Diversity Presents Opportunity for Higher Ed

Another topic that follows the future of education theme and that college and university educators must grapple with is diversity.

The Ontario government suggests that 70% of jobs will require post-secondary education by 2013. This upward trend is likely not shocking to very many people, but if you think about it colleges and universities have gone through quite a dramatic evolution over the past 50 years.

Up to the middle of the 20th century university enrollment was much lower and colleges did not exist in Ontario. Centennial College was Ontario's first college and it opened in 1966. In the type of environment that existed 50 years ago it would have been very difficult for most students to go to university. Students that grew up in a background with some advantages, such as parents that attended university or a family with a higher income, stood a much greater chance of being able to continue their education beyond high school.

Today, in our knowledge based economy it is now generally accepted that a person's chances of being successful increase if they attend college or university. The expansion of higher education has meant students from very different backgrounds are participating in college and university. As a result our campuses are much more diverse today then 50 years ago on many measures. This leads me to wonder if we are taking full advantage of this opportunity to educate our students about diversity in its many forms.

I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and one part has troubled me. Gladwell acknowledged that he struggled as well. In chapter three Gladwell describes his experience with the Implicit Association Test (IAT). In this test participants are given a list of words and asked to place each word in one of two catagories. The catagories are labelled with a pair of words. In Blink one of the examples had Male or Career as one category and Female or Family as the other category. In the real test, participants are timed on how long it takes them to place each word in the list in one of the two catagories. Changing the word pairings leads to different results which brings me to the part that has troubled me.

A second example in Blink used the following two catagories: European American or Bad and African American or Good. The reader was then asked to place the following words in one of these two categories: hurt, evil, glorious, wonderful and so on. Pictures were also used. The word pairings were then changed to European American or Good and African American or Bad and the reader was asked to catagorize the same list of words and pictures again. My experience matched Gladwell's in that I was able to catagorize the words faster when the European American/Good and African American/Bad were paired.

Part of Gladwell's explanation for this outcome is that "we live in North America, where we are surrounded every day by cultural messages linking white with good." He also quotes Mahzarin Banaji, one of the IAT researchers at Harvard University, "You don't choose the make positive associations with the dominant group. But you are required to. All around you, that group is being paired with good things. You open the newspaper and you turn on the television, and you can't escape it."

In trying to understand this phenomenon I have had many thoughts, such as:

• How can this information be used to help train our student leaders?
• What systems or processes can we alter to benefit a greater number of our students?
• What can be done so all students feel that they belong to their college or university community?

Answers to these questions are certainly not easily found, but post-secondary education has evolved to include much diversity and the IAT points out that our past decisions may have been biased.

2 Million Minutes + 2 Million Minutes

A few months back I discovered this trailer on YouTube. It compares six students that are about to graduate from high school - a male and female student in the US, India and China. The title of the documentary is 2 Million Minutes which is based on the number of minutes in a high school student's life.

I duplicated the documentary's title in this post to point out that an undergraduate degree is also based on a four year period of time.

All six students plan to attend PSE and the film makers do a real nice job in comparing and contrasting the different cultures and student's expectations. Students in each of these cultures certainly spend their time in different ways. One of the (not so) underlying messages is that the US (and by default Canada) cannot take their position in the world for granted.

I would encourage anyone working in education to check out the trailer, watch the video and use it to start discussions with students. You can can also visit the 2 Million Minutes website to find out more. Enjoy.

Predicting the Future :-)

I love trying to predict the future and since my field of work is education this summary article called Compressing Stephen Downes interests me a great deal. I've been following Stephen Downes for a few weeks now. His area of focus tends to be online learning, but this article about his thinking is applicable beyond those boundaries. For those of you with more time on your hands here is a link to the full article: The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On

A random thought that I had a year or so ago that has resurfaced a few times is: How will online learning impact student life? If you know me the reason I'm interested in this question is obvious - I work in student life ;-)

I ask this question because as everyone involved in education gets more comfortable with online learning our practices will obviously move more heavily in that direction. My concern (for more then my job) is that their will be less face-to-face interaction. Without this type of interaction I worry that the ability of future students to practice their communication skills in more ways then text messaging, emails, discussion boards, blogs etc will diminish. With less experience at communicating face-to-face I worry that their relationships will not be as deep.

That said, I realize that online learning and interactions can evolve in ways we simply do not understand or appreciate now. For instance, social networking was not an option 10 years ago and I believe it has a great deal of potential to enhance the level of online communication.

Beware of Social Networking?

This Inside Higher Ed article titled Frenemies on Facebook highlights a few issues for students and schools that need solutions. Basically, a marketing company created Facebook groups that targetted students. Seems reasonable. Problem was that the company acted as if they were a school and failed to mention that they were a marketing company. Fortunately, the hoax was uncovered and the company admitted that they "crossed the line."

This story points out that students (& parents) must be aware of where they get their information and schools must find ways to share their message in the Web 2.0 environment. With our communications methods changing so rapidly and with everyone, from schools to students to outside companies, having access to the same tools to share information widely it will not be easy to find solutions. In my work I'm trying to understand how we can use social networking to enhance the sense of community at our school. Any suggestions?

Dec 21 Readings

Here are some readings that may be of interest:

• Universities may face free market overhaul - This is a report commissioned by the Australian gov't to assess higher education down under. It reminds me of Ontario's Rae report from a few years ago.
• Teaching by Lying: Professor Unveils 'Last Pirate' Hoax - A creative way to teach, but the approach pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable in higher ed.
• A New Look at the Impact of Diversity - Inside Higher Ed interviews the author of The Diversity Challenge: Social Identity & Intergroup Relations on the College Campus. Two interesting findings are highlighted, which make sense as a concept, but might be harder to implement: (1) In student housing efforts should be made to places students together that are from different racial/cultural background and (2) Ideally support for groups that segregate students into racial/cultural groups should be eliminated, or at least slowed down (eg Greek societies or minority student organizations).
• Facebook vs Google - This article is not directly about higher ed, but I thought I'd include it get people think about the ways higher ed can connect to these growing services.
• We have to write the rest of the song - I discovered Karl Fisch last year when I saw this video and I now follow his blog. Fisch is a grade school teacher, but this article about the importance of reflection applies to both grade school and college or university.
  

Dec 16 Readings

Here are a few brief and not so brief readings to ponder:

• BBC: 'Aspiration gap' for white poor
• Stats Can: Study: Leaving postsecondary education without graduation
• The Nat'l Center for Public Policy and Higher Education: Measuring up 2008: A National Report Card on Higher Education
• eBook: The Tower & The Cloud

Private University... Not so much

Quest University in British Columbia is one of Canada's first, if not first, private university. Maclean's On-campus blog certainly does not paint it a pretty picture in this posting: Public vs private universities in Canada

Introducing some variety by way of a different model for a post-secondary institution to follow should be a good thing... in time. Quest University has not had a great start, but as long as we learn from their experience then we should all benefit. Let's hope someone is studying the Quest experience!

PSE Mergers?

I cannot recall hearing of two (or more) post-secondary schools merging together into one new entity. According to this BBC article it could become reality in the UK: Uni and college in merger talks

Colleges & Universities are not known for being efficiently run organizations, but searching for answers through faculty's research or through a student's self discovery as they develop should not be measured against an "efficient"yardstick. As such, it will not be easy to find the balance between an efficiently run college or university and a place where students and faculty have the freedom to take some risks to explore.

Bright Future for Ontario College & Universities?

The answer to this question would seem to be a resounding "Yes!" according to this article in the Toronto Star: Could 'mega-region' phoenix rise from economic crisis ashes?