New U
A wish list for higher education institutions:
1. Bundle or package courses that generate separate credentials, so that students who leave before finishing a full 4 years have something to show for their time, effort, and monetary investment.
2. Investment in more tenure track faculty lines rather than relying overwhelmingly on an exploited instructional workforce. Adjunct instructors, when hired, should be competitively paid and have access to job security and benefits.
3. No more 9-month academic years. Students generally don't have the time or resources to wait around to finish their degrees. Full course timetable operates all year round.
4. Fundraising and development that heavily prioritizes supporting students to degree completion (i.e., scholarships, fellowships, financial aid, advising, tutoring services), rather than new, named buildings.
5. Strategic infusion of technology in teaching/learning and student support services, with students and academic faculty and staff driving selection of vendors. Technology systems should all use the same interface or at least be able to talk to each other.
6. Authentic investment in creating an inclusive university culture that permeates outreach, recruitment, research and teaching, career and student support services, financial aid, and provision of a wide range of opportunities for celebrating diversity.
7. Extensive and meaningful coordination with local community and tech colleges to ease pipeline from 2-year to 4-year.
8. Heavier investment in career advising for students, staffed by individuals who have strong relationships with local and state employers so pulse on the job market is always current.
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9. Financial aid services with access to a generous emergency assistance fund for students facing economic crises.
10. Well-funded, high quality behavioral health services.
11. Adequate staffing and adequately compensated staff!
12. Annual requirements for instructional faculty to participate in continued training to strengthen teaching skills and learn new strategies and technologies.
13. For hiring, tenure and promotion decisions, re-envisioning of the definition of scholarly impact. It's not just about publishing in "high impact factor" journals or presenting at conferences full of academic peers.
14. Free, high quality, and adequately available child care.
15. A red-tape czar, whose sole purpose is to ferret out and destroy non-sensical bureaucratic hurdles, burdens, and barriers.
16. New rules and regulations should not always necessitate an on-line training.
17. Free parking.
I love these progressive ideas!
Students need to be required only courses that will help them on road to getting a degree and then a job. No more having to take badminton 101 or creative writing. College course cost too much to require the taking of nonessential classes. Next classes taught need to relevant to what goes on in the real world. The courses in the education field do not prepare an individual on how to deal with angry parents, how to work with coworkers who are not supportive, how to co-teach and many other things teachers deal with on daily basis.
I like #4 which is also relevant with #6. As a civic engagement practitioner, I would love to see the full embracement of the term “civic engagement” by HE institutions so everyone on campus realizes the role of being a member of civic society *at-the-same-time* being a member of the campus community. The majority still considers them as separate, which continues to separate the two.
These are excellent ideas... I especially like the one about burping to help students who leave have something to show for their efforts.
Kristen—all progressive ideas about how a university and potentially community college can function with harmony—I particularly like the red tape czar—though many of the ideas are appealing and insightful