Contextual note: I wrote this intending to send it to my Department through my capacity as co-director of FYC. But I went a different route. The audience throughout is my colleagues in the English Department.
In her opening remarks in the AAC&U publication Liberal Education, AAC&U president Lyn Pasquerella points to unsettling survey data released by Gallup in December 2019. Only 51% of U.S. adults consider a college education to be very important; younger adults between the ages of 18 and 29 were more than likely than those from other groups to question the value of a college degree. Pasquerella takes these data points to argue that “a majority of young adults now consider getting a job to be the primary purpose of earning a college degree” (3), and, as the AAC&U president, takes this opportunity to endorse high-impact practices but also, more importantly, takes this opportunity to talk to us—college educators—about the need to “adopt an equity-minded approach by being intentional about connecting curricula to careers, paying attention to reducing costs for students, and positioning graduates for success in work, citizenship, and life by promoting student agency” (3).
Much of what Pasquerella argues for in her President’s Message seems to be directed to the upper administrators at my university and for my university system, and certainly the argument of attending college for the sole purpose of landing a job irks many faculty members who advocate strongly for the power and beauty of learning for its own sake. But I call attention to her words in May 2020, during a global pandemic and uncertainty all around, because, no matter when we gather again in a face-to-face learning and teaching environment, we will gather in a much different landscape of higher education: high unemployment numbers outside of higher education, potentially slashed budgets within higher education; the argument for college as a pathway to a career even more pressing.
Georgia is an AAC&U LEAP state, and within UNG, with the support of our provost, vice provost, and many faculty and staff, many of us have attending workshops or joined semester-long cohorts to bring high-impact practices into our classrooms. This Fall, CTLL will form new HIP cohorts composed of faculty and staff and the important work we are undertaking with Gateways to Completion dovetail with these high-impact practices, particularly ePortfolios, which according to a recent Hart Research Associates survey, 78% of business executives found more useful than a college transcript for evaluating a potential employee’s potential.
Questions and concerns remain; and high-impact practices are not the panacea for the distressing survey data reported by Gallup. But with their committed focus to student equity and access and with their committed focus to preparing students for “success in work, citizenship, and life,” I wonder—on this late May day with the flower blooming and the birds singing—how the work already underway at the System level and at UNG may prepare us for the new landscape we will traverse whenever we walk alongside our students again on our campuses.
We only see a small percentage of UNG students as majors; but the English faculty work with almost all UNG students during the all-important first year of college. We are thankful to work with colleagues who, no matter what initiative in in vogue at the time, no matter if we are teaching face-to-face or rapidly pushed online, no matter a global pandemic or not, are committed to supporting student learning and creating educational pathways for all our students to succeed.
J. Michael Rifenburg 