What Else Can and Should Be Learned about the 4Rs? 

May 2011 Bringing Theory to Practice Newsletter

Conference participants (both students and faculty) were asked to reflect on the question: “What other aspects of the 4Rs should have been discussed at the student conference—or what aspects do you think need be addressed when considering the future of higher education?”

Student Reflections

“In addition to reflection, resiliency, relationships, responsibility and risk I think there is one more “R” that needs to be addressed when considering the future of higher education: Recognition. From one’s self to an organization, recognition provides a vision and direction to the future. In order to better improve, one has to recognize where they are, what they are capable of and what external factors influence their ability to accomplish a task or goal.”

Raymond G. Lord, III, student,
State University of New York-Geneseo

“I think the Four Rs definitely provide a blueprint for responsible decisions and growth but what should have been addressed was how do you recognize as an individual when you are truly utilizing all 4 Rs productively and what could be potential results.”

Carlton McFall, student,
Morehouse College, GA

Faculty Reflections

“At the 2011 AAC&U Annual Meeting, which took place about ten weeks after the BTtoP Student Conference, one of the most anticipated, well-attended, and most discouraging presentations was by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, on the findings presented in their recent book, Academically Adrift. The authors presented a sober and unassailably data-driven picture of higher education, and it wasn’t pretty. Something like 40 percent of students, for example, showed no significant improvement in critical thinking, reasoning, or writing over four years of college.

Another of Arum & Roksa’s points that stood out for me was the terribly high percentage of students—it may have been more than 50 percent—who said they rarely or never discussed, in any way, any aspect of current events with anyone. In other words, the passionate engagement, initiative, and urgency that we saw so clearly among students in the BTtoP fold is not at all typical. If the capacity for reflection and responsibility can vary that much, I wondered what it was that made the BTtoP students different. The AAC&U crowd, mostly deans and provosts flying at high altitude, was passionate about programmatic and institutional assessment and innovation. But there are smaller and equally valuable scales of analysis. What would we find at the level of the individual? Why do some students have full sails, while others merely drift?”

Joshua Fost, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and University Studies, Portland State University

Ask the Director

It has been a steadfast belief of the BTtoP Project that students are often the most untapped resource on college and university campuses in terms of engaging stakeholders to move good (or difficult) work forward, and that their voices are not often enough highlighted as some of the most important in considering strategic next steps at our institutions. Students have extraordinary amounts of energy, boundless creativity, resourcefulness, and potential for innovation (especially in this age of technology), and are often yet less burdened by cynicism than most.

Instead of a column from director Don Harward in this issue, the student conference participants were tasked with asking questions of Don (president emeritus of Bates College) that perhaps they wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to ask. In reflecting on their experiences and what was learned at the student conference, several students posed interesting questions relating to higher education in general.

Student: “During my years in college I have noticed a lack of participation by students in programs or events that are centered on uplifting the community. ‘The Bringing Theory to Practice Project encourages colleges and universities to reassert their core purposes as educational institutions not only to advance learning and discovery, but to advance the potential and well-being of each individual student, and to advance education as a public good that sustains a civic society.’ Thus, what are some things colleges and universities can do to incentivize civic engagement amongst the student body to encourage them not to think about themselves and the trendy outfit they plan on purchasing, but better yet, their neighbor and their lack of a next meal?”

Marcus Wedge, student,
Morehouse College, GA

Harward: Question (1) is primarily a statement—one that resonates positively with the BTtoP Project. I believe that it is inherent in the very meaning of higher education that its ultimate purposes are both of intrinsic value and of extrinsic or external value. The intrinsic value has to do with self-worth and achieving potential development as a whole or realized person. The extrinsic value is often seen as pragmatic—contributing to practical gains both social and personal. While dimensions of higher education’s extrinsic value are currently intensively emphasized (“qualifying for a good job in an increasingly complex world economy”) a necessary element of its practical gains is the pursuit of common, community, goals—among them the serving of social justice; self-determination; and access to the means to achieve both.

These are not naïve or occasionally considered values (although they currently receive less attention from the media), but are essential to defining higher education and learning and make it distinct from skill acquisition, training, indoctrination, and socialization. These are the values—and their expression in interaction with what is beyond the campus “bubble”—that make “higher” education higher in purpose and potential.

Student: “What responsibility do colleges and universities have to eradicate educational inequalities? I’m wondering how these institutions can reconcile the way they perpetuate inequalities through their admissions practices and role as ‘gatekeepers’ to social and cultural capital with a civic and ethical responsibility to ensure everyone has access to a high quality education. What are some other solutions, beyond affirmative action in admissions programs and asking students to perform community service to underprivileged communities, so that colleges and universities can expand access to a meaningful education?”

Kimberly Probolus, student,
Smith College, MA

Harward: I want to believe that there are responses to this important question that would suggest a path of prescribing and supporting remedial or transformative actions, rather than adopt the view of some current critics who present as the only alternative the dismissing or dismantling of higher education as it has developed in this country. The BTtoP Project is one effort to offer and support actions and policy changes–ones that retain and give priority to what we value and alter what should change.

Certainly affirmative action policies and other policies and practices that broaden access to higher education are crucial—as are practices and policies that focus on learning and the full development of those who gain access.

The evidence of larger proportions of overall increasing minority populations attending institutions of higher education is positive, but the data also reveal severe declines in the enrollment of particular populations. Pockets of growth in community college attendance have occurred and measurable increases in access to places the questioner refers to as “gatekeepers of social and economic standing” have increased. Why have such gains of access not made more of a difference? Why hasn’t some increase in access obliged institutions to make fundamental changes?

Projects such as BTtoP are about reforming what “higher” education, learning, and student attainment are all about—away from myopic consideration of the gains from “seat time” in a recognized (i.e., “ranked”) institution to assessing higher education, learning, and development in all of their real dimensions—intellectual, emotive, and civic. Our strategy is to help institutions develop the structures, rewards, and priorities that transform what they do, or have been perceived to do, by encouraging, and incentivizing their focus on sustaining the changes that create the opportunities, deepen the expectations of, and reward the realization of student emancipation as “engaged independent learners—perhaps contrarians.” In doing so, in using the example of your own insights, and the committed efforts of students such as those we gathered in November, we and others work to help all institutions to offer and to champion the full promise of higher education to all who seek access—for those who seek access will want, and their families will see, the profound importance and lasting values of the outcome.