Rethinking American Higher Education by Richard Keeling and Richard Hersh is yet another book describing the train wreck that is higher education and demanding change. I have to admit to being somewhat tired of reading about the dreadful state of higher education but this book goes beyond that with a detailed prescription of what we need to do (which is also subject to some debate.
After a couple of chapters detailing the awful state of affairs they go into some detail regarding the neuroscience of deep learning basically concluding that time and engagement are critical to forming the pathways that are needed to learn – a detail not lost on the authors of The Slow Professor.
They then go on to outline the key principles of what would inform a university with an emphasis on good learning and teaching.
- Learning vs teaching
- Holistic
- Cumulative and collective
- Coherent and integrated
- Challenging and rigorous
- Actively engaging
- High faculty contact
- Advising and mentoring
- Assessment as teaching and learning
- General Education
One could argue that this is not rethinking American education so much as a teaching model that looks a lot like a small liberal arts college. It also looks like small class sizes are also implicit in those principles. The simple fact of the matter is that most institutions can simply not afford to operationalize this list. The ones that do have hefty tuition fees and hefty endowments to make it all work.
The authors continue to outline the key elements of a curriculum that would align to these principles. It consists of a core liberal arts and science curriculum with learning outcomes addressing writing, critical thinking, problem solving and ethical and moral development in problem based approach with comprehensive exams, capstone projects and learning portfolios. There is little question that a curriculum based on these practices would indeed be transformative and many universities including my own are implementing these ideas in various forms.