The Central Problem in Higher Education – EdSurge Independent

If you often look for updates about higher education, you will probably see the media flooded with news about colleges’ rocketing cost and widening unequal access. However, while cost and access are important, focusing on them will not go far enough. More focus should be given on how effective colleges are on their core mission: preparing students to become citizens that can thrive in the 21st century world. In other words, the central issue of post-secondary education is quality. In improving high education’s quality, general education curriculum should be one of the focal points.

Almost every higher education institution in the United States spends a major part of their programs for general education. The most common type of general education among them is the core distribution model. In this model, students are required to distribute their elective courses across different areas of study, such as natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Also within these general education (gen-ed) curriculum are mandatory classes in crucial skills such as writing and public speaking.

This model of general education seems to achieve its purpose — training students to draw knowledge from multiple disciplines and apply them in the real world. However, its impact is highly questionable. The typical general education program only requires students to take a set of courses, each focusing on a narrowed subject, without any connection to one another. Worse yet, these courses are designed and taught separately by different professors, who don’t usually work with each other to connect these courses together. In other words, this type of curriculum lacks incoherence.

Why does this incoherence matter?

First, it means that the gen-ed program doesn’t really show students how to connect knowledge they’ve learnt from those separated classes together.

Second, it also means that most students are not trained to apply what they’ve learnt to real life.

Evidence

Research in the science of learning has shown that human minds have a hard time to obtain far transfer of learning — which occurs when we apply (transfer) knowledge in one context to another or to connect knowledge from multiple disciplines together. For instance, even though philosophy can teach students to think logically and construct solid arguments, it’s really difficult for a student to use philosophy to make sound arguments in her sociology paper. To cite another example, most students have learnt how to write effectively, but when they’re done taking that writing class, not all can recall how to apply specific rhetorical techniques in writing other classes’ papers or in other circumstances.

Given the circumstance, it can be said that the gen-ed curriculum in most colleges won’t do much to help students achieve far transfer, which translates to failure to help students to synthesize knowledge from multiple disciplines (and then apply it to the real life).

Moreover, the current curriculum also contributes in creating a negative mentality among students. Many peers I’ve met either see gen-ed courses unhelpful (and thus want to focus on their major classes) or simply find the gen-ed classes disconnected and unengaging. But the thing is these core distribution requirements won’t go away — anyone has to take classes to fulfill the prerequisites. As a consequence, “students had adopted a checklist mentality, seeing their required gen-ed courses as something to simply get through”, according to one University of Notre Dame’s faculty member. Although more than one courses are available for a particular discipline, say history, a student usually chooses the easiest history class available to only fulfill the liberal arts requirements.

Not only won’t this help enrich students’ minds, it also unnecessarily wastes their time and effort. General education is undeniably crucial for educating competent citizens, but if students are required to take those general courses anyway, why not make those courses way more engaging and helpful than they are now?

What should be done?

Institutions need to revise their curriculum and develop more interdisciplinary programs to truly provide students with a broad base of knowledge and the ability to connect multiple disciplines. This can be approached from one of three perspectives: curricular, pedagogical, and organizational perspective.

The curricular perspective

This perspective focuses on decreasing the separation of disciplines. In order to create a cohesive curriculum, courses should be developed or redesigned in order to gain a connection with other courses.

One approach can be to create skill-based courses that are transferable to many disciplines. For example, knowledge about the scientific research method, scientific reasoning, as well as critical and logical thinking can be covered by one single course. Knowledge learned from such a course can be applied in almost all natural and social sciences fields. One example of such a class is the Minerva Schools at KGI’s curriculum. The gen-ed in this curriculum consists of four first-year courses on critical thinking, problem solving, and interpersonal skills — skills that can be broadly applied to almost any circumstance you face. Each class trains students to adopt a set of skills called Habits of Mind and Foundational Concepts (HC). One of the classes, Empirical Analyses, teaching problem-solving skills, such as design thinking, and then train students to apply such skills to solve many problems with distinguishing contexts.

Minerva’s curriculum design then build upper-level classes based on competencies trained in those four courses, thereby connecting the classes together. Their curriculum is described as a systematic rethinking of the liberal arts and has gained a great deal of attention within higher education community.

The second approach can be constructing courses (or a set of courses) based on big questions or pressing issues, such as sustainable development. In this way, each course or each component of a class can cover a different aspect of a question or issue, hence helping students to form comprehensive thinking in complex problems. To cite a real-life example, University of Notre Dame has been working to develop one such initiative since September 2018.

The pedagogical perspective

From a pedagogical perspective, some solutions regarding learning or teaching methods can be undertaken. Notable among them is the team-teaching method, where instructors from different areas of expertise collaborate in creating interdisciplinary classes, as shown in Minerva’s and University of Notre Dame’s initiative. Information and advises can also be exchanged within teaching teams to enhance the quality of teaching and learning.

Another approach can be based on technological infrastructure to facilitate a learning community, which prompts students to “synthesize different views, solve problems and collaboratively advance knowledge using the wealth and diversity of ideas that community members contribute” (Kidron and Kali).

The organizational perspective

At the institutional level, the following five key provisions, recommended by Project Kaleidoscope (a major initiative by many institutions in creating interdisciplinary teaching and learning environment), should be taken into account:

• Promoting a common understanding of interdisciplinary learning goals and why we need to meet those goals
• Making those goals to become one of the focuses on campus using assessment to connect those goals with program structure, content, and pedagogy while paying attention to students from diverse backgrounds, experiences, expectations, career aspirations, and goals.
• Training current faculty and staff as well as hire new ones to assume leadership role in shaping interdisciplinary curricular and co-curricular approaches and in assessing the impact of those approaches on undergraduate learners.
• Allocating resources — money, personnel, equipment, and spaces — to improve the gen-ed program.
• Aligning interdisciplinary learning with the institutional vision, mission, and identity, and include it in strategic planning at all levels.

In addition, in order to build a program of significant efficacy, a school must promote and maintain the communication and collaboration between members of the campus — including students, faculty, and school executives — at the highest level. Particularly, students need to have more voice and hold more decision-making power in constructing interdisciplinary curriculum. The feedback between students and faculty should also be kept at a constant basis, ensuring the curriculum and pedagogies to stay adapted to students’ and faculties’ concerns.

Finally, as constructing interdisciplinary efforts is expected to be time- and energy-consuming, faculty should be awarded by an incentive structure that not only address research output, but also encourages faculty’s work in designing and implementing interdisciplinary education programs.

In general, although the purpose of the contemporary general education curriculum is indisputable, many colleges aren’t doing it right. Alternative approaches need to be continuously adopted and refined. However, in order for such complex effort to be successful, there needs to be a well-structured, long-term plan and implementation, along with an open dialogue between higher education stakeholders.