Abstract
This book is a remarkably candid and honest self-study of Empire State College (ESC), as many faculty, administrators, and students struggle to remain true to the institution’s historic roots as SUNY’s flagship of progressivism. The editors and contributors to this volume have experienced life at ESC as participant observers, tossed between ideals and realities. The result is a book that speaks not only to the travails facing progressive institutions but all institutions in today’s chaotic academic environment.
There are forces, both internal and external, that are moving all of higher education in directions that challenge original principles and missions, factors that have an even greater impact on institutions aligned with John Dewey’s ideas about linking educational practice to democracy, broadening access, honoring diversity, placing a student’s experience at the center of the curriculum, and working toward social justice. To state and accrediting agencies these progressive virtues might appear as “disruptive innovation” (p. 252) when forces driving the national conversation on the future of education measure success in terms of business models having little to do with students’ goals and interests. Students’ interests and professional and educational goals are frequently unable to penetrate curricular parameters set by federal, state, and professional standards.
Competition for the “nontraditional” student forces growth and a corresponding demand for resources and cost-cutting. Economic uncertainties have resulted in massive disinvestment in public higher education. Since the Reagan years, public colleges and universities have been redefined as a private, rather than public, good placing demands for accountability to regulators, rather than to students. As a result, many faculty believe that only by returning to traditional ways can academic quality be salvaged.
This book acknowledges the present realities of higher education, but addresses them as sources of creative tension, barriers through which passageways demand creative academic planning. Students enter the college or university seeking faster degree completion, lower tuition, as an easy path to graduation; then they are surprised and overwhelmed by the work, research, and time-effort needed to complete degree plans, independent studies, apply for prior learning credit, and get portfolios approved. Students want, even beg for direction, and resist a self-directed and student-centered curriculum. At the core of this tension within ESC is the relationship between its student-centered mentoring model, which emphasizes the learner’s role in creating curriculum, and the college’s increased emphasis on online learning with its faculty-driven curriculum.
On the other hand, there are instances in higher educational institutions, ESC among them, where institutional identity provides the rationale for academic studies and themes to emphasize, and drive decisions about which students to seek and how, which pedagogical strategies to employ, and which partners to engage. ESC is not alone. While pressure for growth and increased tuition income can cause a college or university to weaken its mission of social justice, it can also embolden the search for alternatives, even within traditional institutions, and for progressive visions that can flourish, providing sustenance to learners who seek to transform themselves and their world.
This insightful book identifies core issues in every academic institution, the tension experienced by all faculty, and questions that will inspire alternatives to the “University of the Customer” (p. 342) in rethinking the future of higher education.