How College Leaders and Faculty See the Key Issues Facing Higher Education

ATTITUDES ON...

How College Leaders and Faculty See the Key Issues Facing Higher Education

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Full Report available at: http://www.cnm.edu/depts/marketing/academe/attitudes-on-innovation

Executive Summary:

Innovation in higher education has been a much discussed topic on and off college campuses this past year, as college leaders, trustees, faculty, policymakers, and the media debated the role technology and online learning will play in an evolving financial model for institutions. 

Because of strained relations between administrators and faculty members on many campuses, it is often assumed that the two sides don’t see eye to eye on many of the key issues facing higher education. But an extensive survey of campus leaders and professors conducted by The Chronicle 
of Higher Education in July 2013, found that the two groups actually agree on some of the most contentious issues, even though they see higher education moving in different 
directions. 

The survey, completed by nearly 1,200 faculty members and a sample of some 80 presidents of four-year colleges, focused on innovations in higher education, including the role various constituencies play in advancing ideas, as well as their opinions on online learning, hybrid courses, and competency-based degrees. 

Among the highlights from the 2013 survey:

DIRECTION Faculty members are generally pessimistic about the direction of higher education in the United States, while presidents are generally optimistic. Both professors and presidents believe that the rank of the U.S. higher-education system

in the world is likely to decline in the next ten years. But presidents see this as a slight decline from a very strong position while faculty members see it as a more severe decline from a moderately strong position.

INNOVATION Both faculty members and presidents feel that the faculty should be drivers of change, but presidents don’t see professors in this role currently. This raises the question of how to successfully engage faculty in driving innovation. Both presidents and professors believe politicians and business leaders currently have too much say in driving innovation.

NEW IDEAS Faculty members and presidents alike see blended learning, adaptive learning, and interactive technology as the most promising aspects of innovation, and are suspicious of ideas that threaten the status-quo or the business model of higher education, such as competency-based degrees, prior learning assessments, open education resources, and massive open online courses.

VALUE More than half of presidents believe that American higher education provides very good or excellent value for the money spent while only one-third of faculty believe the same.

FOCUS Both professors and presidents are in agreement that the focus of discussions on innovation should be around changes to the teaching and learning model, but cur- rent discussions are instead focused on technology and cost cutting.

VALIDITY Almost 40 percent of faculty members say they have taught a blended or hybrid course and one-fifth have taken a course in this format. Both professors and presidents agree that hybrid learning is better than online-only courses, but they disagree on whether hybrid learning provides equal educational value compared to the traditional classroom. Faculty members are more inclined to think the value is not equal while presidents are more inclined to agree that the value is equal.

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