As children, we believed the 21st century would bring flying cars and field trips to the moon. Today, there are a number of prevalent challenges facing higher education:
Success Measurements
- Graduation
- Transfer rates
- Retention rates
- Accountability
Access
- Student readiness and remedial courses
- Cost, affordability, student debt
- Technology, use of online resources
- Government funding, especially relating to diverse identities
- Retention and provision of resources for diverse students
Identifying Purpose
- Students picking an identifiable direction
- Universities identifying a direction and target
Availability and Technology
- Class when you want it, where you want, and how you want it
- Virtual classrooms
- Changes in how we define community
- Virtual experiential education
- Technology changes expectations for scholarship
Access
- Prevalence of homeless and foster students
- Expectation of bi-lingual education
- Access for students on the ASD spectrum
- Genetic information and admissions/hiring practices
- Changing family dynamics and definitions of "family"
Global changes affecting education
- Car-less campuses
- Future unseen impact of possible future tragic events
- Will historic processes continue to guide higher education?
- Allocating space in a hot, flat, and crowded world (Friedman, 2009).
- Learning communities disappear
A brief unsolicited note from group 1:
The language around issues may frame changes in a negative light rather than as an opportunity for growth. We hope to embrace new challenges as catalysts for growth and development, and opportunities to advocate for new populations.
Group 1: Lori, Jenella, Lisa, Katee, Beau
Higher education simply cannot afford a bilingual curriculum at the present time.
ReplyDeleteFor each class designated for bilingual curriculum there would need to be additional building space, staff and support staff. The cost of making such a transition would be well beyond what the vast majority of higher education institutions can handle without significant state and federal government support.
In addition, the question needs to be asked, "Are we providing a disservice to students by educating in another language than English when we know the majority of business conducted is the United States is in English."