There is little dispute that higher education world-wide is undergoing significant change. The contested ground is what to do about it and the "conversations" at individual colleges and universities often become a litany of appeals for niched special interests. How could higher education begin to have higher quality and better informed conversations? Perhaps devising ways for all those who aspire to a teaching, administrative, or other roles in higher education to understand the place where they work would help.
David Thiele, author of "The citizenship we're not talking about," proposes that a course in higher education for faculty and administrators is as essential as the core courses we presume to be central to undergraduates' introduction to the collegiate experience. At the core of this is some kind of socialization to the complexity of higher education designed to reduce the ignorance of the challenges we face. As Theile indicates, "Armed with a knowledge of the higher education landscape and a brass-tacks understanding of how colleges and universities operate, those who don't land a tenure-track job will have a leg up in the growth industry of higher education administration while those who land a tenure-track position will be equipped to help their institutions navigate reform."
Particularly when it comes to the emerging international centers for higher education, leaders, policy-makers and funders should take note that one of the things that has been essential to college/university success in countries like the U.S.A. is some form of shared governance. If one assumes the need to cultivate shared governance in faculty and administrators it is important to devise a strategy that undermines "the counterproductive mind-sets that a broader knowledge of higher education is bound to ameliorate. Chief among these are exceptionalism, defensiveness, recalcitrance, misplaced suspicion and fatalism." There needs to be an antidote to these maladies; an introductory course on higher education might be a good start.
Responses to Thiele's article generally reinforce the merit of a course to more deeply inform faculty and administrators of the dynamics of the higher education environment.
David Thiele, author of "The citizenship we're not talking about," proposes that a course in higher education for faculty and administrators is as essential as the core courses we presume to be central to undergraduates' introduction to the collegiate experience. At the core of this is some kind of socialization to the complexity of higher education designed to reduce the ignorance of the challenges we face. As Theile indicates, "Armed with a knowledge of the higher education landscape and a brass-tacks understanding of how colleges and universities operate, those who don't land a tenure-track job will have a leg up in the growth industry of higher education administration while those who land a tenure-track position will be equipped to help their institutions navigate reform."
Particularly when it comes to the emerging international centers for higher education, leaders, policy-makers and funders should take note that one of the things that has been essential to college/university success in countries like the U.S.A. is some form of shared governance. If one assumes the need to cultivate shared governance in faculty and administrators it is important to devise a strategy that undermines "the counterproductive mind-sets that a broader knowledge of higher education is bound to ameliorate. Chief among these are exceptionalism, defensiveness, recalcitrance, misplaced suspicion and fatalism." There needs to be an antidote to these maladies; an introductory course on higher education might be a good start.
Responses to Thiele's article generally reinforce the merit of a course to more deeply inform faculty and administrators of the dynamics of the higher education environment.
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