A while back I described a process that we mounted over the summer of 2013 (See: A Visioning Process for the Georgetown of the Future), which was aimed at gathering together faculty, students, and alumni to help envision how Georgetown educational programs might evolve over the coming years to fit best the needs of the 21st century.
We assembled a wonderful group of wise faculty members to help us imagine how we could mount a campus process to seek very wide input to make the effort effective. They quickly steered us away from several ideas. Many thought the faculty had burned out on the “town hall” format of seeking input. Others strongly felt that very abstract, “blue sky” exercises would not be taken seriously by many faculty. There were feelings that their input had often yielded little change. Some believed that many faculty were quite focused on their own scholarly work, their own students, their department and school, and that thinking of the future of the whole university might be too daunting a task. Many believed that they didn’t know enough about what was currently going on at Georgetown.
The goals of the initiative are clear:
- As the current stewards of Georgetown as an institution, the current faculty need to be active in helping it cope with the external influences of declining real family incomes, rising tuition rates, the promise of learning technologies, the rapidly expanding breadth of human knowledge, the need to prepare students for a life of multiple careers, and a host of other pressures.
- We have entered a moment in history of great experimentation in new educational packages, which together are attempting to grapple with those influences above.
- We believe that Georgetown has the possibility of unusual forward progress if the faculty and students were freed to innovate in effective ways in educational program design.
- At the end of this year of visioning, we want to identify some experiments in educational programming that may offer great promise on the issues above.
The committee met with the deans of the main campus schools early in September, to debrief and move the process forward.
There seems to be agreement on the following:
- A university-wide conversation about the future of higher educational programs seems to be desirable.
We are now inviting prominent thinkers on the future of higher education to speak in public lectures and interviews at Georgetown. Some are our colleagues who are thinking deeply about these issues or are involved in radical innovations in educational programming. We are actively inventing other ways to involve students and faculty in the discussions.
- A succinct summary of the “as-is” of Georgetown would be useful.
Where do our students come from; where do they go after Georgetown? How has student demand for different educational activities changed over time? What is the composition of the faculty by field, research activity, teaching duties? How do we compare to other universities on key issues? We will assemble answers to these and other questions, to assist the campus discussion.
- Some identification of the skill-set needed for the 21st leader would be useful.
We expect our graduates to face the need to prepare for multiple careers in their lives. We aspire that they be leaders in a fully connected, global society, with near instant communication abilities and real-time monitoring of key features of life. What skills do they need to prepare them for that world?
- Faculty evaluation of what experimental programs should be mounted is needed.
How could we evaluate our ability to deliver the highest quality experiences for our students in new ways? Can we effectively mount 4 year programs that combine in novel ways BA/BS and MA/MS certification? Could we experiment with more self-paced learning, to change our certification process more to knowledge assessment and less to completion of a pre-specified number of 15-week courses? Do 12-month programs combining work and learning make sense for the future Georgetown student? We will craft specific program proposals for the faculty to evaluate.
All of us at Georgetown lead busy, rewarding lives educating the next generation of global leaders. We hope to mount a broad discussion to assure that those who follow us will enjoy the same lives.
This is an important initiative. I applaud and support it.
I would suggest that the following question be considered in connection with this effort. What is the appropriate role in the future Georgetown of minimally selective programs like those of the School of Continuing Studies/Georgetown Downtown, which the University has greatly expanded in recent years. While admission to all other parts of the University is highly selective, admission to SCS/GTDT programs, by virtue of their continuing education function, is necessarily more open and less rigorous. What are the implications of this dichotomy?
On the one hand, SCS/GTDT type programs provide important benefits. They bring the University much needed revenue. They extend the opportunity of a Georgetown education to a broader public. And if industry and vocationally speciifc programs like those of the SCS’s growing Master of Professional Service offerings are indeed an important part of the emerging educational landscape, they present an opportunity that all colleges and universities must consider.
On the other hand, there are corresponding costs. One of the important components that establishes value of a Georgetown degree is its screening function. By indicating that its holder has survived a highly competitive admissions process, it identifies him or her as one of what David Halberstam famously called “the best and the brightest.” Such value is potentially eroded when an institution attempts to run minimally selective programs along side its traditional highly selective ones.
The stewardship challenge in this regard is to find and maintain an appropriate balance, and should be part of the current discussion.
William A. Kuncik
Glad to see this is underway. A very worthwhile initiative being conducted in very inclusive manner. I look forward to the next update and more detailed plans as they are developed.
Congratulations: glad to see this effort underway and especially glad to see that the focus is on the core of what we do. It’s an object-lesson for other initiatives.
Administrators: like the Cheshire cat they appear and disappear as actors in the drama of our grand transformation. This has been pointed out before (and not just by me). Not clear if this is intentional or not. I’ll speak only for myself and say I am happy to accept a secondary role – I’m here in the service of the educational and research missions, not actually laboring at the coal-face of either – but I feel administrators have something to offer too.
Suggestions for inclusion in the roster of “prominent thinkers”, on subject of globalization in HE: Kris Olds (U. Wisconsin), Philip Altbach (Director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College), Ben Wildavsky (author of “The Great Brain Race” and Fellow at Kauffman Foundation). Also, note that COURSERA has a MOOC starting in January on Globalizing Higher Education and Research for the ‘Knowledge Economy.’
“Near instant communication and real-time monitoring…” It seems to me that the world itself is already preparing them for this, that they are already immersed in it. What is missing is deep reflection, slow reading, a tolerance and even appreciation for learning that is difficult, slow to come, takes a major commitment. Where is the time/space for our students to immerse themselves in a subject, to become experts?
I think this is a great point…. I find it it all too easy to get caught up in cursery, shallow reading and that what is more important is the ability to focus and sit with a text or a problem for a long time.
An issue that might need to be addressed would be the allocation of FTEs in the new BA/MA programs you mention. Currently, the FTEs go to the College until the student graduates from the College. But in our BA/MA program in American Government, some students graduate from the College in December of their fourth year, receiving their MA in August. The College gets their fall tuition even though many of the courses they take in the fall are Master’s level.