Reimagining Education
Jeff Fox, Interim President, NWCCU
NWCCU’s theme for the annual conference scheduled for this fall is “Reimagine Education.” This topic is as timely as it gets. In the current political climate, reimagining requires a broad consideration, and it is an opportunity to reconsider aspects of our great work in serving students through teaching, outcomes, assessment, evaluation, support systems, staffing, facilities, pedagogy, and more.
Higher education is no stranger to external political pressures and political influence from one administration to the next. The Department of Education is a relatively new federal cabinet-level department, having been signed into law in 1979 by President Carter. While the news regarding the department lately is grave, for the nearly four decades I have been in higher education as a teacher or as an administrator, I have marveled at how the core of our work in educating students has stayed constant despite the political pressures that come as regularly as the steady swing of a pendulum. Though higher education has remained steady, it has not remained static, and what has changed over the years is how we have improved the work of educating our students.
These days, we are better at assessment and gathering and using data to inform improved instruction and curriculum. We understand our students more effectively as we now gather demographic data to better understand areas in need of improvement for recruiting, retention, and graduation. We have structured our institutions to improve service to our students, developing traditional and hybrid instruction, always evaluating and implementing appropriate technologies, including these days, Artificial Intelligence (AI). We have improved curricula to reflect the foundation and evolution of post-secondary education while at the same time learning to adjust and incorporate new technologies, new opportunities, new expectations in research and in the workforce.
In the midst of this chaos, the defunding of key initiatives, the impending cuts to the Department of Education (and its possible closure), we must stand firm in the belief that what we do and how we do it matters. My predecessor at the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, Sonny Ramaswamy, in a recent interview noted that we in higher education must be engaged.
But before whatever it is that’s coming down the pike, let us as educators, let us as accreditors demonstrate that value proposition [and] tell the story. Don’t wait. Get college presidents, students and alumni to speak to the value of higher education.
Will this be enough in the face of the daily and surprising changes we face? I hope our good work and our dedication to possibly the best higher education system in the world and its results—highly-educated, productive and engaged citizens—are more than enough to stand firm.
Considering reimagining education, then, is an opportunity to stay the course as best we can when it is appropriate, and to review and revise our systems and resources with an eye to the future even if it may not be any future we could have imagined until recently. As the cuts to program funds, grants, and even the Department of Education happen and as the lawsuits pile up to challenge these moves, we must advocate for our mission as we reimagine education. We have a powerful and important story to tell, and we must tell it.
Postscript
I want to personally acknowledge the work Sonny Ramaswamy performed in his role as the President of NWCCU. He has been a tireless advocate for higher education and a champion for the work of regional accreditation. In his time with the Commission, he was positively innovative and inspirational.
