Departments are dead, or they should be. Colleges are old school. Majors are so last generation. Rigid structure is out, flexibility is in. Uniformity out, customization in.
Colleges and universities, it seems, have finally come to grips with new learners and new traditional students. (It took far too long to get beyond the non-traditional label. I’m even seeing the term post-traditional used now.) But these same institutions have done precious little — or few have done much — to create new degree paths or programs of study to accommodate them.
So, what did we expect when we acknowledged new learners and offered only old learning? Students took it upon themselves (often with the encouragement of their families) to find majors that prepared them for good-paying jobs. They listened to the media, paid attention to the job markets, experienced the explosion in high-tech and new-tech, and fell prey to the narrative that college was too expensive and the degrees of little value. They skated to where they believed the puck would be (thank you, Mr. Gretzky for that, one of my favorite sayings): jobs, wealth, choices, security.
What’s been happening to the humanities and arts at many colleges and universities is not a new phenomenon. It has been decades in the making, decades in coming, and the result of decades of failures to reaffirm, reform, or at least refresh. Now we are starting to see similar downturns in some of the social sciences and education. Questions (not always the right ones) are being asked defensively, reactively, provocatively, and in some cases protectively. Who will be the integrative thinkers and leaders? Who will be able to convene and lead teams? Who will teach our students? Who will fill public sector jobs? Who will run for office? These and other questions (some displaying arrogance and others ignorance) likely do more harm than good. At the very least, they are the wrong questions, creating false dichotomies and fueling the ill-cast debates around STEM vs. liberal arts, science and business vs. humanities and arts, career-preparation vs. liberal education, etc.
I’m not going to address false dichotomies or the integration of STEM and liberal arts here. I have done so elsewhere. Nor am I going to speak to the limitations imposed on students and their education, as well as on institutions’ ability to truly evolve academic programs, by the academic organizational structure of colleges and departments. Again, I have done so elsewhere. But I can offer some probing and perhaps provocative questions for my university colleagues to consider. Where do these exploding fields of study and need for graduates fit in the traditional academic organizational structure: cybersecurity, energy systems, artificial intelligence, technology security/policy/ethics, global and population health, planetary health, food systems, water, adaptation for aging population?
Instead, let’s consider two examples of “very traditional” fields of study (majors) that will always need graduates but that are losing ground in competing for students: transportation and agriculture.
I recently was invited to speak with two professional groups, one from each of these areas, and was asked more or less the same questions. What’s happening? Why is student interest declining? Why are universities seeming to struggle to correct? Why are they unable to get traction in attracting students and connecting them to the strong employment markets? In both cases, the answer is modernization and assuming a far more expansive posture. The fields have modernized, and perhaps the instruction has. But universities are still trying to recruit the same types of students, those that have the same interests and aspirations, using the same recruitment messages, and relying on the same employers and employment types to help make their case. Both transportation and agriculture need to excite and inspire students with interests in computer science, coding, robotics, UAVs/UASs, virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning, gaming, genetics, and more. These fields (among others) are evolving rapidly and it’s time to compel new types of students.
No longer just transportation engineering, traffic systems, urban planning, or pavements. No longer just agronomy, plant and soil science, crop science, or ag equipment manufacturing.
You want to attract students? Fire their imaginations. Leverage their interests. Ignite their passions. Meet them where they live, not where you want them to land, where generations before them had landed. These new graduates will be the ones to continue the transformation and evolution of these once-traditional fields that are poised for rapid evolution.
Transportation and agriculture, of course are just two examples. There are many others.
Who will be the naysayers? Two groups. Those who hide behind program accreditation requirements, citing lack of flexibility, and those who resist evolving their teaching, research, advising, or other roles (exhibiting lack of flexibility). Most professional program accreditation requirements allow (and more are now requiring) flexibility in the curriculum and if more is needed there are paths to ensuring it. And faculty can, do, and must continually evolve. Faculty members need not become expert in every new technology. But they must become more comfortable in teaming with new types of faculty colleagues, often those from different colleges and departments, and most certainly having different ways of seeing, exploring, and interacting with the world. This means more than accepting such partnerships but also working to create a new lexicon that enables them to work together and to flourish. This will take time and effort, to be certain, but it will just as surely produce quick results. Students will be drawn in, exciting new programs created, partnerships forged, and a new type of graduate will be produced. The students will respond, as will the market for those graduates.
If we want students who are critical thinkers, strategic integrators, and broadly intellectually curious, it is not through a reinvigoration of the traditional liberal arts or a cosmetic rebranding of the humanities that we will achieve this. We will achieve this by creating programs that require comparative thinking and critical analysis, that force integration rather than isolation of disciplines, and that create conditions for genuine discovery and not just rote learning.
It’s time to bring into alignment, with purpose and intentionality, the triad of (1) student interests and passions, (2) employment needs, now and into the coming decades, and (3) educational offerings (pathways and programs) for both. This must be adopted as part of the mission of any higher educational institution and students should seek out those colleges and universities that have made this commitment. Future-proofing college graduates depends not only on ensuring they graduate without crippling debt, but also that they are prepared to adapt, evolve, and serve in a rapidly changing world.