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Inside Higher Education
The Promise of Dual-Mission Colleges
The institutions, which mix certificate, two-year and four-year
programs, offer a novel approach in a postsecondary ecosystem that
needs to adapt, write Jamie Merisotis and Carrie Besnette Hauser.
Jamie Merisotis and Carrie Besnette Hauser
February 4, 2021
Today’s postsecondary education system is out of sync with what our
nation needs -- as surveys of students, employers and others show. One
reason is that it’s ossified by structures put in place a half century
ago, which led many colleges and universities, even new ones, to pursue
academic and business models that aligned with strictly designed
categories, whether they served students or not.
In recent years a group of colleges started offering a mix of programs
challenging the notion that college credentials must come in neat
two-year or four-year packages.
From our respective perches, we believe that these “dual-mission”
institutions offer another way forward for higher education in the
post-pandemic period.
We got here in part because a group of higher ed leaders, led by former
University of California president Clark Kerr, worked to create some
order out of a rapidly growing and changing system. The Carnegie
classification system was designed in the early 1970s, a time when
higher education was booming following the passage of the Civil Rights
Act, rapid expansion of community colleges and the adoption of the
Higher Education Act, which launched many of the federal financial aid
programs that still benefit millions of college students today.
In the decade that followed, the United States saw the launch and
expansion of hundreds of colleges and universities that, to a very
large degree, looked identical. Most had two 15-week semesters, offered
“traditional” academic degrees and adhered to the expected standards
assigned to “two-year” or “four-year” institutions. Yet college
prestige was universally accepted as if it were chiseled into stone
tablets.
With this backdrop, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching, which designed the original classification system, offered a
taxonomy to differentiate colleges based not on their productivity,
learning outcomes or innovation, but on their degree types, research
intensity, resources and student populations. For 50 years this system
has organized colleges in seemingly well-defined categories,
effectively creating the expectation that colleges must fit such
categories.
The problem is that today, those categories -- and the students they
were meant to serve -- have gone the way of shag carpeting and the
BlackBerry.
As with everything else in 2020, higher education was turned on its
head. After the pandemic hit, students and faculty went home. Removed
from the historical architecture and scholastic traditions that
reinforced the rank-ordered classification system, students began to
question whether their colleges were worth the price. Some even sued
their colleges for charging full tuition for an online experience.
Once colleges and universities shifted to a universal instructional
mode -- one that treats musty teaching traditions as a liability --
some students began to question their ready acceptance of higher ed
hierarchy. This has added complexity and urgency to the need for new
models.
And as students more openly consider a wider array of pathways, such as
technical certificates and associate degrees that lead to high-demand
jobs requiring specialized skills, increasingly, they ask, “What
exactly are we getting for our money?”
All the while, employers complained about not finding the talent they
need. Nearly three-quarters of employers told a 2019 Cengage survey
that they were having trouble hiring qualified candidates.
In response, a group of colleges decided that, rather than adhere to
the confines of the Carnegie classifications, they would try to serve
as many students as possible without considering predetermined
classifications. These class-busting, dual-mission institutions broke
out of the two-year/four-year mold by factoring in prior learning,
online course offerings and pathways that might range from six months
to four years (or more) depending on students’ circumstances or a
rapidly changing economy.
Today, an estimated 400 dual-mission colleges -- including many in Utah
endorsed by state legislation, the Florida system of state colleges, a
handful in Georgia, Colorado Mountain College and others -- offer
technical certificates, applied programs and robust liberal arts
degrees at all levels.
The timing is providential. As machines get smarter and smarter, the
work of the future will be rooted in things that differentiate humans
from machines: our intelligence, our drive and our values. To succeed
in the future, workers will have to develop both their human traits --
including empathy, ethics and compassion -- and human capabilities such
as creativity, problem solving, analysis and communication.
Teaching those skills and capabilities -- and combining them with the
deep technical expertise gleaned from “traditional” higher education --
is what distinguishes dual-mission institutions.
At a recent national summit on dual-mission institutions, we were
joined on a panel by a group of presidents who said that a key strength
in the dual-mission approach was meeting today’s increasingly diverse
students where they are. That’s especially important right now because
these students -- adults, parents, workers, people of color and those
from lower-income households -- rarely earn a “two-year” degree in two
years or a “four-year” degree in four years -- underscoring dated
nomenclature and structures designed decades ago for an entirely
different student profile.
Summit participants agreed that, due to the disruptions caused by the
pandemic, U.S. higher education is at a pivotal moment -- and that the
dual-mission approach has the nimbleness to respond.
One president shared a recent conversation with a faculty member, who
said she was able to adjust to changes forced by the pandemic “because
I’m used to teaching students from a variety of backgrounds who are
juggling school with their lives.”
Several student speakers shared that dual-mission institutions are
effective because they offer a welcoming environment and flexible
experience. Those enrolling in entry-level or shorter programs can
transition seamlessly into bachelor’s degree programs at the same
institution, having seen their peers be supported and successful.
Conversely, students pursuing bachelor’s degrees can easily pick up a
specialized certificate or “reverse transfer” to earn an associate
degree.
The moral of this story is that adaptation and innovation needn’t be
confined to classifications determined 50 years ago. The pandemic has
challenged nearly everything we once assumed true in our business,
government and education systems.
Many colleges are struggling; some have failed. But others are adapting to students’ shifting needs and aspirations.
Whether we call them multimission, dual mission or just boldly
nonconforming, these blended institutions may be the canary in the
Carnegie system’s coal mine. They are the approach best able to reach
the millions of Americans who will need more -- and different --
education for the work of the future.
Read this and other stories at Inside Higher Education
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