by Kristin Walker-Donnelly and Tony W. Cawthon
There is nothing like a worldwide crisis to provide perspective. But even before COVID-19 and its disruption of higher education, the timing of the new book Higher Education’s Road to Relevance: Navigating Complexity by Susan Ambrose and Laura Wankel (Jossey-Bass) was important and relevant. As the opening of the book reads, “This is a pivotal moment in higher education,” a sentiment supported over the last few months of webinars, online articles, or virtual meetings with colleagues. As campuses swiftly modified their operations, the statement could not be more accurate. Ambrose and Wankel’s words demand not only honest reflection but a call to action with purpose and urgency. They challenge those involved with higher education to review how work can be done differently and more relevantly in these uncertain times.
The authors acknowledge higher education’s place between tradition and innovation by making the call for higher education to look beyond itself to remain relevant. Housing professionals can easily identify opportunities to examine the philosophies of operations, learning, staffing models, and more, regardless of institutional type, size, or geographic location. As the authors articulate, for higher education to remain relevant, it must hold itself more accountable and must regain public trust that has been compromised by financial missteps, challenges to free speech, legal and ethical concerns (especially related to sexual assault), poor leadership, inadequate preparation of graduates for the world of work, and numerous other examples.
Higher Education’s Road to Relevance contains four complex and detailed chapters offering insights on how higher education must transform itself to remain relevant and embrace forthcoming change. The first chapter provides the context for a call to change and extensive discussion on the public’s concerns about several components of higher education. Some of the data-informed concerns include return on investment, persistence and graduation rates, career readiness, political and social challenges, and competition and confusion in the marketplace.
The authors also explore the massive changes in employment due to globalization, automation, the gig economy, and the increasing diversity of workplaces. Finally, they raise the question of how learners’ needs or styles are changing, what methods different learners prefer, and who the learners of today are. The authors caution against interpreting their review of public concerns as pessimistic and hope that their broad overview helps ensure that readers understand these concerns before connecting with colleagues to develop cross-functional ideas and strategic plans for addressing these concerns.
To build on the notion of hope and opportunity, the book’s second chapter focuses on making the most of complexities by helping learners develop in ten areas that speak to the nature of the evolving world. These skills include addressing the world’s large-scale challenges, responding to uncertainties and ambiguities, owning one’s career development, learning to work with robots, and designing balanced, healthy lives. The detail the authors go into with each skill is helpful in connecting how different parts of institutions can contribute to achieving these outcomes while remaining true to their missions. The authors also note that there are several lists of skills or competencies that can be beneficial for students to learn and use after graduating.
The third chapter examines how institutions can help learners achieve these ten outcomes through a variety of curricular and cocurricular experiences. The initial portion of the chapter challenges the perception of higher education’s purpose and conveys the need to balance the pursuit of knowledge with job preparedness. The second section encourages readers to use research on how people learn, the intersection between learning and development, and helping individuals become self-directed learners. The authors offer mechanisms to alter strategies by being flexible, enhancing experiential learning, and capitalizing on creative partnerships. Finally, they stress the importance of aligning human and financial resources as well as increasing efficiencies and quality in processes, technology, and policies. Ambrose and Wankel carefully assert that not every institution can or should employ all of their suggestions, nor is there one single approach for success. To develop their course of action, readers must consider institutional context, mission, priorities, and stakeholders.
The book’s fourth chapter brings everything together by discussing how to embrace and sustain reflection and change in order to remain relevant. The role of individuals and groups of leaders in creating a climate for innovation is vital to implementing any plans. Embracing disruption, systems thinking, design thinking, and transformational leadership can help create action plans, enhance buy-in, and foster creative problem-solving. Ambrose and Wankel call for eliminating administrative bloat by examining redundancies and duplications and addressing perpetuated gaps in access and success. If institutions and their leaders consider applying these approaches, they can continually monitor and respond to the changing landscape while ensuring that students are ready to embrace the complex challenges of their communities and the world.
One of the book’s strengths is the authors’ use of data, reports, and studies to support their call for higher education’s evolution and transformation. After each chapter, there are pages of resources practitioners can leverage when helping to promote change and engage in meaningful and transformative dialogue. By partnering with academic affairs colleagues, housing professionals have embraced their role in student learning; they have led the development of learning communities, established faculty-in-residence programs, and provided space for learning to occur. As such, housing professionals are integral in facilitating discussions about determining and communicating relevance and contributions to learning. This book would be an excellent book club selection as it provides opportunities for all housing and residence life stakeholders to understand how they must do better in the delivery of programs and services. It would also be a great resource for student affairs divisions engaged in the strategic planning process, providing a foundation and philosophy to guide that process.
The good news is, as Ambrose and Wankel write, “we have some time to be thoughtful and purposeful about our transformation.” However, many would argue that in the age of COVID-19, higher education and campus housing are confronting new levels of complexities and the public’s increasing interest in their return on investment. In other words, the time to be thoughtful and purposeful is now.
Kristen Walker Donnelley, Ph.D., is the director of assessment for the division of student affairs at Clemson University. Tony Cawthon, Ph.D., is the director of graduate studies for the Clemson University College of Education.
