New Directions Start at the Top

A recent report from the Aspen Institute entitled “Renewal and Progress: Strengthening Higher Education in a Time of Rapid Change” provides a solid summary of the issues that frame the current leadership crisis in higher education.  The report rightly points out that tomorrow’s presidents will need to be a of a different cut from today’s.  They might have also pointed out that other senior positions will need to be rethought, but that is for another discussion.  The authors do a creditable job of laying out a number of the qualities that new leaders will need and the areas that will require focus.  They also provide a good perspective on many of the shifting societal issues that will affect what presidents will need to look like in the future.

That said, I think there are some imbedded impediments to actualizing the agenda that the report lays out, despite the fact that it is a commendable one.  First, the elements of the report are steeped in history, legacy, and tradition.  The report asserts that today education is seen as having value primarily to individuals and has moved away from addressing the larger public good.

If this is true, it is the fault of higher education, not society in general.  The call today is for higher education to address the economic needs of a society that is far more complex than the one that spawned the current higher ed system.  Individuals create—in fact they are—the public good. The larger good flows from individuals; therefore, higher education must adapt to more fully empower individuals.  We have lost sight of this.

I would suggest that if the general public fails to see the relevance—the value—of the liberal arts, it is a failing of our higher education system.  I posit this as a person with a bachelor’s degree in classical languages and graduate degrees in linguistics.  The challenge is not so much to show the public the value of the liberal arts; it is to make the liberal arts valuable in real ways.  Ars gratia artis may still be a viable perspective, but it must now be contextualized in modern society.  That is a role for higher education.  Utilitarian?  You bet.  But not barbarian.  Just realistic.

Given the rapid flux of society there is the need for higher education to adapt.  Too often higher ed, in its monolithic way, has assumed the reverse.  It is this view that has led in some measure to the dearth of leadership.  The report suggests that one way to attack the problem of future leadership is for current presidents to mentor their successors.  Yet the report also sees that todays’ presidents are not the model for the future. The logic here is hard to follow.

One key is to get out of the box.  The 35 members of a task force that informed the report are without doubt an august and talented group.  But I think they may have not gotten out of the box so much as they repackaged the contents of the box and put a different bow on it.  I suggest that a different departure point is to look at what higher ed leadership looks like today, and write a job description for what the new model might be.


Stay tuned.

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