We Can Improve Educational Quality and Access
It’s possible, but can’t be done alone.
Opinion by Stephen C. Ehrmann
In the 1970s, when I did my doctoral research on engineering education, a common assumption in STEM education was that students’ capabilities—such as math aptitude—were fixed by the time they entered college. A secondary goal of STEM courses was to filter the more able from the less able. In addition, teaching was mostly about covering content; the way to raise final grades was to admit smarter students. Finally, the educational quality of a school of engineering was viewed as a function of the quality of inputs, such as high-aptitude students and accomplished faculty.
In recent decades, there has been a slow shift toward different assumptions. A large body of literature has demonstrated that student capabilities can be developed if the education and institution are organized to foster that development. Content coverage alone has little effect on students’ abilities, but an engineering course of study can and should develop skills in applying knowledge, including the content they’ve been taught. In this new paradigm, a college of engineering’s quality should be judged in part by the capabilities and accomplishments of its graduates.
An essential ingredient to helping all students achieve more is the systematic use of high-impact practices (HIPs) at scale. Many engineering programs already have embedded HIPs in their courses of study—for instance, learning communities, project-based courses, undergraduate research, internships, service learning, capstone courses, and ePortfolios. When students engage in even a single HIP a year, their learning improves (+quality). That contributes to increased pass rates, retention, graduation rates, and speed to graduation. Those changes can save students time and money, plus provide lifetime benefits of an earlier graduation (+affordability). The use of HIPs particularly benefits students from underserved groups, who graduate at the same rates (and with the same gains in affordability) as students from more privileged ones.
Georgia State was one of six institutions that I studied. In 2003, only 32 percent of White students in the school graduated within six years. African Americans faced even tougher odds: half never made it to their sophomore years and only 24 percent graduated within six years.
The university began taking systematic steps to improve their students’ education. For example, they scaled up their use of HIPs such as learning communities while redesigning a small number of courses that had unacceptably high rates of failure, year after year, instructor after instructor.
Their efforts have paid off. Half of White students now graduate from Georgia State within six years, while 78 percent earn bachelor’s degrees from either the university or another institution over that time. African Americans do even better: 58 percent graduate from GSU while 81 percent earn a bachelor’s from some institution within six years. And gains in graduation rates increase the institution’s tuition revenue.
However, at many institutions scaling up HIPs can be a challenge, unless other changes are made. For instance, to expand undergraduate research, it can help to:
- Tweak the system for allocating faculty time (course load) to encourage faculty mentoring of undergraduate research on a large enough scale;
- Build up the university’s staff and budget to help interested departments improve program outcomes;
- Shift the student’s entire course of study (not just the department’s courses) to systematically develop the student’s capabilities to do productive research (including creative work);
- Make ePortfolio projects and reflections part of the student’s academic record;
- To the university’s survey of graduating students, add questions about the student’s engagement in undergraduate research and assessment of its value for them personally. This evidence can be used to detect trends in undergraduate research and in how it is valued by students.
What do these disparate initiatives have in common? None can be accomplished alone by a school of engineering. To scale up the use of HIPs requires a coalition of groups with overlapping needs. If those needs are important enough, if the plan is feasible enough, and if the parties are sufficiently committed and patient, substantial gains can be made in both quality and access.
Stephen C. Ehrmann’s 50-year career has been devoted to helping colleges and universities improve education. He has a bachelor’s degree from MIT in aeronautical and astronautical engineering as well as a PhD in management and higher education. His newest book is Pursuing Quality, Access, and Affordability: A Field Guide to Improving Higher Education. Ehrmann invites your comments and questions at ehrmannsteve@gmail.com.