Faculty and 21st-Century Education
William F. Prokasy, PhD, University of Georgia
Academic institutions are rapidly being reshaped by external
influences, and these influences are having a marked impact on the
role of faculty. One result is that many assumptions of post-World
War II academics no longer have the meaning or validity that they
did 20 or 30 years ago. For example, relative detachment from the
supporting society, the dominance of academic disciplines and
majors, education for its own sake apart from jobs, and unfettered
inquiry are no longer academic norms.
Consider a few of the pressures for change:
Accountability
More evident in state-supported institutions, academics and
academicians are being held publicly accountable. How do we show
that we can deliver what we say we deliver? The demand for
assessment by state legislators, the Office of Education, and
regional and specialized accrediting bodies is changing how we
develop and evaluate our academic offerings.
Education and Jobs
The greatest experiment in the history of higher education, the
post-World-War II GI Bill, has been a resounding success,
sufficiently so that higher education degrees and the workplace are
linked in a way unimaginable (apart from land-grant institutions)
prior to the 1970s. Higher education has long been promoted as a
means for acquiring a higher income and better job. Students now
expect us to deliver on that promise. It cannot be otherwise in a
society in which higher education has become mass education, and
employers expect employees to have post-high-school education.
Cost of Education
Price elasticity in higher education is gone. There is little room
for higher tuition at private institutions or higher tuition and
state allocations at public institutions. What has been and
promises to be no more than stable state funding creates
constraints and will require us to find other ways to be
cost-effective than by simply tripling classroom size and hiring
low-cost part-time instructors. Higher education is one of the few,
perhaps the only, major enterprises of this century that has not
implemented the same (or better) quality programs at a lower
societal cost.
Technological Revolution
Computer-based multimedia, instant communication, and fewer time
and space constraints constitute more than a mere 'add-on.' There
will be a revolution in how people are educated, curriculum
planning, academic policies and procedures, and responsibilities of
faculty. For example, the classroom lecture format served us well
in 1900 when there was limited information access. Its value will
remain, indeed be enhanced, for select purposes, but in 2000 it can
no longer be the primary way through which students are educated.
Faculty will more often assume roles in the creation of learning
environments, less often in preparing lectures for a specified
number of periods a week.
Competition
Education delivered electronically without the costs (and benefits)
of a campus will increase, especially in continuing professional
certification and life-long education. Lower cost access to
world-wide information sources will challenge traditional colleges
and universities to redefine their missions and to demonstrate
value-added for their clientele.
Undergraduate Major
Many undergraduate majors are versions of graduate education and
are becoming less relevant to why students are in college.
Curriculums are likely to become more issue-oriented and less
discipline-oriented with a corresponding increase in
interdisciplinary (or nondisciplinary) course work.
What will this mean for the future faculty member? For
psychologists it is significant in at least two ways.
First, and also relevant to other disciplines, the number of
students per faculty member will increase. This will occur through
allocation of more time to instruction and the creation of learning
environments designed to reach more students. Addressing this
responsibly implies significant changes in graduate education,
including systematic experience with learning technologies. It also
calls for creative scholarship in the development of learning
environments, especially in the content synthesis required for
successful development.
A corollary is that the arts and sciences PhD model stressing
original disciplinary scholarship will be amended to include
original and applied scholarship in pedagogy. Instating this
amendment will be aided by the fact that fiscal constraints at
federal and state levels make it impossible to continue to support
(at the same per-faculty-member level) the original disciplinary
scholarship expected of faculty not only at research universities,
but increasingly at regional universities and private colleges.
Second, and this is particularly important for psychology, there
will be an increased need for and institutional investment in
behavioral science research and development oriented to the
creation of learning environments. Especially relevant will be
applications from developmental, social, educational, and cognitive
psychology.