Fall break is a wonderful time for me to catch up on important reading and reconnect to the latest trends in higher education. As a leader for the College of Arts & Letters, I find that time to stay conversant in the larger questions of education is critical to effective thinking about, and planning for, our future.
Among the things I've reviewed over the past two days was a brief
audio interview with the incoming president of Florida International University, Dr. Mark Rosenberg by the Chronicle of Higher Education. In it, Rosenberg talks about the need to engage the faculty in a "curricular re-set." The concept, and his rationale for why it is needed, struck a chord with me, but also struck a nerve.
He notes that in American higher education, most curricula are based in late 19th and early 20th Century modalities; high quality, highly specialized faculty teach discrete courses within disciplinary boundaries that are themselves often highly specialized. He questions the relevance of such information and ways of thinking to 21st century societal needs. I fully embrace the concept of expanding our notions of what constitutes "appropriate" and high quality education to allow us (and our students) to adapt to our changing world.
However, Rosenberg also contends that the need for this change is driven largely by financial realities that are not unfamiliar to us here at Southern Miss: increasing demands for higher education coupled with decreasing state funds and pressure to keep tuition rates low in order to ensure "access" for all students. While the problem he identifies is a very real one, I disagree that a "curricular reset" is necessarily the solution to such a problem.
In reality, the curriculum and pedagogies needed to adequately prepare 21st Century students may potentially be more expensive than those needed in an earlier era. Until we carefully study both the needs and the possible curricular solutions, I think it unwise and potentially harmful to equate the need for curricular revision with the need for budgetary restraint.
As we seek to develop our college-wide strategic plan, our faculty are engaged in similar discussions about BOTH issues. I hope that we will be clear about our goals in each area and not give in to the temptation of assuming that modernizing our curriculum will somehow fix our budget problems.
