UC-Chancellor France Cordova was the invited speaker of the Atwell Lecture presented before the American Council on Education
February 12, 2006
In the public interest: Student success in higher education
President Atwell, I am honored to be giving the lecture that bears your name.
Tomorrow there is a special session at this meeting for presidents and chancellors called "What keeps you up at night?" Let me start the dialog.
Least among the things that keep a president awake are the 500 students partying on the lawn of the 3 bedroom rental house across the street from the President’s House. A president might, instead, spend Monday night wondering if tomorrow's announcement about the State budget will bring tuition increases and further cuts to sorely needed money for academic preparation. Tuesday night a president might lie awake fearing that the neighborhood association will file suit against the university for its expansion plans to accommodate an influx of new students. Wednesday night the president could wonder if kindly Mrs. K will give her alma mater the planned gift she has mentioned on several occasions, a gift which would provide for a much needed performance center on campus. Thursday night the president might toss and turn about whether the basketball team will rank last, or next to last, in the athletic conference (Those are the presidents with no football teams). Friday night the president will be anxious whether the regents will approve the university’s business plan for a new medical school. Saturday night the president could ruminate about the academic senate: did the faculty understand the urgent need for curriculum reform at its meeting last week? Sunday night, well, Sunday night the president might read a fat book about China in the 21st century -- its proliferation of universities and accelerating numbers of science and engineering baccalaureates, and its rising competitiveness in world markets. And get really worried.
But what keeps parents awake? Do they toss and turn wondering whether their son or daughter will be accepted in the college of his or her choice? Whether they can afford the rising costs of tuition, not to mention room, board, and books? Whether Raoul or Megan will qualify for financial aid?
What keeps our college students up at night? (And I don’t mean late night parties.) For our students, sleepless nights may be spent worrying about the paper that is due or how they did on that mid-term. Will they be accepted into graduate school? Will they find a job?
Finally, the public at large is increasingly concerned and vocal about higher education. Issues such as access and eligibility, academic preparation, and perseverance to degree keep the public roiling. What is this they are hearing about the decline in U.S. global competitiveness? Legions of students in foreign, emerging economies challenging our preeminence in technology and business? I bought my copy of The World is Flat at Costco; how about you?
Over the past year, the Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as The Economist and other journals, have reprised many of the questions plaguing higher education – a full year’s worth of sleepless nights. While each of these issues justifies considerable dialog and attention, the one issue on which parents, students, the public, and educators can agree is the importance—and the challenge—of student success.
It's the common denominator: Whether our concerns are about the future of an individual student, our nation’s competitiveness, or the health and security of the world's people, the underlying issue is the challenge of making our students' college experience successful.
What does that mean? The challenge is about throughput (will Megan graduate?), education (will Megan learn?), career preparation (will Raoul acquire skills and interest for a career?), and inspiration (will Megan find her passion, challenge her world views, and learn to value different cultures and perspectives?). It is about our future (will enough students go into the STEM fields?), our competitiveness (are foreign students better prepared?), and what we want our society to be (will our students be inspired to contribute to our culture, to shepherd our fragile environment, to give back to those who are less fortunate?).
In the entire nation, approximately 17.4 million[1] students are in colleges and universities, roughly 75 percent[2] of them in public institutions of learning. The public is spending its money, directly or indirectly through taxation, to educate those students. It wants them to be successful because it equates education with opportunity and with quality of life. It links an educated workforce to innovation and economic prosperity, improved health care, global competitiveness, and smart defense at home and abroad. So, what could be more in the public interest than student success?
It is dismaying, then, to see what is happening with students at many of our colleges. Graduation rates for all but the top tier private universities are relatively low. According to the NCES (National Center for Education Statistics), the four-year graduation rate at Title IV four-year institutions hovers around 34 percent, increasing to just 56 percent after six years.[3] One would hope that the students who do qualify for admission to our colleges and universities could succeed. Who would guess that the leak in the education pipeline would persist even to college – to those who, in principle, have "made it?"
The situation becomes even bleaker when we focus on student defection in college from potential careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (or STEM). In a recent issue of Science magazine it was reported that "an annual survey of incoming freshmen shows that nearly one in three declares an interest in STEM fields… but only about 5% of students actually graduate with a STEM degree."[4]
NSF's Science and Engineering Indicators for 2004 reported that "of the 2.8 million bachelor’s degrees in S&E granted worldwide in 2003, 1.2 million were earned by Asian students in Asian universities, 830,000 were granted in Europe and 400,000 in the U.S. In engineering specifically, universities in Asian countries now produce eight times as many bachelor’s degrees as the U.S."[5] In three decades, we have fallen from third to 17th in the world for 18- to 24-year-olds receiving degrees in science and engineering.[6]
This situation is one of the roots of the "Quiet Crisis" first enunciated in President Shirley Ann Jackson’s BEST report[7] and reinforced in many recent studies, including the book The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.[8] They warn us of a “perfect storm” that is gathering, setting our nation up for a loss of global competitiveness.
Indicators show that the number of S&E Ph.D.'s awarded in the U.S. has declined. The S&E labor force has been buttressed by the migration of many foreign born S&E graduates. This is expected to fall off, however, because foreigners are finding it easier to communicate globally and get paid for S&E careers, even working for U.S. businesses, in their home countries. That's in part why the world is "flat."
There is talk about the "ambition gap," which holds that students in this country are not as hungry for technology careers as their foreign counterparts in emerging economies; they lack passion for study in science and engineering. Here I would disagree: While this may be the 'anecdotal' truth, it is not the whole truth.
Igniting the spark of curiosity in our U.S. born students is not the problem -- keeping the flame alive is. Just last month I had the honor of welcoming back to campus UCR's first alumnus to win a Nobel Prize—Dr. Richard Schrock, co-recipient of this year’s award in chemistry. Dr. Schrock spoke about the importance of capturing our students' interest early (his was ignited at age 8 with his first chemistry set) and keeping their interest with better teachers, more interesting courses, and more challenges to "keep them hooked."
Not every child can become a Nobel Prize winner, but every child can be helped to realize his or her potential, to fulfill his or her dream. We must stimulate and nurture these interests, whether their passion is music or literature, business or anthropology.
We must examine those factors that lead to student success and those that end up being obstacles—sometimes insurmountable. Success, I would argue, requires encouragement and nurturing every step of the way—from well qualified, credentialed K-12 teachers to professors who recognize what it takes to reach today's student and to tap into his or her creative or scholarly potential.
What we face might not be so much an "ambition gap" or even a "perseverance gap" as it is a gap in our support system. Megan began as an engineering major, and is now considering switching to English. She didn't give up; she was actively derailed. I have sat down with Megan, eating sub-sandwiches at the campus commons. She recounts that on the first day of class her sophomore year the instructor announced that half the students in his large class would fail his mathematics course. He then proceeded to teach the course in a way that was unintelligible to most of the students. Perhaps their early preparation wasn’t all that he could have hoped. But instead of helping them overcome academic shortcomings (real or perceived), the instructor discouraged her and many others from continuing with their initial major of choice.
Universities and colleges offer boutique choices within their large environs, from honors programs to colleges within colleges, to specialty programs in cross-disciplinary areas and research and creative experiences. Yet these are accessible only after a student negotiates several large 'gatekeeper' classes. Megan can give up in frustration or be failed for lack of performance in such classes before she has the opportunity to experience the more interesting opportunities that her institution offers.
That large classroom experience is hardly unique. At the University of California Riverside, we have tracked pass rates of students in three large gateway courses—biology, chemistry, and mathematics. For the freshman class entering the sciences in 2000, the pass rate averaged only about 65 percent. The large percentage of students who fail, understandably, becomes discouraged and may be turned away from their chosen career paths
The national consciousness is not yet fully aware of the gravity of the lack of student success, or its consequences for society. The emphasis of many recent reports is on the need to incentivize more students early on to enter STEM fields of study in college, and then to persist to graduate school or teaching careers.[9] A point that needs to be made is that more students matriculating into higher education does not necessarily translate proportionately to more students successfully graduating – throughput in higher education is a very real concern. The loss of human capital is an issue that should keep all of us awake at night.
Fortunately there is a growing awareness at the federal level about the various factors that impact student success, and solutions are starting to emerge. Recently President Bush used his State of the Union address to call for an American Competitiveness Initiative, requesting $136 million over 10 years to increase investments in research and strengthen science and math education. And in its report, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm,"[10] a committee of the National Academies recommended an increase in America’s talent pool by "vastly improving K-12 science and mathematics education."
The University of California and the California State University system already have joined forces with K-12, community colleges, other universities, and industry to improve the preparation of science and mathematics teachers in our state. UC's California Teach program has the goal of quadrupling the number of graduates who go on to teach K-12 science and mathematics by 2010, annually providing California with more than 1,000 additional, highly qualified math and science teachers. Cal State aims to double its current output of qualified math and science teachers to 1,500 annually. The Academies' report advocates a federal program that would grow 10,000 science and math teachers to educate 10 million minds.
And let's not overlook the nation's 1,150 community colleges, serving more than 6.5 million students. The importance of this cannot be overstated. A recent report by the National Academy of Engineering[11] showed that, in 1999 and 2000, 40 percent of the students who received Bachelor's and Master's degrees in engineering had attended community colleges. We must do more to take full advantage of the contribution made by community colleges.
Initiatives addressing the science of teaching and learning at the university level are critical. Teaching methodologies should be redesigned to nurture and cultivate the young scientific detective, the new social policy change agent, and the budding philosopher and humanist. Nobelist Richard Schrock told his UCR audience that he chose our campus for his undergraduate experience because he could immediately do hands-on research with faculty. A recent UC study finds that students who report more faculty contact and greater exposure to faculty research are more satisfied with their university experience than those who had less such contact.[12] We can learn by listening—and responding—to our students.
We must increase awareness at all universities of a rigid and exclusive – and sometimes outdated – curriculum, and amend it to be more attuned to the background and experiences our new diversity of students brings with them to college. Today’s student is likely to bring to the university classroom a much different background and set of experiences than the student of thirty years ago. Students today are technology savvy, results oriented, and career focused. Yet many also come from non-English speaking homes or bilingual homes and are the first in their families to seek a higher education. Notably, in that same UC study, survey responses indicated that students from disadvantaged backgrounds or who were in the first generation in their families to attend college were more likely to be academically engaged than their more advantaged counterparts.[13] So, we have sure signs that we have their attention to start with; the question is how do we keep it? Especially when dealing with gateway courses taught in large classes.
A number of experiments are underway nationwide to teach large classes differently, to employ technology in more interesting ways, and to evaluate and modify the core curriculum to respond to the needs of new faces in our classrooms. Among the methods being tried to improve large group instruction is collaborative learning, which employs strategies to break large classes into smaller, more interpersonal activities allowing more student involvement and inter-student exchange – both proven effective in promoting knowledge retention. Also being used are team presentations, breaking up the length of lecture per topic and bouncing the subject matter between two or more instructors to keep both speaker and audience more focused and alert.[14] And technology is providing additional ways to redesign the classroom to promote live interaction or even obviate lectures altogether by placing all class materials on-line. Student groups led by a teaching assistant "coach" with mini-lectures as needed, and "virtual classrooms" that offer student-to-student and student-to-faculty computer teleconferencing, are among other technology-driven experiments.[15]
There are those who fear that electronic contact with students will discourage the necessary personal interaction; however, the UC Survey of 7000 students revealed that students use e-mail to supplement their contact with instructors, not to supplant it. Those stating that they contacted instructors frequently by e-mail also acknowledged frequent personal contacts. Those indicating rare communications by e-mail also stated that their personal contacts, too, were limited.[16]
Another factor to consider is the application process itself. For example, are college application and admission practices turning away would-be S&E majors? Look at how tightly guarded the engineering programs are in our large public universities. High school students age 17 applying to these institutions have to know that (a) they want to be engineers (most have never taken an engineering course in high school) and (b) exactly what kind of engineer they want to be (mechanical, electrical, chemical, materials, and so forth) – again, without education about these differences. If they fail to apply to a specific engineering program, choosing instead "undecided," they may find it very difficult to transfer into an engineering major at a later time because of a rigid curriculum which has few or no entry points.
We should examine admission practices like this that may curb our objective of exposing a student to a broad education and many career options. One solution might be to admit all students into a general, core curriculum, and give them the opportunity to look around and be exposed to different subject matter before deciding on a major. For the most demanding disciplines, engineering included, we need to provide multiple entry points for students, allowing more time for those who enter academically under-prepared.
Another promising solution is summer bridge programs that help a student develop strong learning skills, while at the same time exposing him or her to a variety of programs and experience. At the University of California Riverside, we offer a FastStart Summer Academy, aimed at students interested in the health sciences, which has proven highly successful. FastStart targets socio-economically and/or educationally disadvantaged students, many of them underrepresented minorities. It provides a five-week, intensive residential program offering preparatory classes, study groups, peer counseling, and social activities to develop their sense of camaraderie. FastStart students taking gateway courses have pass rates of 83 to 93 percent, as opposed to the 65 percent rate I mentioned earlier. However, because these kinds of programs require additional funding, they presently are available only to a limited cohort.
UCR also offers freshman discovery seminars to help students explore their options – one unit courses on any and every topic intended to expose students to subjects they might not otherwise study, while teaching them to think critically.
In truth, however, the single most important agent of change is the faculty, whose commitment to student success and innovation in teaching is essential if Megan and Raoul are to succeed. And succeed they must!
There are roles for every faculty member to affect education. For example,
* For neuroscientists and behavioral scientists: How does Raoul learn? Information technology and other entrepreneurial approaches can help deliver education in new ways and perhaps overcome the devastating phenomenon of the large, impersonal classroom.
* For artists and media specialists: How do we frame the appeal of both art and technology – as well as learning in general -- to our students, to Megan, revealing its truth, its beauty, its excitement?
* For faculty and researchers in colleges of education: Can we enhance the training of teachers of science and math by ensuring that they get research experiences in the sciences? How can we better measure student learning?
* For teachers of history: What are the stories that bring to life the colorful personalities who changed the course of the world through philosophy, the arts, and scientific discovery?
* For teachers in the humanities and languages: How do we address through classroom innovation the U.S.’s need for culturally competent workers in all sectors, and language specialists for particular defense and security needs?
* For professors of science and engineering: How do we develop more research experiences for students to make science tangible and personal? Can such experiences start in the freshman or sophomore year?
* For all faculty: How do we create classrooms that foster cross-talk between the disciplines and encourage students to address the most fundamental of questions? Or the most important national challenges?
What is student success really about? It's about curiosity, wonder, immersion in subject, and the belief that Raoul can be not only a funnel for knowledge, but can become its fountainhead.
For three years I have been teaching a freshman class called "The Search for Life in the Universe." It's a focus on one of humankind’s fundamental questions. The class provides an opportunity to weave together the laws of physics, the wonder of the cosmos, the tools of paleobiology, the principles of genetics, the concepts of chemistry, and the joy of exploration.
I tell my students that I would never have guessed three decades ago, when I started studying science, that the resolution to that fundamental question would have advanced so far, with:
* Discovery in the last decade of about 160 planets orbiting nearby Suns – not pale blue dots with green splotches on them, but evidence nonetheless that solar systems are widespread;
* Discovery, also relatively recently, of extremophiles – organisms living in extreme conditions on our own planet – signaling that, in principle, life could thrive in hostile environments beyond Earth;
* Sequencing of the genome of so many creatures, including us, which is illuminating the picture of what makes creatures distinct, as well as identifying the common ancestors of the smallest living things;
* Deciphering the geologic and fossil record of our planet to understand the major catastrophic changes on the Earth which may have affected the history of life on the planet.
Do we impart to students a sense of the pace of discovery? A sense that knowledge is not stagnant, but evolves continually?
I tell my students that the flood of discoveries expanding our understanding of the origin of life and the search for life elsewhere continues unabated. Take just the last three years, from the time when these students started taking SAT tests as high school juniors until the present, their freshman year:
* Two rovers with cameras, scoops, and analyzers have been deployed on Mars and discovered small gullies, perhaps etched by running water;
* Last winter the Cassini Satellite, newly arrived in Saturn’s neighborhood, deployed a probe onto a moon called Titan. The images sent back to us reveal seabeds and river channels carved by liquid methane. Billions of years before cyanobacteria created free oxygen in the air on Earth, setting the course for life to evolve, methane secreted by more primitive bacteria insulated our planet. Is Titan like a cold, early Earth before life forms emerged? What can we learn from this cold moon about the evolution of our own planet and life itself?
* In the last year or so new planetary-like objects with strange names like Sedna and Xena have been discovered orbiting our Sun. Xena may be the same size as Pluto but orbits the Sun three times farther out. What a wonder to know that the extended solar system is replete with millions or more icy, stony objects, some mere specks and others large enough to have their own moons orbiting them.
* And during our class this year, a satellite called Stardust came back to Earth after 7 years collecting dust from a comet and from its journey through space. The dust may be pristine material present at the formation of the solar system 4.6 BYA. Might space debris pummeling the early Earth have carried the ingredients for life? What could be more intellectually exciting than to consider and debate this question?
Who is making these discoveries? I inform my students that many are young, of college or graduate student age – like them, like Megan and Raoul. I try to show them that they have access to discovery.
As a student studying physics decades ago, what I learned about the practice of science from working with my professors were four things, things that motivated me to be a scientist:
* First, questions today that seem far reaching, even foolish, have the possibility to be addressed in our lifetime with invention and application;
* Second, every new discovery generates new hypotheses and concepts for exploration; improved tools are likely to reveal still more discoveries;
* Third, what we don't know covers vastly more territory than what we do know, and even areas of science that one thinks initially are "all sewn up" reveal, when examined closely, gaping holes in understanding. In truth, humankind knows very little about the most important of questions regarding the universe, the planet, and life itself;
* Fourth, even I as a student could make a discovery! I made one, small in scope but advancement in knowledge nevertheless – a discovery which led to further questions about the behavior of matter in extreme conditions of gravity and magnetism. In the moment of my own small discovery, I felt I had access to the universe.
How accessible is the universe for Megan, Raoul, and the majority of students filling our university classrooms today? Do they arrive at the knowledge that there is no 'final' frontier, that the universe yields its secrets only as a reward to those who actively explore it? Not known because not looked for – a line from the poet T.S. Eliot. What would happen if every student believed that she or he could be the one to turn over a rock in a rain forest or explore a hot fissure in the sea floor and find a new species? To look into the sky aided by advanced optics and become the first person on Earth to spy a new world orbiting our Sun?
As administrators, we struggle with metrics for student success. Some things we can quantify: years to graduation; GPA, GRE or MCAT scores for some; awards won; jobs of interest secured. Some of us send questionnaires to recent alumni attempting to get a handle on the ineluctable. "Good to great?" we ask. Rate your experience at your alma mater.
I recommend a few different questions for that questionnaire to all the Raouls who attend our schools: Were you challenged to think? Were you challenged to invent? Were you challenged to link knowledge across disciplines (give an example)? Were you challenged to explain your knowledge and your ideas clearly (how and where)? Were you challenged to challenge commonly held views – tell us about one belief that you questioned and the outcome? Were you challenged to take charge of your future, to envision a different future from the one you imagined as an entering student (how and when did this happen)? Such questions could frame a new approach to instruction.
In the December 15 editorial in Science magazine, Donald Kennedy and Thomas Cech[17] advocate that when scientists step out of the lab into the classroom, they should think and act scientifically. Scientists, they argue, should find out what students already know and tune their methods accordingly to teach better, and apply good technology (as they would good tools in their labs) to enhance the learning experience. Other disciplines, I must point out, also could benefit from this model. They announced that each month of 2006 Science and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute will collaborate to showcase innovative education ideas—such as new approaches to teaching, especially in large lecture classes, and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching.
There is much national focus now on a renewed federal investment in basic research, and science and math teaching and education. A renewed focus on student success at our colleges and universities addresses our own responsibility within the universities for the public interest. It is part of the solution that could help reinvigorate the public’s appreciation of higher education as a place to grow, to dream, to be creative, to think – a place of opportunity. Is this to be a year of great ideas? Perhaps this will counter a year of sleepless nights! [18]
[1] US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey 2004
[2] NCES, 2005, Enrollment in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2002 and Financial Statistics, Fiscal Year 2002, NCES 2005 – Total enrollment was 17, 035,000 at time of survey.
[3] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, Spring 2004.
[4] Science, U.S. Competitiveness: Summit Lists Ways--But Not Means--To Strengthen Science, J. Mervis, 16 December 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5755, p. 1752
[5] For a contrasting view, see Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate: Placing the United States on a Level Playing Field with China and India, Duke University, Master of Engineering Management Program, December 2005.
[6] NSF Indicators 2004, Chapter 2. Higher Education in Science & Engineering, Table 2-33;
[7] The Quiet Crisis: Falling Short in Producing American Scientific and Technical Talent, Dr. Shirley A. Jackson, BEST report, 2002
[8] Friedman, Thomas L., The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2005
[9] See Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, National Academies Press, 2005; and National Defense Education and Innovation Initiative: Meeting America’s Economic and Security Challenges in the 21st Century, Association of American Universities, January 2006
[10] Ibid.
[11] Enhancing the Community College Pathway to Engineering Careers, National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council, 2005
[12] Center for Studies in Higher Education, Learning and Academic Engagement in the Multiversity: Student Experience in the Research University—21st Century (WERU21) Project, June 2004.
[13] Ibid., p. 31
[14] Smith, Karl A., Enhancing Large Classes with Active and Cooperative Learning, Michigan State University, “Active Learning and Inclusive Teaching” – 10th Annual Summer Institute on College Teaching and Learning, August 2005
[15] Seymour, Elaine, Tracking the Processes of Change in US Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology. Science Education, 86:79-105. 2001.
[16] Center for Studies in Higher Education, Ibid, p. 27-29.
[17] Science, Editorial (D. Kennedy and T. Cech, 16 Dec. 2005, p.1741)
[18] Additional Sources and suggested reading:
The Knowledge Economy: Is the U.S. Losing Its Competitive Edge? Task Force of the Future of American Innovation, February 2005
The Quiet Crisis: How Education is Failing America, Peter Smith, Anker Publishing 2004; reviewed in University Business, Sept. 25, 2005
Ahead of the Curve, Dr. Shirley A. Jackson, Educause Review,Vol 39 #1, p. 10-18 Jan/Feb 2004
President’s Column: Getting Serious About Science, Stanford Magazine, J. Hennessy, p. 6 Nov/Dec 2004
CP Snow: Bridging the Two Cultures Divide, D. Barash, Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 25, 2005, p. B10
Ferment and Change: Higher Education in 2015, D. Yankelovich, Ibid. P. B6
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