What is the Purpose of Higher Education in the 21st Century?

it's the microphone on the mic working odd is good morning everyone I know it's it's bright and early people are still gathering breakfast and they can come into the room but I want to get started we have a terrific panel a large panel an important topic and so we are going to jump right in I'm Elliot Gerson with the Aspen Institute and I'm thrilled to have had these five enormous ly distinguished and diverse people up here we have presidents of colleges we have scholars we have business leader and we have a policy maker so I think we'll have an opportunity to talk from a number of perspectives about critical questions about higher education let me just briefly introduce our panel melody Barnes is the director of the Domestic Policy Council in the White House as such she is president obama's chief domestic policy adviser and coordinator on behalf of the white house she was the president's top domestic policy adviser in his presidential campaign before that she was counsel to Senator Edward Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee Claude Steele is Provost of Columbia University where he's a professor of psychology formerly at Stanford he was the director of the Center for comparative studies in race and ethnicity and also the Center for Advanced Study in the behavioral sciences he's the author most recently of whistling Vivaldi and other clues to how stereotypes affect us Sidney Harman is the executive chairman of Harman International a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science trustee of the Aspen Institute he also holds a university-wide chair at the University of Southern California where he is also developing a new academy named the Academy for Polymathic study which is appropriate for someone who is quintessential polymath he's also the rumored buyer of Newsweek but I won't ask him anything about that Eduardo Padron is the president of my I mean Dade College some of you may not realize that miami-dade College is the largest institution of higher education in the United States Time magazine called him one of the country's ten best college presidents he's former chair of the Association of American colleges and universities and cher vice chair of the American College of Education Kim Bottomly for those of you who are up especially early had a chance to hear her on this very stage this morning is of course the president of Wellesley College she was formerly the deputy Provost at Yale very distinguished immuno biologist so she has experience both in a large research laboratory and large research university as well now in a liberal arts college and she also chairs the consortium of financing higher education which is a topic obviously of enormous importance to start I'm going to take a moderators license and just defer the critical question we're going to be addressing on purpose of higher education for a minute because over the last four days we've been in many many panels about the crisis and the terrible problems in K through 12 education and the enormous gap in inequity and opportunity that we have in this country but also not just that the tragic problems but some of the exciting opportunities I I wonder though if if there isn't a warning here and we heard this also at the very first session of the of this first session of the ideas festival when Neil Ferguson reminded the audience that that we once led the world in K through 12 education it's one of the things that that really produced the country that we all that is so successful today but we have fallen and further and further and further behind he then said in the 1920s and 30s the greatest universities in the world were in Germany it's commonly assumed that the greatest universities in the world today are in the United States but he said are we likely to continue being the are grade of having the greatest universities in the world the Chinese are investing enormous lis other countries are also investing tremendously in doing things quite differently so before we turn to purpose I just like to ask anyone on the panel who might like to comment about whether we are perhaps too complacent and whether there is a risk that's something that now leads the world arguably could in fact follow a decline and maybe we'll we'll start with with with you Kim so I think there are two things to say one is that what's the strength of the American system really I think falls into sort of two categories one is that it has to do with the research university model during the Truman era there was a really conscientious decision that federal funds that funded research would be given to universities that are educating the future scientists of the world people who would be the innovators and that decision has really served America as well and that continues and I think we're really on in a very good position on that the other thing that I think that we can be proud of as Americans is that liberal arts education actually is a very American thing I mean you can really kind of wave your flag on this you know people don't really like the word liberal and they don't really like the word part so when you put it together it's hard for a college president to be convincing about how what a great educational model this is but on the other hand it is a great educational model and it's a model that other countries China Germany other places are coming to us to find out how we're doing so I think that's what we do well we have a lot of challenges in higher ed I don't think I could stand up here and say higher ed is you know the best it could ever be there are clearly some challenges I think that most of us would weigh in on affordability how do we keep up to date how do we have access how do we educate the vast majority of our young people in the country these are all major problems that are becoming bigger and bigger problems as we go forward any other panelists at work yes I have to agree with that the fact of the matter is that American higher ed is the envy of the world and everybody's trying to learn from you know how we do it however we have our challenges I feel that in this new knowledge economy globalized society that we live in the world at the universities college and university have played in this country which has been vital and very important has to be extended to more people and I think that's the key because we all realized that we need to provide the same opportunities to the majority of the people of this nation you look at the last century the high school diploma was a benchmark you got a high school diploma and you would be able to join the middle class you would be able to get good jobs buy a home from a car and put your children through school well with a high school diploma today all you can hope to do is flip burgers at a fast food store get minimum wage and stay in the cycle of poverty for the rest of your life if you there was a recent study by Tony Carnevale of Georgetown University that demonstrates that from 1973 to 2008 the number of jobs requiring a post-secondary credential increased from 28% to almost 70 percent and more and more you know you're going to see that in order to for you to have the best possibilities you need to have a college education how do we make that education has being so wonderful accessible to the masses is the key to the future Melik I couldn't agree with you more and I think that sets the stage for the rationale behind the president's two big goals in education with regard to higher education it is to ensure that once again the United States has the greatest proportion of college graduates and I stress graduates in the world we've slipped over the last generation we know now that we are among our peers about seven in terms of the number who are enrolled and were 15th among our peers in terms of the number of students who are graduating from college and we were first a while ago absolutely and I think as president padrone was saying at one point in time a high school diploma was adequate and it is no longer a 50% of the fastest growing jobs in the country are jobs that require a college degree and we know looking out over the future that that it not only will require a college degree but those jobs will require graduate level degree so the competition is only becoming more and more stiff so that goes to the president's first goal and the second goal and I think this goes back to your original question the relationship between K through 12 and higher education the second the second goal is a complete and competitive education from cradle to career so the focus on K through 12 to make sure that our students are prepared for higher education and they don't enter whether it's community college a two-year institution or a four-year institution needing so much remedial work that they are behind the game before they even get started and to ensure that whether when they finish college I mean when they finish high school that they are in fact ready for college or ready for some kind of certification program or ready for a career thank you let let's I mean it sounds though that what we've been hearing are the challenges relating to access and and but we're going to spend much of the rest of our time talking about what actually takes place in American higher education and and the question posed in in the title of this program is purpose and most people believe in many of our panels over the last few days have talked about how the world has fundamentally changed more interconnected certainly the Internet has had profound effects on education you know no longer the large libraries and knowledgeable people exist only in universities they're ubiquitous they're available through Google have the what are the purposes of higher education and have they changed in the 21st century is there a new mission statement for higher education Claude I might be one that would stick to the conventional purposes of of higher education I do realize that at all times one purpose central purpose of higher education is to prepare people for their careers and for their contributions to the larger society so that is that that is central but in my mind there are really three things that are at the heart of what higher education does one I think is at the level of the individual and there I think it's almost I'm a psychologist so maybe I think this way but but I we contribute to the development of the person in a very important way there's a kind of a decentering of the person that happens when you go to college you begin to realize that there are more points of view than the point of view that you've been exposed to they're more kinds of experience that then the kinds of experiences you had and I think that is a fundamental part of of Education and I think it happens most soundly at the level of higher education and I think it's really a foundation you need to begin to take on the challenges of the 21st century in the digital age and the the complexities of life as we go forward here another purpose I think is this role that Kim mentioned earlier of American higher institutions of higher education especially being a part of a system of innovation these really these institutions really are the bedrock of innovation in our society they train people they've been people close to the to the frontiers of knowledge they create new knowledge and they disseminate new knowledge and that is is something as a made our institutions of higher education the kind of powerful things that they are in the world I think this is where our distinction really comes from and then I think thirdly a purpose is that we need educated people to really have the democracy this is a Jeffersonian notion and that if that begins to fall the quality of our democracy begins to fall and the quality of our contributions in the world begin to fall and so I think this too is a major responsibility for for our system of higher education in the country Sydney what can i applaud everything I've heard I I agree in particular with Claude's summary I would like to emphasize an aspect of this material which in my thinking traces back to this illustrious place it is some 35 years ago here at the Aspen Institute that a conference was held the Drude to it the greatest talents of principled thinkers of the day people like Mortimer Adler and Lionel trilling and the like it was titled what an educated person should know I think they had it wrong and I think that for 35 years higher education has been substantially devoted to what an educated person should know and it's paid for for too little attention to how an educated person should learn how to think that's no small difference I come in part from the world of industry nowhere is it more dramatically expressed than there this nation's love affair through its universities of high education it's love affair with specialization we are taught how to be splendid architects how to be splendid physicists and be splendid mathematicians but we are taught them in virtual isolation from everything else in industry encounter time and again men and women who have risen through the ranks and hold positions of serious importance and who live lives of silent temer they know how to do this one thing very well they don't have a ghost of an idea about how the whole system works and they're terrified that someday they're going to be challenged in a fashion that requires them to understand how the whole system works or somewhat worse that the board of directors is going to learn that the only thing I know is this narrow thing I argue and we're hard at work at the University of Southern California which has grown substantially in the last decade in terms of recognition for its educational verities there's a serious effort there to take on this question and that all too self-conscious we titled Academy for Polymathic Studies is directed to that later perhaps I'll say more Thank You Kim so I just want to follow up on that I think I agree with you absolutely I think what what we want to do if we want students to stay in the educational system almost of every level is to inspire them to make them want to be a part of the process and so learning how to think is something they all get excited about they don't they don't get excited about having to memorize a lot of facts I think that's a very important part of Education that we all try to do as part of our jobs in higher education I think we succeeded that reasonably well I would just like to go back to the question of what the purpose is and should it have change in the 21st century and really agree with Claude I think that we do the purpose as it stands is really a very good purpose I think we could broaden the purpose a bit because after all the students today as they go through college will have to enter a workforce and as part of that workforce they're going to have to understand different cultures different religions different values in a way that we didn't have to do when we graduated from college and so really what I think isn't going to be necessaries for us to start thinking about a pedagogical approach that would allow us to educate students for complexity so right now the way it is in college and it was for us I'm sure and for you is it's about the individual so it's about learning who you are and how to how you are how you work in a socially what's your philosophy of life you compete to get into college you compete to get the best grades in college you compete for the awards you compete to go to the graduate school and there's nothing wrong with any of those things I think those things should continue and they're good things to have but in some place you have to the students need to understand that some of the problems that they're going to face out there are going to be problems that are going to require collaboration between people with different expertise and that in order to do that we have think we have to set up a way in colleges and universities to have students be able to understand how to do that kind of work so that they will understand that working in teams working collaboratively listening to other people's viewpoints and coming synthesizing information to come to some sort of point of view is really something that is exciting for them and also something is going to be necessary for them once they go out in the workforce we need to institutionalize that I totally agree with that I think that we need to be gone both teaching and learning more intentional when you look at especially in the predictable 21st the the first quarter of the 21st century with such a volatile work environment where Americans today change jobs eight to nine times within the productive life very different from last century when you would go into a job spend thirty years and retire on that job that's no longer the case so making sure that as students I engage in the learning process making sure that you know we give them the skills and the tools to navigate this new economy and this new society it's crucial and those are things that are enhancements that we desperately need in higher education today in order to really equipped our students to be successful in the new economy I would just want to follow on to that because I I think intrinsic in higher education are the the means of doing some of these things that that scholarship itself is something that scholarship and science come to mind readily as experiences in my own life that showed me that I needed to learn a lot more and that my presuppositions about things were often not right and that you really needed to talk to other people and just the experience of finding that your own preconceptions are not always validated or not always affirmed by people who have different experiences or the the act of scholarship itself just having that experiences that experience creates a kind of curiosity that I think is central to surviving in the kind of world that we're that we're talking about where you need to stay across the life course open to to possibilities and to always consider yourself to be in a learning a learning position and I think that's one of the things that just the experience of scholarship science I also think the diversity of American higher education the increasing diversity is another way that that happens you really come in direct contact with people who have different points of view a globalized experience which is which is can be part of higher education the all these things conspire to to create this this appetite but how practically I mean we all agree we want the critical thinking is important learning environment you know innovation and getting people to think in different ways but as a college president how how do you how do you do that I mean well you do it in sprinkled magic dust or do you hear why are certain core you know requirements make sure they take foreign languages the kinds of things we used to do when when we were in college how do you create that kind of environment is sure that over the four years your students are there that they come out thinking critically and they're prepared for eight or nine different kinds of jobs in their life it's so important that we inspire students on some front I think that that's really key and with that comes a sense of confidence and their own ability a desire to continue to learn so how do you do it you know so it's going to be different for different individuals it's gonna be different depending what the background of an individual is so you do in some ways have to sprinkle that magic dust you have to offer opportunities let me give you one example so last year and I give it to you because of a student response to this particular example last year would at Wellesley College we set up a new Institute for global affairs which we named after one of our famous alums Madeleine Korbel Albright and she was a very much of a participant in Norwich what of our trustee that's right so it's it's kind of nice it's talking about it here it's a three week short course so it's really about educating for complexity students were selected to be involved that we're interested part of that you know the head course we're going to have internships but part of that is they had to do a research project and at that particular point it was on you Millennium Goals and they had to work in teams and so the first week of this I asked them how are you doing and they both all of the students that we'd love this we're able to interact with students that are majoring in different things that have different expertise we've never been able to do that before the second week I asked them Oh how's it going and one of the groups said oh it's going great we're working on our project and and remember the project the end of the project the results of the team effort had to be presented to Madeleine Albright herself so this was pretty intimidating for college students so the students said you know this is really hard to do working in these teams and coming up with some sort of consensus about what we want to present and I said well well why is it hard and they go well you know at Wellesley you choose us and you say you want us all to be leaders but we don't really know how to be followers and and that experience was really important for the students and so when I talked to them after the Institute was over and said how was the experience absolutely to 100 percent of them said this was the best experience they have ever had in college so there's lots of things you can do like that but I think capturing their imagination is really an important force to another kind of question there we've we've also been hearing a lot about how we're falling behind the rest of the world especially and you said this in science technology engineering mathematics but but Sydney you with an extraordinary career in technology as an innovator are very fond of saying if I want to get a manager I want to find a poet what what do you mean by that and is there some ink incongruity there and you know you either the trends in majors in colleges I don't know what it's like at Wellesley but many colleges some liberal arts colleges actually have to put quotas on certain sort of pre professional majors because people aren't majoring in English and history and philosophy and religion you know they're they're majoring in things that are highly practical highly focused and maybe losing some of the folk liberal arts Sydney I mean will you you do say that I've heard you say that what do you mean I say it often I mean it always the arc of history is defined in large measure by a group of polymaths people who mastered mastered is an an adequate verb who synthesized number of disciplines you can trace it from Aristotle and Omar Khayyam through magnificent Leonardo and our own Jefferson in Franklin and Goethe and Einstein and Bucky fuller every one of them assumed this concentration on a single narrow discipline every one of them understood that each of these disciplines informed and illuminated and to use the word I loved inspired the others innovation does not arise out of spontaneous combustion kids don't come to college hoping that in fact somebody will sprinkle this magic powder on them and one I will invent the iPad that material has to be germinated in rich soil the purpose of the 21st century research university should be if nothing else to enrich that soil and the way it seems to me and I argue for this and I have persuaded the provost and the president-elect of the USC that it's worth investing significantly in it the way to do it is to sell to celebrate to recognize and celebrate the value in breaking away breaking out of this mold of specialization learn how to do this one thing very well but let it be informed and illuminated and enhanced by an awareness of the others the architect who understands anthropology is likely to design a house people want to live in and I could go on at some length the reason that I've said get me some poets is managers is that our poets are our original systems thinkers they observe the complexity of the universe they distill that complexity into a sum into a sublime expression I cannot imagine a better definition for management than to be able to review the complex and distill it into something that is that sublime and interminable that's why I look for people if you will with the poetic mind well I hate to move from sublimity to sort of very practical considerations and you talk about investments in higher education let's talk about the costs of higher education as as my wife is here and we have four children in college at the moment and so I say something I'm acutely aware of belly what I mean affordability and access what what can what what are the president's views about this what are what are your views and then I want to ask some other people about questions about affordability and why it is that you know higher education costs are going up far faster than inflation far higher even than health care inflation and this poses a huge problem what could the government do about that absolutely and we see this as a problem that has solutions that have to come from multiple avenues one of the things that we've done thus far and it happened at the same time health care reform passed so as everyone was celebrating that victory it kind of came under the radar screen but in the reconciliation bill we also included higher edge patient reform and that was the culmination of a battle that's been fought for decades to reform the way that we fund and try to deal with cost higher education costs from going on for many years so one by shifting from the current form of Student Aid to a direct lending system that allowed us to save about sixty eight billion dollars some of that went into deficit reduction but a big portion of that went into strengthening and enhancing the Pell System and that's the way many low-income and middle-income students are able to go to college and ensuring that the amount of aid that they receive goes from paying for about 30% of their college education to a greater proportion of their college education and some instances if they're going to community colleges ensuring that college is almost almost free for them and also that we're going to be able to sustain that over a longer period of time so increasing the wart strengthening the system also including what is known as income based repayment and that is a system that's already been in place that takes some of them the debt load off of the shoulders of families and students right now I think the average student loan burden for students is about $23,000 and if you're coming from a low income or middle income family and you're just starting out and you're already sitting and saddled with $23,000 worth of debt that's a huge burden what the IBR program does is what we were able to do is expand that so that over after about 10 years or 20 years depending on whether depending on whether or not you go into public service that loan is that loan debt loan is is forgiven and obviously as I was saying if you go into public service that relief is granted a little bit earlier and in addition to that one of the things we touched on earlier was community colleges you know this is community colleges consist of the greatest proportion of our higher education system touches about 60% or more of American families it's been an area where the federal government has had very limited limited footprint but is incredibly important in providing access there allows a number of students who want to start at a community college or see community college as a way to gain skills that they can take into the workplace or transfer to a four-year institution and perhaps do it more affordably it provides a pathway for them that we were able to do that back in March to get a toehold in there it isn't as large a footprint as we would have wanted but at least it's a beginning but that's only part of it as I said this is it this is a two-part problem the other part is the work that we want to do and engaging with university presidents and many people have been doing innovative things around the country to drive down the cost but we recognize we're talking about doing this at a time when state budgets are really really tight and the proportion of State dollars going to many colleges and universities is going down there for driving up tuition and fees and that is creating that's creating a problem that families are looking at and they don't know how to deal with right now I want to come to it wardo about but because you've been known for really remarkable success and taking low-income students from low-income backgrounds first generation and giving them access to quality higher education but before that they do that I want to put Kim on the spot and ask you why well she's probably what fifty thousand dollars a year all considered roughly you're going why good question so first of all yes we are just that is the sticker price very few students pay that amount of money we have a very rich and very generous financial aid program so the average cost is closer to a thirty thousand dollars and for students who come from families that make less than $60,000 they basically get all their subsidized and those students are come from families from sixty to a hundred thousand have a quite a reduced tuition so there is a kind of a recognition by Wellesley it's really a long-standing history from our founder who who actually said is wanted as much calico as velvet at Wellesley to really support students so we can have the best students anyway didn't matter if those students could pay or not so we think we'd do a good job of that nevertheless I will say as a college president I'll get out there and say in front of these all the Saudis that were too expensive and that we need to look at why we're so expensive and why our expenses are being driven up I think most of us that have large endowments and whose tuitions are fairly high on the surface of it although most of us provide significant financial aid our thinking about what what we can do just in terms of helping with the president's initiative to try to make education more accessible to all individuals I think it's really going to be a difficult picture because we can certainly look at our costs you know our operating budgets are pretty simple minded you know we have two sources of income from Wells Lee's purpose we have our endowment and we have tuition other schools have research incumbent actually doesn't cover the cost of the research itself so you know it's all about where we spend our money most of it's on salaries most of it's on faculty and faculty are really critical to good education so it's a complicated thing to figure out and when you think about that when you think about and we only educate the small liberal arts colleges probably you know much less than 10% of the population of students so the real question is what's happening the schools are educating most of the students in terms of what their budgets look like and for public schools it's a problem they don't have much of an endowment to help with their costs and their states are not being able to provide money they have only other one of those right only California's higher education one of the greatest public education systems in the world that it's in Christ that's right and the only source of money is tuition and so the only place they can go is to raise tuition so I think we're seeing a significant problem in this country for for those institutions who are so important in educating the vast number of our students well in terms of large numbers at wardo you really do a remarkable job what what what are your views and well first of all what how did how is Miami day26 as it is with providing access and then success not just access because another issue well he talked about - it's it's one thing to be admitted to college it's not a thing to graduate well let me first comment on the issue of cost you know in fact for public institutions that's a responsibility of the states and you look at funding for universities and colleges in all state throughout the nation in general for the last 30 to 40 years the amount of money invested in today's institutions have been decreasing so it's not because of the recession that we're going through this issue of underfunding of Education has been there for at least 30 years now you take an institution like mine where by state statute were supposed to the students supposed to pay 25 percent of their education well the fact of marlott today they are paying 52 percent and the state is only providing 48 percent has been decreasing every year I'm working today with 15 percent less per dollars per FTE than 3 years ago in spite of a tremendous increase in enrollment so yes the issue of cost and the key to our success is being affordable that's a tremendous part of that because we're an open door institution were taking those students I would not be admitted almost anywhere else and we try to provide them with the same quality of education and opportunities as any other place and I think the reason for our success is we're working with very vulnerable students who have a lot bringing a lot of issues which go beyond academic preparation it is true at my institution we test every student who comes in and 74 percent of them test efficient in at least one basic skill so we have to invest and I Verte another resources from the mainstream of academic life to be able to provide them with you know the kind of remediation that will prepare them but they also come with some you know non cognitive problems and issues they are very fragile because most of these students just to give you a short profile 60% of my students are low-income 38% of those live in poverty the majority of them are first-generation college students they have to come to school most of them part time because they have to work and come to school and besides coming most of them unprepared for college so those students are very fragile and the only way that you can really be successful with them is instilling in them what you said you need you need to inspire them you need to make sure that they are able to come in touch with themselves most of them are very insecure they lack self-confidence and you have to instill in them and yes you can type of attitude they have to believe that they can do it and that is something that it's not inexpensive because you have to provide a lot of support the key to to our student success is setting high expectations and providing a very pervasive environment of support and that is the thing that helps them not only have very good results of retention grades but also graduation grades and it's no easy task but it's doable and it's all related to resources I want to be for that and I want to add to it USC is an enormous University the profile that students probably not all that different many many Asian students I've had a unique franchise for the last three years I lectured across the entire bandwidth of the University so I do lecture the schools of law and medicine and architecture and technology and business at the college and the schools of journalism and communication I am a smash at the School of gerontology three three years ago I was introduced to a large audience of kids by an inspirational speaker Pete Carroll the famous football coach and there he intoned that crowd know who you are and Pete Carroll and that moment came to mind as I listened to you I was obliged to follow this guy and I summoned the courage to say to them with all respects so the great Pete Carroll you won't have a clue to who you are until you begin to know what it is that you truly believe in now that process of defining yourself and encouraging the self definition by the students I think is fundamental to the entire learning schematic you begin there we've got a serious chance if you enlarge on it by introducing them today the poetic glory over the interaction of all of these disciplines then you've really got a hell of a chance it is no accident that we live in a period of globalization and the rise of digital technology at the same moment these are stamen and pistol it's no accident at all each is an expression of the other the kids who in one respect are more literate and more numerous in the technology than or many of their teachers set up another very special challenge how if that's true do you make damn sure that they realize it's just not the mechanics not just the machinery not the instrumentation that counts it's what you feed into that stuff that is crucial you I think Kim's focused by the way I came here primarily to so that could put in a good word not to his kids but my you for my son okay melody and then I weren't going to ask a question of Claude and then I'm going to open it up to the audience so please be thinking of some questions that you'd like to ask the panelists sure I think the issues that we've been talking about access persistence and completion and we've seen such a hunger for innovation and a drilling down on the work in that area I was talking about the higher education work that we were able to do in the context of the reconciliation bill framed under under the American graduation initiative a piece of that included an access and completion fund that we weren't able to get done there but we're still pushing on but as we've gone around the country and talk to college presidents talk to people in States etc there's a real desire to focus on these issues so that we get kids in and out of college and some of the things that we know we need one better data so that we're tracking and better understanding what's happening to our students when they enter what's happening either at the point at which they drop out aren't able to complete or why they are able to complete and also to try and catalyze some of the innovation and scale it up and what we're seeing around the country for example in Ohio we recognize as they are putting state dollars into public education that they are not only looking at enrollment rates but they're looking at completion rates to determine where phelp where public dollars are going to go so they're starting to look at that again data is very very important to that so that's one thing that I wanted to mention I also wanted to say I think throughout the conversation that we've been having and I don't want to drag this back to the K through 12 but they're so hand in glove that it's never too late it's always important to try and inspire to focus on those higher-order analytic skills to drive students who are interested in stem studies in those areas but if we don't if we're starting that with some walks on a campus in there 18 or 19 years old we I think we've missed an opportunity that we have to start much much much earlier and that some of the work that we're trying to do in the K through 12 context so that students have the opportunity to move beyond the fill in the bubble and think about and think through problems analyze problems and to show to strengthen that set of skills as they are also moving through their K through 12 education Clawd I can't resist we have really the leading scholar in the country who studies how stereotypes affect self image and ambition and the work that you have done particularly and how it's affected african-americans and their and their disproportionate access to and success in academic fields also women and as we discussed earlier this morning their disproportionate you know lack of access success self-image in quantitative fields what if anything can universities do to address these huge stereotype gaps and their pernicious effects on young people's ambitions or what can society do what do we do about this problem that you have done so much to study and research and write about well I think I think one thing to do is to recognize that we still have the problem even though most of us including myself are reluctant to see them I I think I think you're just stepping back for that picture we have to recognize we're still a society that is is trying to integrate a very diverse population into our institutions of higher education and that has inherent in it certain kinds of challenges are our history visits us in the classroom and the way it visits us is in the form of of stereotypes and and here I'm not so much talking about people using stereotypes actually in the perception of people I'm talking about people worrying that they couldn't be stereotyped and the effect that that can have on the choices people make on a low performances that they're able to to give give you a simple example you give african-american and white college students a difficult IQ test alone in a room and the test gets more and more difficult as it goes on it's made up of nonverbal items what happens if you do that you get African American students scoring considerably lower than white students if you tell them it's an IQ test they score considerably lower than that then white shoes now why part of the reason that after all of these years of research I think we're pretty confident in pointing to is the the fact that when you're as an African American you're in a situation where you're you're the stereotypes about your group are that you are lacking in this area and here this test is precisely about that area so as you experience frustration on it you can begin to worry that you're confirming that stereotype or that you're going to be seen to confirm though that you'll be judged or treated in terms of it and that anxiety and wrestling with it and trying to overcome it is a multitasking kind of an effort where you're doing two things at once trying to take the test and resist this is perception so this is this is really a moment where history is actually there with you sorry the test results different if they're told that it is a different kind of test from an intelligence test if you tell them that the same test is a puzzle that has no ability to measure your intellectual abilities then their performance matches that of white students message was remarkable so that's a way you can get at the role at this place still plays and in higher education I think throughout education what do you do about this I think there are some common-sense things I think some schools and some individuals professors and instructors are intuitively know what to do one one thing is to be demanding and very but at the same time affirming of students abilities to meet demands that is a combination of strategies or tactics that signals to the student that they're not being seen static that they can meet these very high standards and that the combination of things probably is what Eduardo has inherently sewn into the culture of this institution that it's a place where a lot is expected because there's a lot of potential that kind of context in culture it can make a great deal of difference I could go on wrong with a long list of those but you'll have to read the book whistling Vivaldi whistling Vivaldi that's it I'm putting in a plug all right all right questions from the audience in the back of that Howard and wait for a microphone again because this is all going to be videotaped on that on the wrap Thank You Howard Gardner Claude you made the important point that a purpose of college and universities is to have educated citizens for democracy I don't know what the situation was like when Jefferson said that but many people including me think our democracy is not in very good shape now we have a political leadership that is now pull the rise in to some extent paralyzed and as far as ordinary citizens justice O'Connor told us about both the amount of ignorance in our citizenry and degree of siloed sectors so my question is there are lots of things which colleges and universities need to do should college of universities would be doing more focused precisely on citizenship for democracy and if so what might your institutions do important question that question is so good I'm not sure how to any answer can completely match it but I do think that this is one reason I chose the rather unusual term at the beginning like was mentioning talking about purpose of D centering because I think part of the what goes wrong in our citizens citizenry is is people having a sort of absolute conviction that what they know is right and right for everybody and and that their nose there's no broader set of views and this is this is something that I think it's overcome in a intercut by higher education that people begin to see multiple perspectives and we begin to we want to to get to the point where we understand that our democracy is in part strong because it draws on a diversity of points of views always it's always been that way that's always been a strength in the society and that's something I think a higher education can can foster but I think we could be much more explicit about that in our curriculum and our general education requirements and the like Elliott I just want to add I'm fearful of teaching things I'm fearful of teaching leadership on Tim fearful of teaching democracy I think the responsibility for educators is to set the environment in which that material is nourished and there is no environment less conducive to thinking and acting democratically than an environment that honors specialization almost by definition it separates you from everybody else and so I believe that an educational environment that encourages interactive learning and an embracing of multiple disciplines is a very good step to a democratic thinking but what about just to continue that way it seems like many colleges are moving in the other direction in terms of sort of a broad classical education and exposure to different ideas different traditions or I mean it should we be should we be doing more to assure that students are exposed in their undergraduate years to a broad array of things yeah absolutely not because it makes you somehow more respectable more cultivated but because of the enlarges it always works to enlarge the capacity of the student to think anew TS Eliot some decades ago almost sadly asked where is the wisdom lost in knowledge where is the knowledge lost in information I think I target ought to be not so much information not so much knowledge as wisdom question Jane in the front row thus economist woman sitting up here normally doesn't need a microphone except you can't ask a question of your husband melody I was proud to vote for the education package as part of historic health care reform but I think only five people on the planet know that it was there and I just urge you to get the word out my question is is to others others then Sidney well I mean on the panel I am a graduate of Smith College which like Wellesley is still a women's college in my day several centuries ago it was one of the seven sister colleges and that's changed but here's the question with respect to generating the next polymaths does gender separated Kayson help or hurt I mean I was listening to Sidney's list of polymaths and I didn't hear a woman's name on it I think our goal ought to be to have women who can match and we should be able to do that since we're certainly equally as smart as men it matched the the virtuosity of some of the men in history and perhaps some of the men presently he was simply afraid of flattering and embarrassing you or he would have mentioned you in the list but Kim do you want to answer I agree with you absolutely I mean I of course I believe in women's education and I think Wellesley Smith Mount Holyoke faster in the days when they were single-sex Barnard have have been enormous ly successful and we can really in many ways measure our success by what our graduates go on to do I think there's still a very important role for a single sex education I think you know it's we only educate about 2% of the students so I think as we think of what we do that works really well for women I think the question is going to be can we export that to other institutions of higher education in a way that will help women and those other educational venues so I just want to say to you that if you look at a piece of data being a scientist I like data and I like to talk about science so I'll give you just one of those so if you look at who what colleges and universities produce the most women graduating in the sciences that go on to get their PhDs all right so that's talking about universities and colleges you look at the top 50 almost all of your universities because they're a lot larger but there's still three liberal arts colleges on that list and that's quite amazing given how much smaller they are and two of those colleges are women's colleges so and if you can cut the data a whole lot of other ways what you can find is that liberal arts education in general women's college college education specifically really does things that advantages women and way that are hard to sort of quantitate so we invest in women we invest in women's education and I think again if we can figure out what that is that works exporting that is a good thing actually maybe we should be thinking about investing in men I mean many colleges today have affirmative action programs just to make sure that men are even close to the number of women in the colleges another question yes in in the back right here microphone should everyone go to college or are there other forms of higher education that would better serve so well I imagine that everybody here went to college and but my favorite of all favorites a great polymath was Margaret Mead who used to observe that she was raised by her grandmother who wanted me to be an educated person and so of course she kept me out of school so what what about vocational education what is the role let me ask you melody in response to that question that's one of the reasons when we articulate the goal we say cradle to career and not just cradle to college many students for your institution's two-year institutions or some other form of certification some form of education beyond high school is what we are stressing and what we think is critically important but that varies depending on the student the individual and what they are trying to accomplish we just want to make sure that they are ready for that next experience and that they have access to it and that they can move through that experience and and actually complete it you know one of the things I also think is interesting I just got here last night and one of the I was getting information about some of the panels that have taken place in a really lively conversation I understand that Walter Isaacson had and with entrepreneurs people have gone on to become incredibly successful and starting out their stories with well first I dropped out of college for another four then I dropped out of college too and I don't have the answer to this especially the two founders of Twitter right so what so what does that mean for us is it something that we're not providing in our higher education system for them is do we need to reorder it toward what did it what it was that they were what they were seeking should we just toss our hands up and say college wasn't right for them or necessary for it for them I think that just raises some interesting questions about their experience in our higher education system you know what one other aspect of that again thinking about the other panels we've been - we've been to so many panels that have talked about assessment an assessment of the quality of teaching and as I said my wife and I we have four children count I have no idea what kind of education they're really getting or whether it's worth the money or you know why don't we talk serious you don't want to tell yourself what do I think you actually have some kind of an evaluation system yes what I like to answer to the lady's question because when you consider the fact that in the present economy and more and more so in the future the majority of the jobs require post-secondary education according to the Department of Labor more than 80 percent of all the new jobs being created in the u.s. today require post-secondary education so the question is not where everyone should go to college the question is where every citizen of the United States of America should have the opportunity to go to college because as a real key to a middle-class status and I think every Americans you have that opportunity now in terms of assessment yes I think it's important for us to be able to to know the kind of learning that that we are having and and what we have done at the college is to first of all work very closely with our alumni with business leaders we asked a simple question to business leaders one of the skills that our graduates should have in order to be successful in your corporation in your company we went to alumni and said did the education that you get here was enough what was lacking what would you change and we went to our faculty and involve them in that same discussion as a result of that a very very great discussion we were able to come up with the learning outcomes that were to be expected of every graduate of the institution after that that was the easy part the difficult part was how do you assess learning and how do you know that in fact those skills and those tariffs ocation is being obtained and to the credit of our faculty I would say that that process was a very grassroots process where the faculty were was able to identify authentic assessment mechanisms to determine the kind of learning that is taking place and use that to improve learning and a several salt what we have today is a teaching and learning at my institution is more intentional our programs are more robust and the students and faculty are more engaged in the learning process and I think that's the key to a good education I think we have time for a couple more questions over here you just wait a second Matt's bringing the microphone Jay Winston it occurs to me that the role that sitting is playing is he lectures in departments across the college is the role of mentor and in a sense serving as a role model for the importance of both depth and breadth I guess my question is how do we create incentives to bring larger numbers of Sidney Harmons as mentors to college campuses and then in turn create incentives to link college students to younger people to help provide for them a roadmap on what's just over the horizon to help strengthen commitment to stay in school very interesting question perhaps one of them either provost or college presidents go ahead you start well I'm not sure I know exactly how to do that but I will affirm how important it is that I I think one of the sort of magic dust you were talking about sprinkling on people and causing inspiration is accomplished by by role models they do both they give you an existence proof that someone like you can do this that's very powerful and motivating and they show you how to do it and so I think in higher education we have underutilized that motive of Education and I do think we have to get more imaginative about how to do it that's as far as I can go at the level of specifics but I I think the the value is a really important one this one I just add to that please I think that's really important and I think I agree that it's very hard to go how to organize that I know at Wellesley our alum our alumni body is very active in interacting with our students and I think this is true for all of the women's colleges so that's one place you can go to really have those great role models that are out there kind of helping students we go see eight their life in terms of the students I just want to put a plug in for the students I think the students today are the most inspiring students I've ever seen they are so interested in social justice they are interested in in going out there and helping the world they are terrific and just and I'm sure this is true for your institutions as well but their willingness to go out to the community and work in the community to participate in Teach for America is really amazing so I think there's that part is really working well a 20 second intervention I make it my business to lecture across not only the bandwidth of the university but at all the levels and especially at the incoming classes and I am utterly astonished at the difference in the quality of the student body in the incoming freshman year this year from any I have seen before utterly amazing yes right here I'd actually microphone please yeah just speak a little louder okay I am a person that never went to college and because of several role models when I was a legal secretary one who was a judge was speaking at the conference this week and another attorney I decided to go to law school which I did without going to college and have had an unbelievable and interesting career and met many wonderful people as a result but in terms of how our school I'm a trustee of Pitzer College which is one of the claremont colleges which is pretty funny since i never went to college myself in terms of one of the programs that we have that i would recommend anyone depending on the area where you located we are located an area that has a very low-income population and many of them are Latinos and so instead of having our kids go off to Spain or Mexico to learn Spanish we actually have people from the college go to the homes and ask them as a favor if they would work with our students and teach them Spanish and allow them to have dinner with them and we pay them to do that so number one they they have a job number two they're honored to be part of the college and number three many of their children are now going toward me that's that's a wonderful wonderful idea ladies definitely we do have to close now because we next sessions that you need to get to but I'd like again to thank this amazing

Channel: The Aspen Institute

Views: 14,746

Rating: 4.7377048 out of 5

Keywords: Eduardo Padron, Kim Bottomly, Claude Steele, Sidney Harmon, Elliot Gerson, Education, 21st century, higher education, college degree, university, masters, leadership, global, learning

Id: xEUIDNKnSbk

Length: 67min 36sec (4056 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 09 2010