‘My teacher recommended it,’ or ‘Because I’m good at it,’ ” said Schell. “I’d ask, ‘Do you like it?’ And they’d say, ‘That’s a weird question.’ ”

As a teacher, she realized she had to shift her assumptions about the role of enjoyment or passion in her students’ pursuits in order to affirm and support what actually motivated them. “I was able to be nimble enough to do that, but what about institutions?” she said. “I thought particularly about higher education and what would happen if some of my students went on to U.S. institutions.”

Students from China make up the largest proportion of international students at four-year colleges in the United States, according to the U.S. State Department, and the plurality of Asian American students are Chinese. Despite the “model minority” stereotype of Asian American students achieving high levels of academic success, Schell pointed to research indicating that Chinese diaspora students experience significant challenges navigating U.S. colleges, including xenophobia and linguistic barriers.

“Even if the students [in my research] are academically successful, many of them would say that they're not thriving yet,” she said. “They're struggling to build domestic friendships or they don't have an adult who’s in their corner, who sees and knows them. They might be moving through, getting great grades, but they're not really able to engage with the experience.”

What culturally mismatched advising looks like

Academic advisors are in a unique position to support students’ experiences, Schell said, but her research identified potential cultural mismatches on several fronts that could impact the advising relationship. For example, in addition to the role of “passion” in motivation, she found differences in the expectations of student voice: Advisors tended to expect students to lead advising conversations, which was daunting for some of the students Schell studied.

Another mismatch involved expectations of exploration, which Schell attributed partly to different cultural perceptions of students during this period of “emerging adulthood.” In a Chinese cultural context, 18- to 24-year-olds are often viewed (and see themselves) as adults whose undergraduate experience is predominantly intended for career preparation. But advisors, and U.S. higher education more broadly, tends to encourage students to use these years to explore a range of paths.

Schell also observed differences in the need for socioemotional support students sought from their advisors. For instance, in response to a question asking students to rank forms of support — including academic, career, social/cultural, and emotional — from most to least important, 73 percent of Chinese international students listed emotional or social/cultural support among their top two, compared with 53 percent of Chinese American and 36 percent of their European American peers.

Although advisors who shared a racial or ethnic background with students sometimes found it easier to connect to their Chinese diaspora students’ experiences, Schell found that some advisors across racial groups were able to successfully provide culturally responsive advising. In fact, some Chinese international interviewees expressed a preference for having an advisor from a different racial or ethnic background, as they came to study in the United States for exposure to different cultural perspectives.

Cultural mismatches in advising had consequences, Schell found. Some students reported disengaging from their advising relationships, turning instead to other sources such as professors or peers, who aren’t necessarily familiar with a wide range of campus resources — or, more concerningly, to no one at all. In interviews and journal entries, many indicated lower expectations of support from their advisors and lower satisfaction with their broader experience of support at their university.

Making knowledge gaps visible

Schell’s research surfaced advising behaviors that could address mismatched norms and expectations, meeting students where they are and taking it from there.

Advisors could take a few minutes to have an expectation-setting conversation at the beginning of the advising relationship, she said, to iron out questions that both sides have: Students might be unclear about an advisor’s role or the types of questions they can ask, or an advisor may not realize their student isn’t used to having a choice of courses and might not know how to navigate a course catalog.

“It’s all about that first conversation,” said Schell, “making potential knowledge gaps visible.”

One simple approach, she said, was for advisors to open with a menu of options for discussion, so that a student who isn’t clear about the type of questions the advisor can address can still shape the direction of the conversation. “It’s just a small tweak: Instead of ‘What do you want to talk about today,’ saying ‘Here are some of the things we could talk about.’ ”

Some students in Schell’s research who experienced culturally matched advising reported greater connections to campus resources and programs, such as one Chinese American student who credited his advisor with helping him access an opportunity to conduct medical research as a first-year undergrad. Recognizing that advisors might not be able to provide guidance on all of the extracurricular programs available at their institution, Schell said that communicating the boundaries of their advising role clearly and being prepared to refer students to people who can offer support in other areas was a more manageable way to ensure more holistic advising.

While her research focused on Chinese American and international students, these advising strategies apply broadly, Schell said.

“There’s a lot of conversation in higher ed, understandably, around issues with belonging for many different student groups, including international and first-generation students,” said Schell. “Institutions are investing a lot of money in new programs to address this, but here’s a powerful resource we already have that we can maximize to better support all of our students.”

Emily Schell’s research was supported by a research grant from NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising.

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What’s next for universities after the ban on race-based affirmative action?

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 21:00:45 +0000

What’s next for universities after the ban on race-based affirmative action?

Olivia Peterkin Wed, 01/17/2024 - 13:00

GSE Professor Mitchell Stevens (right, front facing) meets with students in a breakout session. (Photo: Kurt Hickman)

Campus Life | Education Policy | Higher Education

A new �� course explores ideas that could shape the future of college admissions policies after the Supreme Court’s decision.

January 22, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

Many universities were left with questions after the U.S. Supreme Court upended nearly 60 years of precedent by overturning affirmative action last summer.

Rather than wait for answers, �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) Professor Mitchell Stevens and �� Law School (SLS) Professor Ralph Richard Banks created a new policy practicum, entitled What's Next? After Students for Fair Admissions, that seeks to provide guidance.

The course — which is made up of students from the GSE, SLS, Distinguished Careers Institute (DCI), and other graduate and undergraduate programs — reconsiders how America's leading educational institutions approach selective college admissions, and the allocation of resources tied to prestigious universities, to improve higher education.

“The Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions created a lot of ambiguity, and it’s in those moments of confusion that new policies and new ideas have a fighting chance at becoming part of the institutional future,” Stevens said. “This policy lab is about thinking about how institutions like �� can respond to the new environment created by the decision.”

Now in its second quarter after starting in the fall, the course is co-taught by Hoang Pham and Dan Sutton, two scholars with the �� Center for Racial Justice.

The class is led by (from left) Dan Sutton, Mitchell Stevens, Ralph "Rick" Banks, and Hoang Pham. (Photo: Kurt Hickman)

Universities and the academic social contract

One objective of the course, Stevens said, is to re-examine the “academic social contract,” a term developed by Stevens and GSE Professor Emily Levine to frame the relationship between universities and the public.

“The academic social contract is this idea that universities are given financial subsidies, autonomy and a good measure of prestige, in exchange for their contributions to society,” Stevens said. “We produce knowledge that’s useful to society, we educate, we provide educational capital, and we enable social mobility.”

Through the course, he and Banks seek to open a conversation about new opportunities for universities to make civic contributions, “beyond just tinkering with how we admit very small numbers of undergraduate applicants, which is where so much of the energy is focused.”

One student enrolled in the course, Jim Cowie, is a fellow at ��’s Distinguished Careers Institute, a yearlong on-campus program for mid-career professionals. Cowie, who was a lieutenant in the Navy before working in law for 30 years, said he enrolled in the course for the chance to help shape the future of how selective universities benefit society.

“I felt that the Supreme Court decision, together with some other political currents that were moving around the country, presented schools like �� with a real opportunity to rethink how to go about making a meaningful contribution to the nation and to the world,” said Cowie, who earned a law degree from SLS in 1993.

Students and faculty gather in a conference room during a lab session. (Photo: Kurt Hickman)

The future of college admissions, shaped by students

In the course, students work on projects and develop research and guidance documents that �� and other universities can use as a roadmap to promote learning and advance racial justice after Students for Fair Admissions. Some of the issues they're tackling include new ways for universities to contribute to their communities and regions; how to make the educational riches of places like �� available to wider populations; and how the academic intellectual capital might be deployed to solve wicked social problems — how to pay for higher education without debt, for example.

“We’re living in a tremendous space of ambiguity right now,” said Carolina Nazario, a �� senior studying sociology who is the Haas Center for Public Service Community Engaged Learning Coordinator for the policy lab. “We don’t know what the limitations are, what is and isn’t going to be shut down, what’s going to be possible. But it’s exciting because that uncertainty gives us the opportunity to impact tremendous change.”

Student projects are focused in one of four areas: changing how admissions offices recruit, sort, and select students; distributing educational resources more equitably; creating new forms of educational assets; and building entirely new pathways, outside of elite higher education, to enable people to attain positions of prominence across a broad gamut of social institutions.

During lab sessions, students and faculty gather in a law school conference room to work on projects and come up with ideas. Among them so far are proposals to use a portion of endowments to support educational partnerships with neighboring schools and community colleges; adding substantial public service as a requirement of admission for graduation; and making universities models of opportunity employment — and allowing college employees access to educational opportunities.

GSE PhD Student Hannah D'Apice (left) shares her ideas with the class. (Photo: Kurt Hickman)

GSE doctoral student Hannah D’Apice, whose research centers on systems of inequality in education, says the course has helped her contribute to policy development while strengthening her ongoing research.

“I joined the policy lab because ‘what happens next?’ is a really urgent question, and �� is in a position to be able to shape directions moving forward by putting out guidance documents,” she said. ““This policy practicum gives us a chance to consider new directions that universities can take in thinking more deeply about equity and inclusion for historically marginalized groups.”

The weekly two-hour policy lab features speakers including Michael J. Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, a historically Black college in Dallas that was founded in 1872, and Scott Palmer, managing partner and cofounder of EducationCounsel, a consulting firm focused on the U.S. education system.

In his class discussion Sorrell spoke about the need for bold reform in higher education, and shared about his experience of disbanding his college’s football program and turning the field into a working farm as part of a jobs program.

Palmer touched on his experience with policy reform efforts under the Clinton administration and the U.S. Department of Education, and how the evolving legal landscape has opened the door for a new range of ideas to reshape higher education.

“If you have ideas that are well articulated and persuasive and logical and can capture imagination, they may prevail over time,” Banks told students during a class discussion. “Who knows – maybe somebody sitting around this table will come up with some idea that, while it may not prevail with this Supreme Court, we’ll be talking about in 20 or 50 years because society has embraced it.”

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Mitchell L. Stevens , Ralph Banks

�� GSE and the Aspen Institute mark the end of a seven-year partnership

Olivia Peterkin — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 16:34:35 +0000

�� GSE and the Aspen Institute mark the end of a seven-year partnership

Olivia Peterkin Thu, 08/03/2023 - 09:34

The eighth cohort of Aspen Rising Presidents fellows will be the last to meet on ��'s campus (Photo: Keith Uyeda)

Faculty and Programs | Higher Education | School Leadership

Since 2016, the Rising Presidents Fellowship has brought hundreds of community college leaders to ��’s campus.

August 3, 2023

By Olivia Peterkin

It seems that the old adage rings true — all good things must come to an end.

In this case, what’s ending is a seven-year partnership between �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and the Aspen Institute’s Rising Presidents Fellowship, which closed out this summer after the eighth cohort of future community college presidents departed campus on July 27.

Launched in 2016, the year-long fellowship brings community college leaders to ��’s campus for four days in the summer for sessions that equip fellows with the data analysis, community building, and leadership skills to become changemakers seated at the helm of America’s two-year post-secondary institutions.

“This partnership began as a way to create a transformative program for prospective community college presidents, addressing the need for confident and capable leaders who can produce measurable student success,” said Anne E. Palmer, executive director of the �� Educational Leadership Initiative. “Now that the fellowship’s curriculum has been created, iterated, and reformed, the program may continue to thrive without ��.”

Josh Wyner, founder and executive director of the College Excellence Program at the Aspen Institute, said the partnership with �� had been particularly appealing because of the deep, pertinent experience of the faculty – particularly GSE Professor Eric Bettinger and Adjunct Professor Thomas Ehrlich, as well as Graduate School of Business Professor Baba Shiv, who played integral roles in teaching content related to leadership and data analysis.

“They both have a wealth of expertise that’s relevant to the program,” Wyner said. “Tom himself was a president in the four-year college space and brought in a lot of knowledge about teaching and learning, while Eric brought in the higher education research piece — he’s truly a national leader in the use of data to advance educational outcomes.”

Russell Lowery-Hart was a fellow in the program's first cohort. (Photo: Keith Uyeda)

Making leaders that last

Russell Lowery-Hart, who was a fellow in the Rising Presidents Fellowship’s first cohort, and returned this year as a mentor, said that participating in the program was pivotal to his career success.

“When I started here, my presidency was at risk, and now I’m coming in as a mentor whose college just won the Aspen prize,” he said. “Coming here to �� I’m reminded of where I came from — including all of the learning, pain, fear, and uncertainty — and how I was able to act on the things that I learned here.”

Lowery-Hart is the first Rising Presidents Fellow to win the Aspen Prize for Community College Excel, an annual award given to U.S. community colleges. Over the last seven years the program has graduated more than 300 fellows, some of whom now lead 9% of community colleges in the United States, according to Palmer.

“In that first cohort we met at �� twice and I left with knowledge and understanding that showed me where I was failing in my presidency,” said Lowery-Hart who was also recently announced as the new chancellor of the Austin Community College District after serving as president of Amarillo College for nearly a decade.

“The work that Russell’s done to change the culture of Amarillo College is amazing,” said Maria Harper-Marinick, a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute and Lowery-Hart’s former mentor in the program. “Building a culture of caring within an educational setting is not something everyone gets to accomplish but he stayed focused on that.”

In one of the program’s final on-campus sessions last month, Bettinger encouraged fellows to lead by tapping into both data and people resources as they go on to lead at educational institutions.

“As the president of a school, you have the opportunity to see things from a panoramic view, but you’ve got to rely on others to help inform your decisions,” he said. “That requires that you be curious, inquisitive, and thoughtful.”

While the formal partnership between the GSE and Aspen has ended, Wyner and Palmer said that the relationships will continue into the future.

“This has been a meaningful partnership for ��, and we’re so grateful to have supported these education leaders in their journey,” Palmer said.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Thomas Ehrlich , Eric Bettinger

After the Supreme Court rulings, what’s next for affirmative action?

Carrie Spector — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 18:20:26 +0000

After the Supreme Court rulings, what’s next for affirmative action?

Carrie Spector Fri, 06/09/2023 - 11:20

Students rallied outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments for two cases that could decide the future of affirmative action in college admissions. (Photo: Associated Press)

Diversity and Identity | Higher Education | Race and Equity

�� professors Anthony Lising Antonio and Eujin Park explore what’s at stake in challenges to the consideration of race in college admissions.

June 12, 2023

By Carrie Spector

Sometime in the next few weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on two cases challenging affirmative action in college admissions. With its conservative majority, the court is widely expected to ban colleges and universities nationwide from considering race as one factor in reviewing and admitting applicants.

One of the cases argues that Harvard University violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars institutions that receive federal funding from discriminating based on race. The other alleges that the University of North Carolina violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which bars racial discrimination by government entities. The plaintiff in both cases is an organization called Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), created by the conservative legal strategist Edward Blum, who has been campaigning against affirmative action for decades.

Given the anticipated rulings putting an end to the practice, how can colleges and universities work to build a diverse student population? Could a ban on race-conscious admissions have a chilling effect on other efforts to support diversity on campus?

Anthony Lising Antonio is an associate professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) whose research focuses on equity issues in American higher education; his work has been cited in amicus briefs submitted to the Supreme Court for a number of affirmative action cases over the past two decades. Eujin Park is an assistant professor at the GSE whose research examines how Asian Americans negotiate with race in educational institutions.

Here, they talk about what’s at stake for students and universities, and why race in particular has become a legal target in campaigns to promote “fairness” in college admissions.

Nine states, including California, already ban affirmative action at public universities, and institutions in these states have tried various alternatives to promote racial diversity. What effects have we seen?

GSE Associate Professor Anthony Lising Antonio

Anthony Lising Antonio: For Black, Latinx, and Native American students, there were initial precipitous drops in both applications and acceptances in these states. We’ve seen some rebound in Texas and California in numbers for the Latinx populations, but that appears largely due to their growth in those states. As representation grows in the general population, you’d expect it to grow among college applicants and admissions, which seems to be happening. But the racial gaps remain. Underrepresentation of Black, Latinx, and Native American students continues to be a serious problem at universities across the nation.

In terms of alternative policies, we’ve seen expanded recruitment efforts, class-based affirmative action (giving preferences to low-income applicants), and “top X percent” plans that grant admission based on class rank in high school. But research shows that none provide the same kind of equitable access that race-based affirmative action provides.

GSE Assistant Professor Eujin Park

Do you expect a ban on race-conscious admissions could affect other university programs supporting diversity?

Eujin Park: I wouldn’t be surprised if the uncertainty and concern about being able to work to increase diversity and inclusion on campus has a dampening effect. Students and families will be at the mercy of individual institutions’ commitments, and I think we’re going to see very disparate experiences from one institution to the next.

Antonio: Whether or not other programs directly come under fire, the threat of litigation can certainly change institutional behavior. In the 1990s, when challenges to affirmative action were making their way through courts around the country, scholarships and programs that used to be labeled “minority” became “multicultural.” Universities were afraid that any programs targeted to benefit racial minorities were invitations to get sued.

But we’re at a point now where diversity is part of the set of ideas around which we understand as good university practice. If you’re a college or university with some prestige, or just aiming to up your status, you can’t disavow valuing difference. Bold institutions will talk about race in all areas except admissions. The more litigious-averse could wipe race out of everything they say but still talk about diversity. Might the exclusion of the term “race” throughout higher education water down or curb racial equity initiatives? It already has.

Colleges take so many aspects of an applicant’s life and identity into consideration during the admissions process. Why is only race being challenged at this level?

Antonio: I would have to say it’s part of our country’s history of white supremacy and a long backlash to the civil rights movement. The explicit effort to address societal racism, especially against African Americans, was flipped a long time ago to focus on white citizens’ rights being infringed upon as a form of “reverse racism.”

In higher education, [the 1978 Supreme Court case] Regents of the University of California v. Bakke crystallized this flipped legal perspective and zeroed in on race in college admissions. The court surfaced the idea of levels of scrutiny in enacting policies that target groups of people, with the strictest level of scrutiny applying to policies that focus on race. Other preferences may be challenged, but their legality – under lower levels of scrutiny – can be more easily defended.

Park: Another reason that legal challenges focus so much on race-based affirmative action is that people don’t understand what it actually looks like in college admissions. We’re not talking about quotas, or giving applicants a points bump if they’re of a certain racial background. Past Supreme Court cases have already banned those measures. Now we’re just talking about holistic review – considering race as one factor of many, including geography and grades. Because of the lack of clarity around what affirmative action means, it becomes this nebulous threat to what people might consider fair or equal opportunity, which is easy to manipulate.

Historically, legal challenges to affirmative action have had white plaintiffs, but these two cases were filed on behalf of Asian Americans. Why is that significant?

Park: There are recordings of [SFFA founder] Edward Blum saying that he was looking for Asian American plaintiffs, so it was clearly intentional. The “model minority” trope supports the story we tell about ourselves as a nation that if you just work hard enough, you can move up the social ladder. There’s this idea that our educational system is an egalitarian one based on merit, with Asian Americans held up as proof that the system works.

That narrative has always been weaponized to delegitimize critiques of the U.S. as a white supremacist and anti-Black society. We see that pattern holding in these legal cases, with SFFA arguing that these Asian American students worked hard for these spots at Harvard and UNC, but they’re not getting them because of affirmative action. The plaintiff is using the model minority stereotype to say this is unfair, it’s not American, it goes against our values of equal opportunity and hard work and fair play. It’s a strategy that allows opponents of affirmative action not only to evade the critique of racism, since Asian Americans are also people of color, but also to draw on racial stereotypes for their arguments.

I think it’s important to note that the vast majority of Asian Americans do support affirmative action. There’s a lot of organizing in the Asian American community to support affirmative action, and it far outweighs the number of activists on the other side.

In 2003, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in the majority opinion for Grutter v. Bollinger that “25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” What would you say about that idea that we might achieve this goal in higher education?

Antonio: Communities now are more segregated than they were in the 1970s. Since we started integrating schools after Brown v. Board of Education, we’ve had white flight to the suburbs and continued socioeconomic segregation. That’s the groundwork for kids who end up applying to college. Some racial gaps have narrowed, but we’re a more segregated and economically stratified society than we were decades ago.

Park: The effort toward racial equity has to address centuries of disenfranchisement. The time Justice O’Connor imagined isn’t going to come that quickly, and it’s not going to come passively. And with these attacks on affirmative action, attacks on critical race theory, attacks on the books that are allowed in libraries – for those of us who care about equity in education, we’re being forced to carry the fight on the opposition’s terms. We’re being boxed into a corner, fighting for scraps. I think this is a time for us to reimagine the struggle and think about what comes next, beyond getting affirmative action back.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: anthony lising antonio , Eujin Park

Academic freedom’s origin story

Carrie Spector — Sat, 06 May 2023 01:02:19 +0000

Academic freedom’s origin story

Carrie Spector Fri, 05/05/2023 - 18:02

The historical origins and the �� ties of how academic freedom came to be established in the United States was the topic of a lecture by Emily J. Levine. (Photo: Sunny Scott)

Higher Education | Teaching

The history of academic freedom can help us understand the complexities of debate on college campuses today, says GSE professor Emily J. Levine.

May 1, 2023

By Melissa De Witte

While academic freedom – the principle that scholars, researchers, and educators can engage in teaching and scholarship without the fear of censorship or retribution – is foundational to American higher education today, it is a relatively recent development.

“The idea of academic freedom is a modern invention,” said �� education scholar Emily J. Levine, author of Allies and Rivals: German-American Exchange and the Rise of the Modern Research University (The University of Chicago Press, 2021), at a lecture she recently delivered about how academic freedom came to be established at American universities.

Examining its early history – which can be traced to a scandal that erupted at �� University at the turn of the last century – can help inform our present understanding of what academic freedom is for and how it might be reinvigorated for our own time and place, Levine said.

“The story of how, when, why, and by whom academic freedom was created exposes the fault lines of current debates, the consequences of decisions made, and opens new and perhaps more robust formulations for the future,” Levine said during her April 25 talk titled “How a �� Speech Scandal Led to the Invention of Academic Freedom: The Case of Edward A. Ross.” The event was hosted by the �� Historical Society.

The now notorious Ross Affair

Levine opened her talk by describing the events that eventually lead to the founding of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a national organization that has played a significant role in defining and defending academic freedom in American higher education.

The turmoil began in 1896 at �� when Edward A. Ross, a young professor of economics, caught the ire of the university’s administrators, and even Jane �� herself, after his vocal criticisms of the railroad industry from which the ��s made their money.

Between 1896 and 1900, Ross advocated for various populist policies. He authored political pamphlets, including one titled Honest Dollars that was in support of the free silver movement, which argued for a reform of the country’s monetary supply to be backed by silver instead of gold. Silver was seen as a currency for ordinary, working-class people; gold was for monopolists and capitalists – like the ��s, who had amassed a large fortune in the construction of the railroad across the American West. (A rumor had also circulated that Ross had said to his students “a railroad deal is a railroad steal,” a claim he later denied.)

Jane �� urged then-president David Starr Jordan to fire the incendiary professor but Jordan resisted.

Things took a turn in 1900 when Ross delivered anti-Asian remarks at a meeting of the United Labor Organization where he called for the expulsion of Japanese immigrants from the United States and �� finally had enough of Ross’ outspokenness.

Ross’ opinions caused an uproar – not for being xenophobic and racist – but for being political in nature. �� believed that a university professor should not publicly express their partisan preferences for fear it could sully the reputation of the institution.

After much quarreling between Ross, ��, and Jordan, Ross eventually resigned, along with seven other professors in protest (representing about 10 percent of the �� faculty, Levine pointed out).

The dispute made newspaper headlines, and it also established new ways to think about the relationship between freedom of expression and scholarship.

“Ross’ departure was no longer a mere event,” Levine explained. “It rose to become an ‘affair’ in the eyes of the nation and the academy, and as a result, catalyzed the transformation of academic freedom from a haphazard custom to a professional ideal.”

Academic freedom as a modern invention

At the time, it was not unusual for universities to dismiss faculty whose views were not aligned with the interests of the institution. Academic freedom was not formalized in any professional capacity, said Levine who went on to describe how academic freedom became a principle underpinning the intellectual community at American colleges and universities today.

One of the �� professors who resigned was the philosopher Arthur Lovejoy (who went on to join the faculty at John Hopkins University). Lovejoy, along with another philosopher, John Dewey (then of Columbia University), established a new professional association – the AAUP.

Until the AAUP’s founding, there were no legal guarantees or economic security beyond what was stipulated in a professor’s contract with their institution, which was renewed annually.

The group’s first publication was the 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure. Among several of the AAUP’s accomplishments were the safeguarding of academic inquiry through the security of tenure, the idea of a shared governance structure at a university, and the emphasis of higher education’s mission to serve the common good through knowledge production and dissemination – values that are now embedded in the academy.

As Debra Satz, a philosopher and the Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, said in her opening remarks, “The AAUP is an incredibly important bulwark for academic freedom’s defense.” In previous years, Satz has served as the president of the organization’s �� chapter.

Opportunities for academic freedom

While the AAUP’s efforts have led to significant contributions to protecting the rights of academic freedom in the United States, there are some contradictions and shortcomings associated with its particular formulation of this ideal that have persisted a century later, Levine said.

“Developing a new understanding of students’ freedom to learn feels to me like the most pressing pedagogical and instructional challenge today. How do we create the preconditions for inclusive and robust discourse in the classroom?”

Emily J. Levine

Associate Professor, �� Graduate School of Education

For example, by concentrating on protecting the rights of faculty through tenure, the AAUP created “a circular logic,” said Levine: “Tenure was needed for academic freedom and academic freedom required tenure. The circle was predicated on the idea of a common good that was never described.”

In addition, the AAUP efforts largely ignored the rights of students, Levine pointed out.

Unlike a version of academic freedom modeled by German universities that guaranteed rights for both instructor and pupil, the AAUP focused solely on protecting the rights of faculty. Levine said there is an opportunity to expand what academic freedom could look like for students as well.

“Developing a new understanding of students’ freedom to learn feels to me like the most pressing pedagogical and instructional challenge today,” Levine said, asking further: “How do we create the preconditions for inclusive and robust discourse in the classroom?”

Another consequential outcome was how the AAUP viewed the relationship between scholars and their responsibilities to serving the public. But there were gaps here as well: The AAUP offered no specific definitions of what academic responsibility should look like. Rather, the founders saw it as self-imposed and enforced by the public opinion of the profession.

“But what is academic responsibility? And how do we determine the public opinion of the profession?” Levine asked.

These are just some of the questions that have lingered in the legacy of the AAUP’s early efforts, and which can be traced in disputes throughout the 20th century and into today.

“With every cycle of academic freedom cases that would follow from the McCarthy era of the 1950s to the Vietnam protests of the 1960s and early ’70s, the law school debates about critical race theory in the ’80s, the Yale culture wars of the ’90s up to our current moment, we are reminded of the consequences of the ambiguity of these statements and the stakes of not clarifying,” Levine said.

Levine is serving on the Ad Hoc Committee on University Speech that will be looking at the form and structure of academic freedom at ��.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Emily Levine

From pipelines to pathways: Researchers call for a new approach to studying academic progress

Carrie Spector — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 21:14:35 +0000

From pipelines to pathways: Researchers call for a new approach to studying academic progress

Carrie Spector Tue, 04/25/2023 - 14:14

Professors from nine universities, including ��, are calling for an updated approach to studying academic progress — one that reflects how students actually make their way through college. (Photo: Linda A. Cicero)

Curriculum and Instruction | Education Policy | Higher Education

An updated conceptual model and new computational tools can yield vital information for students and educators, says GSE Professor Mitchell Stevens.

April 27, 2023

By Carrie Spector

In the study of higher education, universities have long been viewed as pipelines, preparing students for productive careers in specific fields. But when it comes to understanding how students actually make their way through college, the “pipeline” imagery fails to capture the twists and turns real people often take along the way.

A group of scholars from universities nationwide are calling for a new model for the study of academic progress: an updated approach that accounts for the complexity of university curriculums and students’ journeys through them, providing critical information for researchers, educators, and students alike.

In a paper published in the journal Science on April 28, professors from nine universities — including ��, Cornell, Columbia, Texas A&M, and the University of Pennsylvania — urge researchers to replace the “pipeline” metaphor with a focus on “pathways,” a shift they say would both help and compel administrators to update established curriculums based on students’ evolving preferences.

“In science, metaphors guide our understanding of a problem — they shape our approach to observing the world and the way we communicate our findings,” said Mitchell Stevens, a professor at �� Graduate School of Education and one of the paper’s lead authors. “The pipeline metaphor has been useful for many years, but it has come to limit our understanding of how academic progress unfolds.”

By shifting to a “pathways” model, he said — with computational tools and techniques that have only recently become available – researchers can transform insights from complex data on academic progress into effective curriculums and support.

�� GSE Professor Mitchell Stevens

Rethinking an outdated model

The pipeline metaphor is limiting for several reasons, the authors say. For one, it suggests highly structured, sequenced curriculums aimed at developing skills in particular domains. But many universities encourage students to explore and combine different areas of study, and (as at ��) to hold off on declaring a major until midway through their undergraduate experience.

“The pipeline imagery implies that when people enter higher education, they know exactly where they’re trying to go,” said Stevens. “But universities are tasked with providing a full range of options. Students might enter thinking they’re ideally suited for one destination and then learn they’re actually better suited for another.”

The pipeline metaphor treats that kind of departure from the original destination as a “leak,” or a loss, rather than an entry onto another route to graduation.

What’s more, a pipeline metaphor suggests a lack of agency on students’ part, the authors say. “It assumes that students are inert substances being propelled through a structure by external forces,” Stevens said. “But of course, people are actively making decisions about their own education all along.”

A pathways model puts both student agency and the structure of the curriculum at the center, recognizing the interplay between them. It traces the various responses students have to certain academic offerings, identifying “fateful” points in students’ academic progress where choosing a particular major is no longer feasible.

This could help pave the way for interventions that promote equity, the authors write. Many factors go into how students decide on courses and majors, and research into this consideration process could reveal opportunities to intervene — to increase students’ awareness of their options and the possible consequences of their choices.

“Students enter the university with varying amounts of information and different presumptions about how much agency they have over their own education,” Stevens said. “If we can level the playing field of information about pathways and choices, we might mitigate inequalities in college knowledge that people bring with them to school.”

Applying new analytical techniques

In conjunction with a new conceptual model, recent developments in computational science make it possible to analyze more complex data on academic progress, the authors write.

Traditionally, researchers might use statistical techniques to chart enrollment patterns, observing cohorts of students episodically — an approach that produces limited insight into how they consider, choose, and sequence each of their course selections, Stevens said. “You’d default to inference about what happens in between those coarse points of data collection, which is very different from observing the process.”

Newer, more sophisticated computational techniques can better capture the micro-decisions students make and the effects of their choices. Advances in computational modeling can produce visualizations that reveal, for example, varying pathways into particular majors, critical forks on those paths, and curricular overlaps that could inform changes in course offerings and requirements. Machine learning techniques enable the ability to forecast major declarations based on courses selected early in the college career.

To make the application of pathways science more accessible, the authors call for building a shared analytical framework and infrastructure, including a system for standardizing data across institutions, available as open-source analytic tools.

Stevens is co-director of the �� Pathways Lab, which offers an ongoing virtual seminar series for researchers that explores the study of academic progress.

The paper’s other authors are René F. Kizilcec from Cornell University; Rachel B. Baker from the University of Pennsylvania; Elizabeth Bruch from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; Kalena E. Cortes from Texas A&M University; Laura T. Hamilton from the University of California at Merced; David Nathan Lang from Western Governors University; Zachary A. Pardos from the University of California at Berkeley; and Marissa E. Thompson from Columbia University. Baker, Kizilcec, Lang and Thompson are recent �� PhDs.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Mitchell L. Stevens

Power forward

Carrie Spector — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 19:18:37 +0000

Power forward

Carrie Spector Tue, 07/19/2022 - 12:18

Title IX, enacted in 1972, opened doors for young women to participate in sports. (Image: MaMboh / Shutterstock)

Education Policy | Higher Education | K-12

Tara VanDerveer, head coach of the �� women’s basketball team, talks about the state of women’s sports on the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

July 19, 2022

It’s been 50 years since the U.S. Congress passed the landmark legislation known as Title IX, which prohibits any federally funded educational program or activity from discrimination based on sex. The legislation opened doors for female participation in K-12 and college sports – but for all the opportunities it created, stark disparities persist.

On this episode of School’s In, Tara VanDerveer, longtime head coach of the �� women’s basketball team, joins Graduate School of Education Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope to talk about the impact of Title IX on women’s sports. She also shares some of her own experience as an athlete – and a piano student – and the strategies she uses as a coach to keep players motivated.

VanDerveer, the all-time winningest coach in women’s college basketball history, has brought the �� team to three national championships since she joined as coach in 1985. She also led the U.S. women’s basketball team to gold in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Growing up before the passage of Title IX, VanDerveer loved sports, but her options to play were curtailed. “In my ninth-grade yearbook, the boys’ basketball coach, who was also the gym teacher, wrote: To the best basketball player in the ninth grade,” she says. “But I didn’t get to play on a team.”

Title IX was enacted in 1972, gradually increasing opportunities for young women to participate in sports. Still, men continue to get the upper hand in coaching roles and other scenarios, VanDerveer says. “We’re making progress, but we still have a long way to go.”

Case in point: Last spring, during the NCAA college basketball tournaments, controversy erupted when photos contrasting the men’s and women’s weight rooms went viral – a single rack of dumbbells for the women, compared with a cavernous space filled with equipment for the men. Disparities went far beyond the weight room, to the quality of the meals served and even COVID screening tests: Male players were given highly sensitive and reliable PCR tests, while the women received cheaper, less sensitive rapid antigen tests.

“On every single level, there’s a double standard,” says Van Derveer, who points to building a pipeline of female coaches as one step in the way forward. “As a coach, I hire women. We have to train women for these jobs.”

You can listen to School's In on SiriusXM, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and Soundcloud.

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Making space for variations in language

Carrie Spector — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 17:38:08 +0000

Making space for variations in language

Carrie Spector Thu, 06/16/2022 - 10:38

Image: Lemono / Shutterstock

Diversity and Identity | Higher Education | Race and Equity

Anne Charity Hudley talks about how Black students navigate the designated parameters of language in higher education.

June 16, 2022

What makes someone sound like an educated American? Are students evaluated fairly on their sentence structure, vocabulary, and grammar? And what does your email client suggest you say in a reply message?

There’s a distinct default, says Anne Charity Hudley, a professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE). “You're trying to be understood by the widest audience possible,” she says. “And that's led us to have a focus on what we refer to as a standardized idea of English. But who makes the decisions in that process?”

On this episode of School’s In, Charity Hudley joins GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope to discuss linguistic racism and how educators, particularly in higher education, can learn to recognize and include different variations of language in the classroom.

In her new book, Talking College: Making Space for Black Language Practices in Higher Education, Charity Hudley questions the standardization process and considers how Black students navigate the linguistic expectations of college. There are on-the-spot strategic decisions that African Americans make in school and in the workplace, she says, to adapt to this standard. “On the one hand, it's how I pronounce my words, and what grammatical patterns I use,” she says. “But it's also very broad, and social-emotionally centered. We can hear ourselves making these linguistic choices because of how we’ve been socialized.”

In higher education, there are fixed ideas of what is correct and what is an error. The go-to explanation for that is the importance of “communication” or “clarity,” she says. But that doesn’t question: Clear to what audience?

If the consensus is that standardized English allows for greater understanding, Charity Hudley wants educators to consider who might be excluded from the conversation. “Whose voices and whose ideas are being left out — [and] also being actively discouraged?”

Historically, authors of grammar guides and dictionaries haven't even had inclusion as an afterthought in the process, says Charity Hudley. “I don't think we will see the kind of cultural and inclusion changes that we want unless we take on these issues of language.”

You can listen to School's In on SiriusXM, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and Soundcloud.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Anne Harper Charity Hudley

Applying science to the question of how best to support working adults without college degrees

Carrie Spector — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 20:49:59 +0000

Applying science to the question of how best to support working adults without college degrees

Carrie Spector Tue, 01/25/2022 - 12:49

A year-long project convened by the GSE and ��’s Transforming Learning Accelerator culminated in nine recommendations to help address the needs of adults pursuing paid employment and learning opportunities at the same time. (Photo: Getty Images)

Faculty and Programs | Higher Education

A new report, co-authored by �� scholars, advises the National Science Foundation on building an applied science to support “working learners.”

January 19, 2022

By Jonathan Rabinovitz

Flora, a 32-year-old single mother, faces a dilemma shared by many of the millions of American adults without a college degree.

She’s an excellent, highly motivated Tier 1 patient care representative at a health insurance firm. Now, her company is automating the work she does, and all of the Tier 1 positions will be eliminated. Her company will be promoting workers to Tier 2 patient care representative positions, something Flora has long desired. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have the degree the job requires. Flora earned a certificate in customer service at work and has six credits at a community college, but she can’t afford to go back to school.

The case study of Flora, who is a composite of research interviews and analyses of demographic data, helped guide a year-long effort by leading educators, convened by �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and ��’s Transforming Learning Accelerator, to build an applied science to study the needs of “working learners,” a term that refers to adults pursuing paid employment and learning opportunities at the same time. The project culminated in nine recommendations, released Jan. 19, as part of a concise report to the National Science Foundation, which funded the endeavor.

“In a nutshell, we’re calling on government to play a leadership role in investing in an applied science of adult and lifelong learning, with a particular emphasis on understanding the educational needs of working adults who do not have four-year college degrees,” said Mitchell Stevens, a sociologist and professor at the GSE who is a leader of the project. “Most education research looks solely at the first quarter of life. The relationships between school, work and biography across the lifespan are a black box.”

In recent years, growing numbers of government agencies, nonprofits, for-profit companies, philanthropies and education institutions have developed programs to support working learners, spurred by the recognition that many adults without college degrees struggle with the impact of new technologies on work and the accompanying shifts in employment qualifications. But there is not yet a reliable way to evaluate the effectiveness of such programs, or even of determining whether they address the most critical challenges working learners face. The new report suggests that a major research initiative can determine how best to build an education system for working learners and how to invest public and private resources most effectively.

The recommendations include identifying new educational opportunities that may benefit workers throughout their working lives, promoting collaboration between researchers and businesses to better understand how new credentials are affecting hiring decisions; and developing data collection systems that will enable researchers to track transitions between learning and employment experiences as people progress from young adulthood to retirement. The report also recommends that such research be conducted by bringing together different stakeholders regionally.

Universities have a particular role to play as conveners, as employers and as educators and researchers, said �� University President Marc Tessier Lavigne when he spoke at the last of four discussion sessions in July that laid the basis for the new report. More than 180 education leaders from different sectors – government, private and nonprofit organizations, philanthropies and higher education – joined the online gatherings, which were convened with NSF funding by Stevens and the Transforming Learning Accelerator (TLA), a university-wide initiative to develop more equitable and scalable learning solutions. More than 35 �� faculty, staff members and students contributed to the project.

“To be effective, this must be a true cross-sector discussion because any science we develop requires the contributions of all of these stakeholders,” Tessier-Lavigne said at the July 28 meeting. “This is the beginning of a conversation that has the potential to make a difference for working learners for the long term.”

Daniel Schwartz, the I. James Quillen Dean of the Graduate School of Education who leads TLA, added in a recent interview that the report underscores the importance of work underway at ��. “We are creating new scholarship and learning solutions that bridge discoveries in education, neuroscience, humanities, data science, psychology, law and other fields to serve the needs of working learners,” he said. “We need to foster a future where all learners thrive – no matter their cultural backgrounds, zip code or age.”

The summer meetings led ��’s Office of Community Engagement to convene a campus conversation to explore how the university could deepen collaboration to support working learners. Megan Swezey Fogarty, ��’s associate vice president of community engagement and a participant in the July gatherings, explained, “We need to learn from leaders across campus, local community colleges, workforce development agencies and others how we can contribute to improve knowledge and skills not only for our own employees but for others in our region as well.”

�� Digital Education, a unit in the provost’s office, plans to help implement the recommendations of the report by piloting new programs, jointly developed with partners, for working adults. These programs could, in turn, yield new research opportunities in the emerging science of lifelong learning. �� Digital Education was launched last year to advance educational innovations for social impact and strengthen ��’s digital learning infrastructure.

Attention to working learners has grown in recent years as part of a sea change in thinking about national education policy. Since the Higher Education Act of 1965 expanded the GI Bill’s subsidy of college access for WWII veterans to include all citizens, the nation has sought to provide economic mobility by promoting college for all. However well-intended, that policy prescription has come to create its own problems. Key among them is that possession of a college credential has become a fateful divide in American life.

“On one side lie reasonably well-compensated jobs, better health, more stable families and more informed civic participation,” Stevens said. “On the other lie precarious, marginal employment, dangerous debt levels, strained relationships, depression and anger.”

In the hypothetical case study, Flora, the insurance employee whose job is being eliminated, finds herself stuck on the wrong side of that divide. To move ahead, she must consider a dizzying plethora of new educational services from big tech companies and smaller recently established edtech ventures, without data to help her choose a path that would improve her prospects.

“That’s a new frontier for the science of working learners,” said Stevens, noting that researchers will need data if they are to find answers. More and more of that data are proprietary and in the hands of private parties. The new report calls for researchers, government and other stakeholders to create new data infrastructures that can match the systems in place to evaluate K12 and higher education programs.

Like many working learners, Flora may decide to take advantage of online courses. Such offerings are convenient but may not necessarily be suited for the learning needs of older people. The use of digital education to serve working learners is still in relative infancy, and the report calls for identifying which approaches work best for which groups.

“To serve working learners effectively we have to marry their educational needs with our technological and human capacities,” said Matthew Rascoff, ��’s vice provost for digital education, who participated in the NSF-funded project and is one of the leaders in the �� Community of Practice on Working Learners. “Working learners need the scheduling flexibility of asynchronous online learning – but also need to connect with a supportive learning community that encourages growth. Our design challenge is to balance those needs in models that scale.”

“We’re still very much in the discovery phase,” Rascoff said.

Jonathan Rabinovitz is �� Digital Education’s communications director.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Mitchell L. Stevens

Higher Education

In first novel, ������������ scholar explores challenges faced by college presidents

When cultural norms conflict in college advising

What’s next for universities after the ban on race-based affirmative action?

Universities and the academic social contract

The future of college admissions, shaped by students

������������ GSE and the Aspen Institute mark the end of a seven-year partnership

Making leaders that last

After the Supreme Court rulings, what’s next for affirmative action?

Academic freedom’s origin story

From pipelines to pathways: Researchers call for a new approach to studying academic progress

Power forward

Making space for variations in language

Applying science to the question of how best to support working adults without college degrees

In first novel, �� scholar explores challenges faced by college presidents

�� GSE and the Aspen Institute mark the end of a seven-year partnership