Demographic Shifts, Social Change, and Mission: College is Not What it Used to Be

College is not what it used to be.  It isn’t what it was when I went to college.  It isn’t what it was when I started teaching in college.  It isn’t what it was when I took my first higher education administrative position. The changes that we have experienced leave us with a choice—to embrace the changes facing us and grow, or remain in the state of grief for the careers we thought we were going to have.  It is a choice.

Higher education is inherently shaped by the society within which it exists.  We are living in a society within the throes of a demographic shift.  Our society has fewer traditional college age students and we face a further erosion in these numbers in the next few years.  Socio-economic disparity has grown and this has expressed itself in a greater range in the academic preparedness of college-bound students.  This range has been increased by the digital divide. On top of this sits a shift toward visual rather than textual learning.  Higher education reflects the society as a whole which has become more socially, ethnically, and racially diverse with many of the decreasing number of students entering college being first-generation or non-traditional students.

Society has changed its expectations to incorporate social equity when it comes to the mission of higher education institutions.  These institutions are expected to make a college education available to a wider group of people—requiring accessibility accommodations and expecting colleges to make college possible for a broader range of students—financially, socially, and academically.  A college is measured by its achievement of social equity.  I would describe the difference from the past as going from a focus on “selectivity,” to a focus on “student success.” This has meant that society measures the value of an institution based on their ability to help the students that come to them succeed.  This laser focus is seen across the board, from required government-reporting, to revised accreditation standards. 

The rules of the game have changed for those of us who entered higher education prior to the shift.  What this means is that our way of looking at students, the curriculum, our institutions, and the world, will need to shift to achieve the mission that has been put in front of us.

We must shift our focus from thinking of “the test” as the measure of learning toward thinking about multiple avenues through which students show achievement of learning outcomes.  For example, a particular student may not be able to learn in a science lecture classroom setting, but can learn in a science field class setting.  This shift is not about lowering standards (with those of us who are born to be successful in traditional classrooms as the benchmark), but about providing multiple paths toward learning.

We must resist the impulse to throw the responsibility for lack of student success to others—If only someone else would academically prepare the students better before they enter our classrooms, or if admissions would just recruit different students, then we could teach them effectively.  Instead, every institution and its faculty need to build curricula on the basis of the assessment of its effectiveness in teaching the entire range of students who come. This means a renewed focus on coherence in a curriculum and teamwork across academic departments, support services, and all other offices on campus. The focus must be on building skills at all levels across the entire curriculum and consistency in approaches across courses and programs.  The consistency extends to course layout such as the use of Universal Design for Learning, in the use of specific learning platforms, and in messaging across all institutional offices, from financial aid, to advising, to support services.  Intentionality, coherence, consistency, and skill building across all levels and between general education and all programs are essential for this effort. The classroom environmental can no longer be a sacred space but rather needs to be a space that links to all other classroom spaces and academic support.

We will have to have the courage to exhibit the same humility we wish of our students.  This means asking for feedback from those of different backgrounds, and use that feedback to construct learning measures to ensure that we are aware of cultural biases that may be at play, shaped by our own cultural background.  Humility is shown when we are able to having learning conversations with staff, or others, that might help us check our assumptions and make adjustments.  This may range from awareness that English Language Learners (ELL) need extra time and a dictionary, to the fact that cultures deal with death differently, to the fact that many of our students are working full-time and are parents.  I know of several situations where faculty regularly require proof of a death in the family, including an obituary in spite of this being a cultural artifact.  In some cultures, even speaking of death is culturally problematic.  We need to reach out to staff and to students and become the learners so that we can better navigate these differences.  Through humility, we can build a culture of hospitality and learning. 

We have to become more attuned to signs of anxiety and trauma, and purposefully create welcoming environments. We do not know what trauma our students have experienced, but we can monitor student behavior (body language suggesting discomfort, disengaging from class discussions, leaving the room, etc.) and make sure we check in with them, seeking understanding through the lens of what happened to this student, as opposed to assuming it reflects a lack of desire to learn. Surely COVID has taught us that the trauma of loss, isolation, sickness, and dislocation from loss of income is present within a large portion of the population. These traumas overlie others that are often hidden.  A posture of understanding and of welcome is one that expresses a growth mindset rather than a deficit mindset about our students.  We need to model that we can grow in understanding in order to show we believe that students can learn self-efficacy and social-emotional skills in the midst of these types of traumas.  In the end, all learning—ours and theirs—has a strong relational component.

We are all in this together.  This means that every faculty and staff member must consciously take on the role of being an interpreter and navigational mentor in every encounter with a student.  I once heard a story of a student who thought “office hours” were when you were to leave faculty alone.  We cannot make assumptions about understanding, but rather, we must assertively work toward clarity and understanding in every encounter with every office on campus.

College is not what it used to be.  The college experience now is culturally richer.  And this cultural richness provides us a greater opportunity to serve the whole of society.  It pushes us to learn more about others—culturally, socially, emotionally, and developmentally—outside our academic areas of expertise. It requires us to grow and develop as human beings as we broaden our skill sets in order to serve our students.  It has the potential to expand the meaning and satisfaction of our work.

Thank you to Dr. Tara Jabbaar-Gyambrah who provided the opportunity to reflect on these changes through her organization of the Student Success Symposium at Medaille College.