Trusteeship - May/June 2020 - 23

the teaching and learning environment in positive ways with
digital tools like virtual reality applications across the whole
curricula.
■	 AI plus big data have also made possible competency-based
online education and digital tutors that enable students to learn
at their own pace and for less cost.
■	 With 70 percent of high school graduates seeking a college education, we should not be surprised that students focus on workplace skills in their college choices.4
■	 A total of 1,694,229 exclusively online students studied at public
and private colleges and universities in 2017, reducing the potential for new on-campus enrollment markets.5
■	 Complex and persistent global issues like climate change, gender
inequality, radical religious conflicts, economic inequality, and
polarized politics around the world do not lend themselves to
single disciplinary solutions.
A 2018 Chronicle of Higher Education report says current Gen
Z's digitally native students "are accustomed to learning by toggling
between the real and virtual worlds....[and] prize project-based
learning and undergraduate research that will hone crucial, marketable skills for life after college."6 This description effectively represents the expectations of many student and adult learners in our
21st-century learning environment. Douglas Thomas and John Seely
Brown's 2011 book title, A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating
Imagination for a World of Constant Change, names this digitally
infused environment. This "new culture of learning" aligns well with
the Association of American Colleges and Universities' (AAC&U)
notion of the "practical liberal arts" that "seeks to empower individuals and prepare them to deal with complexity, diversity, and change."
AAC&U's leadership has claimed that "integrative learning is the
new frontier for 21st century learning,"7 and a good number of faculty and deans of colleges and universities are using "active learning"
and/or "integrative learning" as an organizing principle for their general education programs or overall student learning goals.8
Using AAC&U's "practical liberal arts" as a baseline, I have
argued that the battle between providing students with a "liberal
arts" versus a "professional" education is a false dichotomy.9 Furthermore, the AAC&U's "practical liberal arts" focus seeks to provide a student/learning/outcomes driven paradigm instead of the
typical faculty/teaching/inputs model. Some universities like Carnegie Mellon University have for decades included liberal education
with professional education in a technology-rich learning environment whose main focus is to enhance student learning.
Questions for trustees, administrators, and faculty to ask
together include:
1.	 Do our current academic structures, curricula, and learning
goals provide our students not only depth in their liberal arts

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or professional majors but also holistic, multidisciplinary,
integrative problem-solving skills that we assess?
2.	 What is the best way for us to organize our teaching/learning
resources (i.e., curricula, faculty, student support, etc.) to
enhance student learning in a financially sustainable way?

Strategic Thinking and Planning
Move beyond Best Practices
Mary Marcy provides an excellent illustration of the difference
between best practices and strategic thinking in her 2017 AGB white
paper, The Small College Imperative: From Survival to Transformation. Most colleges and universities are responding to significant
external and internal challenges in episodic and partial ways that
often become "best practices" emulated by others. New on-campus
or online academic programs are added to attract new enrollment
cohorts. Faculty incorporate new materials or technologies into their
classrooms or laboratories or add "active learning" components (e.g.,
undergraduate research, case-based projects, study abroad, etc.)
to some students' college experience. As important as these best
practices are, what is often missing is a systematic effort to focus
these many good practices around an agreed upon, holistic, strategic vision for the institution that provides integrative learning and
complex problem-solving in both the disciplines and general studies
programs for all students-and in a financially sustainable way.
Marcy describes the landscape for small colleges in five operational financial/academic models:
1.	 Traditional Model: The private, traditional liberal arts college
model is where most private colleges began but is now sustainable by only a very few elite colleges with very large endowments and robust application pools. Marcy cites Amherst,
Pomona, Swarthmore, and Williams as examples.
2.	 New American College Model: Marcy says that this group
includes the "vast majority of nonelite small private colleges in
the country" that maintain their liberal arts core and residential
experience but add undergraduate (e.g., nursing or engineering) as well as master's (e.g., MBA) programs. Marcy says of
this group, "So many colleges and universities have now added
graduate and professional programs that there is no longer any
market distinction in doing so." While important to institutional
effectiveness, "best practices" like these typically lead to what
Harvard's Michael Porter calls "competitive convergence"-that
is, a loss of any competitive distinctiveness.
3.	 Distinctive Program Model: Typically, such colleges add a signature academic program to the new American College model.
Here, Marcy includes Agnes Scott College, whose Summit
Program focuses the college's whole institution on providing
women students with global awareness and leadership abilities
in an attempt to improve enrollment and to enhance learning
for all its students.
MAY. JUN. 2020  TRUSTEESHIP  23
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