Common thread: The Fifth Discipline from a liberal arts college perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
William D. Schneper
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Learning Organization ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Liberal Arts Colleges ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
The Us ◽  
Learning Principles

Purpose Liberal arts colleges (LACs) have played a crucial role in the foundation and development of the US higher education system. Today, these schools face numerous organizational and environmental challenges that threaten their performance and even survival. This paper aims to examine whether Senge’s (1990) vision of the learning organization can serve a useful function in responding to these challenges. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual analysis was conducted based on research relating to learning organizations, LACs and the liberal arts tradition. Findings The paper identifies significant congruence between learning organization and liberal arts/liberal learning principles. LACs may benefit from applying and modifying Senge’s (1990) framework to their own unique situations. Originality/value While The Fifth Discipline has certainly contributed to the lexicon of higher education, the role that Senge’s (1990) framework plays in LACs has received scant research attention. This paper investigates the applicability of Senge’s approach to an underexplored context.

scholarly journals Centering the Margins: Knowledge Production in the Introductory Archaeology Course

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kylie Quave ◽  
Shannon Fie ◽  
AmySue Qing Qing Greiff ◽  
Drew Alis Agnew
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Students Of Color ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Course Structure ◽  
Student Reflection ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
Full Picture

Teaching introductory archaeology courses in US higher education typically falls short in two important ways: the courses do not represent the full picture of who contributes to reconstructing the past and do not portray the contemporary and future relevance of the archaeological past. In this paper, we use anti-colonial and decolonial theories to explain the urgency of revising the introductory archaeology curriculum for promoting equity in the discipline and beyond. We detail the pedagogical theories we employed in revising an introductory archaeology course at a small liberal arts college in the US and the specific changes we made to course structure, content, and teaching strategies. To examine the impacts on enrolled students and on who chose to enroll in the revised archaeology curriculum, we analyze student reflection essays and enrollment demographics. We find that students developed more complex understandings of the benefits and harms of archaeological knowledge production and could articulate how to address archaeology’s inequities. We also found that enrollment in archaeology courses at the college shifted to include greater proportions of students of color. These results support the notion that introductory archaeology courses should be substantially and continually revised.

Institutional Commitment to Diversity and Multiculturalism through Institutional Transformation: A Case Study of Olivet College

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evon Walters
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Liberal Arts Colleges ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Institutional Transformation ◽  
Institutional Commitment ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
American Council On Education ◽  
American Students ◽  
Changing Demographics

Olivet College is a private, residential liberal arts college in central Michigan that enrolls approximately 900 students. The College was founded in 1844 by abolitionists and was the first college in the nation, by charter, to open to women and people of color. Yet, over the last two decades Olivet College failed to acknowledge changing demographics and problems of intergroup relations. In 1992, a racial brawl involving White and African-American students put the college into crisis. The incident launched the college into a process of reassessment and redefinition that resulted in a major institutional transformation. Diversity was a major part of this initiative. As a result of its success in infusing multiculturalism into its structure, Olivet College was recently selected by the Association of American Colleges and Universities as a Model Institution for its diversity initiatives. Additionally, it was selected as one of 35 institutions out of 675 nationwide to participate in President Clinton's initiative on race and was spotlighted by the American Council on Education for its exemplary work in infusing diversity across the campus. This article presents all aspects of Olivet College's diversity initiative including mission, curriculum, co-curriculum, students, faculty, and staff. These strategies are applicable not only to small private liberal arts colleges, but to other institutions of learning as they attempt to create an action plan that addresses the challenge of diversity/multiculturalism in the higher education system.

scholarly journals Building a Liberal Arts Tradition in India

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-137
Author(s):  
Takako Mino
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Culturally Relevant Education ◽  
Societal Challenges ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
The Us ◽  
Education In India ◽  
Indian Higher Education ◽  
Relevant Education

Postcolonial nations often struggle with the legacy of higher education systems built by and for the benefit of former colonizers. In India, several visionaries have endeavored to design new approaches to higher education that are suitable to India’s unique context while taking inspiration from the US liberal arts college model. Interest in the liberal arts has grown - in an interconnected world, where a broader scope of understanding is required to craft solutions to societal challenges, young Indians are seeking an alternative to the specialized university model that has dominated the Indian higher education landscape since colonial times. This paper explores the practice of the liberal arts in India through three questions: How does the liberal arts approach fit within the Indian context? How have Indian universities built their own liberal arts tradition? What tensions do these universities navigate? I collected data through a document analysis and interviews with founders, faculty, students, and alumni at three new liberal arts universities in India. While communicating the practical value of the liberal arts to a largely unfamiliar population, the universities built their own liberal arts tradition to help students appreciate, analyze, and develop a commitment to improving the Indian context. At the same time, universities faced numerous tensions: responding to pressures to produce highly employable graduates while remaining true to their institutional ideals, balancing wisdom from both the western liberal arts model and indigenous Indian traditions, and fostering greater inclusion while maintaining financial sustainability. The study’s findings contribute to the field of higher education in India and other postcolonial countries seeking to create new culturally relevant education traditions.

FEATURES OF FUNDING AND THE RESULTS OF THE ACTIVITIES OF HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE USA (1919 – 2019)

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 225-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
V.N. MINAT ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education System ◽  
Private Investment ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Inductive Method ◽  
Evolutionary Development ◽  
Assessment Practice ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Retrospective Assessment ◽  
The Us

The purpose of the study is to identify trends that determine the dynamics and structure of funding for the US higher education system. The subject of this study is the dynamics and structure of funding for the US higher education system. The relevance of the topic of the article lies in the substantiation of possible threats to the use of financial instruments that have passed the path of evolutionary development in America. In accordance with the purpose, a retrospective assessment of these trends has been carried out over a long period of time. To analyze the vast theoretical and statistical material on the stated problems, such methodological techniques and tools as retrospective assessment, statistical and economic analysis, comparative assessment, generalizations, and the inductive method were used. The results obtained reflect not only the stages of spatio-temporal evolution in the development of the American higher education system, but also reveal indicators that make it possible to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of this system over a century of research. The identified trends highlight the contradictory nature of funding for universities in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. On the one hand, the instruments and results of funding reflect the distinct American way of combining centralization and decentralization in the evolutionary development of a complex higher education system. On the other hand, they confirm the worldwide, ambiguous in qualitative assessment, practice of financing universities - reducing the share of government spending by increasing private investment.

Accreditation and ranking of higher education institutions (HEIs): review, observations and recommendations for the Indian higher education system

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerald Ozee Fernandes ◽  
Balgopal Singh
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education System ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Academic Quality ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Global Ranking ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
The World ◽  
Indian Higher Education

PurposeThe higher education system has been entrusted globally to provide quality education, especially to the youth, and equip them with required skills and capabilities. The visionaries and policymakers of the countries around the world have been working relentlessly to improve the standard of the higher education system by establishing national and global accreditation and ranking bodies and expecting measuring performance through setting up accreditation and ranking parameters. This paper focuses on the review of Indian university accreditation and ranking system and determining its efficacy in improving academic quality for achieving good position in global quality accreditation and ranking.Design/methodology/approachThe study employed exploratory research approach to know about the accreditation and ranking issues of Indian higher education institutions to overcome the challenges for being globally competitive. The accreditation and ranking parameters and score of leading Indian universities was collected from secondary data sources. Similarly, the global ranking parameters and scores of these Indian universities with top global universities was explored. The performance gaps of Indian university in global academic quality parameter is assessed by comparing it with scores of global top universities. Further, each domestic and global accreditation and ranking parameters have been taken up for discussion.FindingsThe study identified teaching and learning, research and industry collaboration as common parameter in the accreditation and ranking by Indian and global accreditation and ranking body. Furthermore, the study revealed that Indian accreditation and ranking body assess leniently on parameters and award high scores as compared to rigorous global accreditation and ranking practice. The study revealed that “research” and “citations” are important parameters for securing prestigious position in global ranking, this is the reason Indian universities are trailing. The study exposed that Indian academic fraternity lack prominence in research, publication and citations as per need of global accreditation and ranking standards.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitation of this study is that it focused only on few Indian and global accreditation and ranking bodies. The future implication of this study will be the use of methodology designed in this study for comparing accreditation and ranking bodies’ parameters of different continents and countries in different economic development stages i.e. emerging and developed economies to know the disparity and shortcomings in their higher education system.Practical implicationsThe article is a review and comparison of national and global accreditation and ranking parameters. The article explored the important criteria and key indicators of accreditation and ranking that would provide an important and meaningful insight to academic institutions of the emerging economies of the world to develop its competitiveness. The study contributed to the literature on identifying benchmark for improving academic and higher education institution quality. This study would be further helpful in fostering new ideas toward setting up of contemporary globally viable and acceptable academic quality standard.Originality/valueThis is possibly the first study conducted with novel methodology of comparing the Indian and global accreditation and ranking parameters to identify the academic quality performance gap and suggesting ways to attain academic benchmark through continuous improvement activity and process for global competitiveness.

Ethiopian new public universities

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Van Deuren ◽  
Tsegazeab Kahsu ◽  
Seid Mohammed ◽  
Wondimu Woldie
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Public Universities ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
System Level ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
New Public ◽  
And Gender

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze and illustrate achievements and challenges of Ethiopian higher education, both at the system level and at the level of new public universities. Design/methodology/approach – Achievements and challenges at the system level are based on literature review and secondary data. Illustrative case studies are based on university data and interviews with university representatives. Findings – The Ethiopian higher education system has increased its enrollments substantially. The construction of 13 new universities that started enrolling students around 2007 contributed greatly to this achievement. Challenges accompanying this growth lie in funding, quality and quantity of staffing, teaching practices, research and community service, quality assurance and gender balance. Originality/value – The present study contributes to existing literature by describing case studies illustrating challenges and achievements in new public universities in Ethiopian higher education.

scholarly journals International Students in Indian UniversitiesVeena

2015 ◽  
pp. 23-24
Author(s):  
Veena Bhalla ◽  
Krishnapratap B. Powar
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Health Care ◽  
International Students ◽  
Education System ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Graduate Level ◽  
Post Graduate ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Indian Higher Education ◽  
New Millennium

In the new millennium the Indian higher education system has grown two and half times in terms of both the number of universities and the number of students. In comparison the growth in international students has been anaemic. The international students are largely from Asia and Africa. In 2012-13 40% of the students were female; 80% were studying at the under-graduate level, 18% at post-graduate level and 2% were in research. The liberal arts accounted for 30% and 70% were in professional streams, the maximum number being in medicine & health care (35%) followed by engineering & technology (23%) and management (9%).

Quality higher education drives employability in the Middle East

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (9) ◽  
pp. 1057-1069 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Nauffal ◽  
Jennifer Skulte-Ouaiss
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Soft Skills ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Content Type

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse and explain the high rates of employability of one group of Middle East youth by focussing on liberal arts and soft skills education as an integral part of quality higher education. Design/methodology/approach This paper employs the survey research method using questionnaires, focus groups and interviews to understand the labour market dynamics in Lebanon and explore factors that correlate positively with gainful employment with a special focus on the graduates of an institution that emphasises the liberal arts and soft skills training. Findings The paper finds that quality higher education – particularly with a focus on soft skills and internships – boosts the potential of graduates to secure their first jobs after graduation. Research limitations/implications Reliable data on higher education, employability and youth are scarce in Lebanon and the region. The paper is based on one labour market study in Lebanon while seeking to extrapolate to Lebanese youth as a whole as well as reflect on employability and youth in the Middle East region. Practical implications The paper demonstrates support for improving quality in higher education as well as making soft skills training and the liberal arts critical components for increased employability of youth in Lebanon and the Middle East. Originality/value The paper is innovative in its reliance on primary data from a labour market survey as such data are scarce in Lebanon. In addition, advocacy for soft skills training and the liberal arts in the midst of focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics and other professional education at the university level is rare in the Middle East.

Spaces of performance: a storytelling approach to learning in higher education

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 410-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Mølbjerg Jørgensen
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Learning Organization ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Approach To Learning ◽  
Conditions For Learning ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
And Control ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to provide a framework for reflecting on how different ways of configuring spaces in higher education (HE) condition the possibilities of learning. Second, the purpose is to construct a storytelling approach for the configuration of such spaces. Design/methodology/approach The paper’s conceptual purpose is achieved through a theoretical discussion of three concepts: performance, politics and storytelling. Findings Learning in HE needs reconsideration in terms of what kinds of learning are made possible through the discursive and material configuration of the spaces of research and teaching. In particular, the focus to some extent should move away from the management and control of learning toward what enables learning. Practical implications The literature on organizational learning and the learning organization comprise concepts, methods and tools that play different roles with regard to controlling, shaping and enabling learning. When the focus is on learning in HE, it is important to be aware of the tracks of learning these technologies enable. Social implications The interest in managing and controlling learning is often problematic in relation to the potential of HE to produce new and innovative forms of learning. Originality/value This paper introduces the term “spaces of performance,” which directs attention toward the material, discursive and relational conditions for learning. It also introduces a space of storytelling as a new principle for learning in HE.

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