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Monday, Oct. 26, 2009

Our View: Provocative ideas for higher education

Cal State Stanislaus president proposes how universities can adapt to new fiscal reality.

Universities are supposed to be the place where innovative ideas sprout and bloom.

But ideas that have to do with changing the way that universities themselves operate often are stomped out before the seed is even allowed to germinate.

Tradition runs deep in academia, even on relatively young campuses such as California State University, Stanislaus, and UC Merced.

CSUS President Hamid Shirvani, never a shrinking violet in his 4½ years at the Turlock campus, has put forth some provocative ideas for how higher education needs to adjust in the wake of the current economy.

His article appeared in last Monday's issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education and is available on CSUS's Web site, www.csustan.edu/President/commentaries.html.

Some of his thoughts:

"Resistance to change in academe has helped create inflexible, unsustainable organizations, just as automobile manufacturers wedded to gas-guzzling models have been unprepared for the demand for smaller, more eco-friendly cars."

"We can only hope that today's harsh economic realities have finally broken the stranglehold of the sense of entitlement about higher education and brought people back down to earth. ... While students and their families will have to pay more, administrators and faculty members must also work together to offer affordable, effectively delivered educational products and services. ..."

"For example, we should re-evaluate the notion that large classes are inherently pedagogically unsound. What both students and faculty members tend to prefer -- small classes -- is not the only educationally effective approach."

"It may make more sense for professors to teach more and do less governance and committee work."

"We should re-evaluate the relationship and the balance between graduate and undergraduate education. It is too easy to overlook the ever-increasing specialization of graduate programs, in which professors happily replicate students in their own, often narrow, interests, focusing on limited knowledge."

"Those of us in higher education must come to grips with the idea that we can opt out of college rankings and national recognition without doing damage to the fundamental value of the education that we offer."

While these ideas are not new, they're still seeds. But most of them are worth nurturing, for the simple reason that Shirvani so effectively articulates: The traditional university model is so rigid and so expensive that it is becoming less accessible at a time when Americans -- and especially Valley residents -- need a college education to be more accessible.

CSUS has raised class sizes slightly, from about 27 students per class average to closer to 30. Shirvani, in a meeting this week with The Modesto Bee's editorial board, suggested that courses such as Sociology 101, Psychology 101 and the History of Civilization could be substantially larger and still be equally effective.

He also is proposing eliminating CSUS's one-month winter term beginning in 2011. The winter term was initiated as a way to give students an opportunity to delve in depth into one subject.

But these days, many faculty don't teach during winter term and many students don't enroll.

The federal Pell Grants are based on students being in class for 30 weeks a year and the winter term cuts that short, meaning students lose money and staff has to spend hours on the paperwork.

It's easy in this economy for any entity, private or public, to shrink into survival mode. Shirvani is to be applauded for rejecting that idea and looking instead for ideas to help higher education grow and thrive.