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Peer Review, Summer 2003
The Dollars and Sense Behind General Education Reform
By Ann S. Ferren, professor of educational
studies, Radford University, and Ashby Kinch, assistant
professor of English, Christopher Newport University
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Fiscal uncertainty has severely impacted curricular reform
efforts as faculty and administrators endeavor to maintain
the momentum of ongoing change in general education programs
despite decreasing resources--not just in dollars but also
in faculty goodwill. On many campuses, the general education
committee aims to create a more engaging intellectual community
and a more coherent undergraduate program. Individual faculty
members hope to produce more committed students with strong
foundational skills. Administrators work to strengthen the
institution's academic identity. But when resource constraints
dampen the optimism of these varied campus constituencies,
the consequent clash between idealism and realism becomes
a serious obstacle to curricular reform.
Initial enthusiasm for change can make everything seem both
desirable and possible. To start the change process, the committee
may review promising practices on other campuses such as service-learning
and interdisciplinary courses. Sensitive to the need for full
campus support, the committee may also consult research on
institutional change to find relevant process strategies (Gaff
1980; Eckel et al. 1999). Too much attention to curricular
design and approval, however, can leave a campus unprepared
for the practical realities of resource constraints. At what
point in the creative process should the hard questions be
asked?
The collaborative intellectual processes that generate an
idea-effective curriculum are not always the same as those
that produce sustainable, cost-effective change. Faculty generally
play the primary role in designing the goals and structures
of a new curriculum and leave it up to administrators to find
the resources. But in the current fiscal context for higher
education, both faculty and administrators need to be sensitive
to the opportunities for, and costs of, reform. Faculty must
learn to calibrate the resources required to actualize general
education principles, and administrators must not let cost
considerations depress the intellectual vitality of the curriculum.
It takes both perspectives for institutions to optimize their
limited resources--financial, physical, but most importantly,
human--and improve the learning outcomes of students, whose
expectations and experiences ultimately determine the quality
of a general education curriculum.
Making Learning Count
Typically, general education planning sessions are highly
energized as committee members debate how best to enrich the
curriculum, enhance pedagogy, engage faculty, and ignite the
minds of students. The committee will tend to "dream big,"
calling for resource-intensive innovations such as small freshmen
seminars taught only by full-time faculty. To support new
emphases on diversity and global awareness, they may suggest
additional faculty and resources for faculty development.
If the program relies on co-curricular experiences such as
community service programs or residential learning communities,
they may suggest integrated staffing with student affairs.
To ensure the sustainability of the revised program, the committee
may recommend a director with an office, administrative assistant,
and graduate students for advising and assessment. All of
these "good ideas" take resources.
With student learning rather than resource management as its
primary concern, the committee will understandably be reluctant
to jettison promising strategies. To accomplish the goals
in a cost-effective way, a fiscal perspective is necessary
to generate alternative approaches. For example, integrating
the freshman seminar with the standard introductory writing
course could achieve a key curricular goal without additional
faculty resources. Revising the major capstone course to integrate
leadership and civic engagement could extend the general education
objectives without adding courses
When confronted with resource limitations, the committee
must cautiously consider which ideals to sacrifice to ensure
that they do not unintentionally compromise program goals.
They may decide, for example, to trust voluntary involvement
in faculty development or rely on department chairs for oversight
and assessment. But these compromises may lead to insufficient
guidance for the program, resulting in neglect over time.
Indeed, "program drift" may be the primary impetus behind
the call for revision. A general education curriculum in place
for a long time and taught by a variety of faculty with different
assumptions about the underlying principles will show signs
of incoherence to both students and professors.
Any committee charged with revising general education may
want to determine whether fixing what is not working by reenergizing
the conversation about learning will be more resource effective
than starting anew. Almost every program could be strengthened
by raising standards, making connections, and getting more
synergy into the structure and content. If a campus cannot
afford to create new writing-intensive courses, for example,
it can be more intentional about what writing should take
place in which courses, establish common evaluation rubrics,
and tell students--repeatedly and throughout the curriculum--that
they are accountable for writing well in all of their classes.
In short, not everything needs reform and resources; sometimes
realigning efforts and refreshing faculty commitment will
produce the desired general education outcomes.
Reform Realism
As the committee does its work, the administration is optimistic
that a rigorous and attractive general education program will
strengthen admissions, assure parents and legislators of value
for their investment, support student retention, and provide
employers with high-caliber graduates. The president may even
launch the reform effort by enthusiastically saying, "Don't
worry about resources. We will find the money." And in some
cases, tuition dollars captured from competitors or gained
through increased retention could be significant enough to
support the new program. A dynamic academic environment can
also attract gifts and grants to support the facilities or
faculty development deemed essential to the new program.
Few campuses have the courage, however, to fund general
education revisions based only on the hope of future returns.
Consequently, administrators know that to align current resources
with the new goals they must rely initially on reallocation.
As ideas emerge from the committee, the chief academic officer
may be tempted to ask, "What should we stop doing in order
to fund capstone courses and undergraduate research?" But
finding the resources by top-down cutting of underenrolled
classes, eliminating unproductive programs, or taxing all
units would quickly lead to a loss of faculty goodwill and
doom the reform effort. The more effective strategy is to
support the committee as it shows departments how realigning
resources to address essential curricular principles throughout
the four years can strengthen both general education and the
major.
To soften the inevitable clash between ideals and resources,
administrators can help the committee during its deliberations
by encouraging faculty to identify funding needs at the same
time they approve the new curriculum. For example, to guide
reallocation of resources based on clear principles, a final
reform proposal may set realistic standards for class size
(to promote interactive pedagogy) and the percentage of courses
to be taught by full-time faculty (to ensure faculty investment
in the new curriculum). Administrators can also help the committee
identify resources in current curricular offerings that might
be invested for greater learning results by analyzing workload,
program productivity, and student progression data (Ferren
and Slavings 2000). All campuses are challenged to produce
more learning with limited resources in an environment where
general education competes with other priorities. Therefore,
in the end, courses, credits, and structures are not nearly
as important as understanding how changes will benefit students.
Time Is Money
Throughout the reform process, both the committee and the
administration must remain sensitive to the perspectives of
the individual faculty members who will question how the new
program will affect their personal allocation of time. Faculty
resistance to curricular reform is often characterized as
fear of change, but rational economists suggest that "opportunity
cost" is the overriding issue as faculty understandably weigh
the time required to develop a new course or learn new pedagogies
against their current commitments. Despite the committee's
best efforts to create "buy-in" by engaging faculty in the
change process, the centrifugal forces of research, departmental
demands, and family place real limits on the time faculty
are able to reallocate.
Many campuses find "start up" funds for workshops, course
releases, and summer institutes as incentives. Lacking such
resources, some campuses try to strengthen their curriculum
by finding faculty who are already pursuing the desired goals
and connecting these islands of success to support the larger
curricular reform effort. For example, the committee could
identify the faculty in sociology, political science, and
elsewhere who have already refined courses that utilize service-learning
to advance their own curricular priorities. Using the principle
"each one, teach one," the reform committee legitimizes existing
innovations and fosters continuous improvement, thus reducing
the need for radical reform and major investments.
The recent widespread interest in interdisciplinarity provides
an excellent example of how alternative strategies for curricular
implementation can amplify the impact of existing campus resources.
To implement an interdisciplinary program effectively a campus
must consider how broadly and deeply it wants the concept
to reach into the curriculum. How many interdisciplinary courses
should a student take? Will the courses cross institutional
divisions as well as disciplines? Such questions guide a consideration
of both the cost and the impact of change. Interdisciplinary
team-teaching, for example, requires an up-front investment
as faculty need release time to plan courses together and
initial student loads are unlikely to replace the hours lost.
The investment is recouped over time, however, through such
positive effects as pedagogical innovation, cross-disciplinary
research, and a greater sense of community beyond the classroom.
When there are no resources to invest, the committee might
locate faculty already fruitfully engaged in interdisciplinary
teaching and invite them to modify the courses to fit the
general education curriculum. If even that approach appears
to take resources from a department, interdisciplinarity can
still be activated at little cost, though in a far less robust
form, by linking courses and sharing syllabi across departments.
To stimulate the kind of intellectual inventory necessary
to discover where resources for reform exist, the committee
and the administration need to foster active, reflective communication
among faculty. Although expensive in terms of time, substantial
and intellectually stimulating conversation is the least expensive
stimulus for change and an essential foundation for a vital
curriculum. Faculty instinctively respond to intellectual
camaraderie; indeed, they complain bitterly when a deficit
of intellectual exchange with faculty peers diminishes their
sense of engagement with a broader academic community. Constant
campus conversations about student learning can result in
reformed pedagogical practices and more intentional curricula
without changing requirements, lowering class sizes, or inventing
new courses.
During bleak fiscal times, faculty must fight off malaise
and remind themselves that they still control the quality
of classroom engagement. Good teachers are constantly engaged
in pedagogical self-reflection, refining assignment sequences,
and rethinking the fundamental practices of their teaching.
A good administrator fosters that endemic process by encouraging
and connecting faculty and thus optimizing the effect of good
teaching by multiplying it across the curriculum to create
a shared sense of purpose.
What Money Can't Buy
Even if a campus had all the resources it needed to create
its ideal program, student resistance would still present
an imposing obstacle. Students tend to view general education
programs as an incoherent set of required courses of little
relevance to their career interests. They readily explain
that they do not work as hard in classes they don't like,
and they develop resentment if they get lower grades in courses
that they feel do not play to their strengths. The psychological
cost of student resistance also takes a toll on faculty who
feel they are dragging along students whose only goal is "to
get it out of the way." The real dollar cost to the institution
is apparent when students repeat a failed course or take their
tuition dollars to the local community college to fulfill
a dreaded requirement.
Even more alarming is the data that full-time students expect
to spend little more than twenty hours a week on academics--including
class and study time. The national report Greater Expectations:
A New Vision for Learning as Nation Goes to College (AAC&U
2002) describes the multiple challenges of limited time on
task, underprepared students, decreased funding, and the misalignment
of high school exit requirements and college expectations.
As campuses make learning-centered reforms a priority, general
education programs focus not just on significant content and
important academic skills but also on how to help students
develop a love of lifelong learning and the sense of social
responsibility essential to participate effectively in a complex
world. Reform efforts must address the gap between ideal outcomes
of a general education program and the reality of the needs
and behaviors of the students.
What students ask for in general education--passion, enthusiasm,
and interest on the part of faculty--does not cost money.
Even though students focus primarily on their job prospects
and often claim internships are more important than art history,
they do concede that the breadth of the general education
program, when taught well, is good for them. But fostering
intentional learning requires intentional pedagogy. Faculty
who teach in general education must constantly renew for themselves
the vital principles that animate their teaching in the context
of the curriculum. Faculty must conduct with their students
the same patient and painstaking discussion they have with
other faculty to establish shared principles, communicate
course design, and develop interdisciplinary connections with
other courses rather than teach only through the lens of their
own discipline. Students also need to understand their own
role in constructing a compelling whole out of their education,
rather than drifting through a fragmented experience. In this
way, the most important resources a campus has--student time
and energy--are used well.
Resolving the Tension
Too often, as a campus struggles with two co-existing issues--insufficient
resources and lack of clarity in how best to accomplish a
fundamental mission--discussions of finances drown out conversations
about learning. Consequently, a clear-eyed assessment of existing
resources--time, energy, commitment, ideas, and budget--and
a sustained discussion of common goals are necessary precursors
to ensuring that the reform effort will result in an engaged
community and empowered students. Administrators play an essential
but delicate role in helping faculty maintain their ideals,
understand fiscal realities, and test ideas against realistic
resource needs. At the same time, faculty maintain their ownership
of the curriculum through willing investment in the intellectual
and fiscal health of the institution. In the end, curricular
reform is about changing attitudes as much as it is about
changing courses. Although a realistic consideration of resource
limitations is a necessary context for curricular decision-making,
ultimately, the highest cost in curricular reform is the opportunity
an institution misses when it loses track of its ideals. n
References
Association of American Colleges and Universities. 2002. Greater
expectations : A new vision for learning as a nation goes
to college. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges
and Universities.
Eckel, Peter, Madeleine Green, Barbara Hill, and William
Mallon. 1999. Taking charge of change: A primer for colleges
and universities. Washington, DC: American Council on
Education.
Ferren, Ann S. and Rick Slavings. 2000. Investing in
quality: Tools for improving curricular efficiency. Washington,
DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Gaff, Jerry G. 1980. Avoiding the potholes: Strategies
for reforming general education. Educational Record.
50.
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