Fostering Engaged Citizenship and Professional
Success: The Role of General Education
University of Montana
October 26, 2015
Debra Humphreys, Vice President for Policy and Public Engagement,
AAC&U
www.aacu.org/leap; @debrahumphreys
humphreys@aacu.org
Collaborating to Better Serve Society
and Our Students
Liberal Education and America’s Promise (2005-present)
• a collaborative national initiative that champions the importance of a twenty-firstcentury liberal education—for individual students and for a nation dependent on
economic creativity and democratic vitality.
• LEAP advocates for a capacious vision of liberal education that is not confined
just to liberal arts colleges nor exclusive to liberal arts and sciences disciplines.
The LEAP definition of liberal education:
An approach to college learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to deal
with complexity, diversity and change. It emphasizes broad knowledge of the wider
world (e.g., science, culture and society) as well as in-depth achievement in a
specific field of interest. It helps students develop a sense of social responsibility as
well as strong intellectual and practical skills that span all areas of study, such as
communication, analytical and problem-solving skills, and includes a demonstrated
ability to apply knowledge and skills in real-world settings.
College Learning for the New Global Century (2007)
“The world in which today’s students will make choices
and compose lives is one of disruption rather than
certainty, and of interdependence rather than insularity.”
LEAP Asks:
• How do we educate students for success in this kind of
world?
• What are the Essential Learning Outcomes and set of
educational practices aligned to this reality?
LEAP Vision is Both/And:
Education for Responsible Citizenship and Professional Success
Since our founding, we have looked to education—and to higher
education—as essential component to building democratic capacity.
• “if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization, it expects
what never was & never will be”
• “enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body & mind
will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”
• “the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the
result of habit and long training.”
--Thomas Jefferson
What Does America Need Today from Higher Education?
A Dangerous Narrowing Of Vision to “Training” for Jobs
“We’re working to … offer the real-world education and hands-on
training that can lead directly to a job and career. We’re shaking up
our system of higher education to give parents more information, and
colleges more incentives to offer better value, so that no middle-class
kid is priced out of a college education. We’re offering millions the
opportunity to cap their monthly student loan payments to ten percent
of their income…”
President Barack Obama, 2014
Building Democratic Capacities: What Are
They? What Are They For?
“The fundamental task of education in a democracy is the
apprenticeship of liberty—learning to be free... The literacy
required to live in civil society, the competence to participate
in democratic communities, the ability to think critically and
act deliberately in a pluralistic world, the empathy that
permits us to hear and thus accommodate others, all involve
skills [and knowledge] that must be acquired (emphasis
added)...”
Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone, 1992
Building Democratic Capacities in a Globally
Interconnected World: How Can We Educate
Globally Prepared Democratic Citizens?
Can one be a responsible citizen without knowledge of:
World histories?
Global cultures?
Political, economic, and social systems and challenges?
The ideas and institutions that support constitutional democracy?
The great religious and philosophical traditions?
America’s own engagement with democracy, diversity, global
problem-solving?
All Civic Learning Must Build Capacity to
Address Big Questions, Meet Global Challenges:
More Than Just Content Coverage/Exposure
At home:
Justice, Racial Inequities, Immigration, Environmental
Sustainability, Health, Economic Inequities,
Infrastructure Decay, Illiteracies
Around the world:
global pandemics, war and peace, refugees, migration,
dislocation, interfaith conflict, nationalism,
environmental degradation, technology, development,
poverty, security, privacy, terrorism
Can We Do Both?
The good news:
The capacities most important for responsible
citizenship are the same as those that are most
important for long-term professional success.
The bad news:
Our practices—in general education and majors—
aren’t well aligned or designed to build those
capacities
The Big Economic Picture
“Human work will increasingly shift toward two kinds of tasks:
solving problems for which standard operating procedures do not
currently exist, and working with new information—acquiring it,
making sense of it, communicating it to others….today, work that
consists of following clearly specified directions is increasingly being
carried out by computers and workers in lower-wage countries. The
remaining jobs that pay enough to support families require a deeper
level of knowledge and the skills to apply it.”
“Frank Levy and Richard Murnane, “Dancing
with Robots” (2013)
Dancing With Robots (2013)
What do Employers Say?
Falling Short? College Learning and Career Success
(Hart Research Associate 2015)
AAC&U has commissioned a series of studies—focus
groups/surveys of students and business leaders, see:
www.aacu.org/leap/public-opinion-research
14
Three in five employers believe that it takes BOTH specific
knowledge/skills and broad knowledge/skills to achieve longterm career success.
Which is more important for recent college graduates to have who want to pursue advancement
and long-term career success at your company?
(employers)
Range of knowledge and skills that apply
to a range of fields or positions
25%
College students:
Specific
15%
Both
63%
Broad range
22%
Knowledge and skills that apply to a
specific field or position
15%
60%
Both field-specific and broad range
of knowledge and skills
15
Employers want broad learning, cross-cultural capacities—in
addition to hands-on learning.
Employers’ agreement with statements about college learning aims regardless of student’s chosen field of study
Strongly agree
Somewhat agree
All college students should have educational experiences that teach them how to solve
problems with people whose views are different from their own
96%
59%
Students/
total agree
94%
All college students should gain an understanding of democratic institutions and values
87%
Every college student should take courses that build the civic knowledge, skills, and
judgment essential for contributing to our democratic society
32%
86%
33%
85%
86%
Every college student should acquire broad knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences
29%
78%
All college students should gain intercultural skills and an understanding of societies and
countries outside the United States
21%
78%
83%
87%
16
Learning Outcomes that at Least Four in Five Employers Rate
as Very Important
Proportions of employers rating each skill/knowledge area
as very important for recent college graduates to have*
Oral communication
Students:
very important
for success
in workplace*
85%
Working effectively with
others in teams
83%
82%
Written communication
78%
77%
75%
Ethical judgment and
decision-making
81%
74%
Critical/analytical thinking
81%
79%
Applying knowledge/
skills to real world
80%
*8, 9, 10 ratings on zero-to-10 scale, 10 = very important
79%
How Do We Build Students’ Capacity?
High-Impact Practices Both in Gen Ed and Majors
First-Year Seminars and
Experiences
 Common Intellectual
Experiences
 Learning Communities
 Writing-Intensive Courses
 Collaborative Assignments
and Projects
 Undergraduate Research
 Diversity/Global Learning
 Service Learning,
Community-Based Learning
 Internships
 Capstone Courses and
Projects
Employers say they are more likely to consider hiring recent
college graduates who have completed an applied learning or
project-based learning experience.
18
How much more likely is your company to consider hiring recent college graduates if they have had this experience?
Much more likely to consider
Somewhat more likely to consider
Students: more
likely to be hired
Internship/apprenticeship
with company/organization
Senior thesis/project
demonstrating knowledge,
research, problem-solving,
communication skills
87%
39%
Multiple courses involving
significant writing
81%
27%
Research project done
collaboratively with peers
80%
24%
Service-learning project with
community organization
69%
21%
Field project in diverse
community with people from
different background/culture
Study abroad program
94%
60%
66%
22%
13%
51%
95%
89%
76%
82%
85%
87%
71%
Both for Addressing Civic and Economic Aims
of Higher Education:
Remember Gandhi’s Seven Deadly Sins
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Wealth without Work
Pleasure without Conscience
Science without Humanity
Knowledge without Character
Politics without Principle
Commerce without Morality
Worship without Sacrifice
Fostering Engaged Citizenship and
Professional Success
Both General Education and
Majors have a role to play!
An Agenda for General Education?
Prioritize Integration and Application
• Need Redesign of Curricular Pathways Rich in High-Impact
and Applied Practices—both General Education and Majors
• Need to Communicate Early and Often about How General
Education Develops Professional and Civic Capacities
• Need Integration of Curricular, Co-Curricular, Work-based
learning—advising and career exploration
• Need more problem-based, applied learning
• Need New Ways for Graduates to Demonstrate Their
Achievement (e.g. e-portfolios, sophisticated Linked-In
pages, etc.)
A Twenty-First-Century Liberal Education
Source: General Education Transformed (Gaston, 2015)
Building The
st
21
Century Academy: Some Examples
• Worcester Polytechnic Institute—integrated general education
courses built around problem-solving both at home and abroad
• Wagner College—general education organized by thematic
learning communities with experiential and reflective components
• California State University—2-year/4-year partnership developing
thematic general education pathways (with optional ‘minors’ in
issues such as sustainability, justice, public health)
• University of Richmond—guaranteeing every student either
undergraduate research or paid internship
• UW-Whitewater—engaging student supervisors in work-study to
help students reflect on and track their learning outcome from work
• Michigan State University—integrative studies gen ed model built
around interdisciplinary global problems
What Students and Our Society Need and
Deserve
“In a world of relentless change, all students need
the kind of education that leads them to ask not just
‘how do we get this done?’ but also ‘what is most
worth doing?’”
College Learning for the New Global Century, 2007