6. From Elitism to Success
Many older faculties still pine for the good old days when they were students. Even in the 1960s, when the Robbins’ Commission recommended an expansion of universities in Britain, the Vice-Chancellors of the existing universities moaned ‘More means worse.’ However, for public universities, the Socratic ideal of a professor sharing their knowledge with a small group of devoted students under the linden tree no longer exists, except perhaps at the graduate level, and is unlikely ever to return to public post-secondary institutions. The massification of higher education has, to the alarm of traditionalists, opened up the academy to the great unwashed. However, the massification of higher education is needed as much for economic reasons as for social mobility.
The implications of these changes in the student body for university and college teaching are profound. At one time, German math professors used to pride themselves that only five to ten percent of their students would succeed in their exams. The difficulty level was so high that only the very best passed. A tiny completion rate showed how rigorous their teaching was. It was the students’ responsibility, not the professors’, to reach the level required. That may still be the goal for top-level research students, but we have seen that today universities and colleges have a somewhat different purpose, and that is to ensure, as far as possible, that as many students as possible leave university appropriately qualified for life in a knowledge-based society. We can’t afford to throw away the lives of 95percent of students, either ethically or economically. In any case, governments are increasingly using completion rates and degrees awarded as key performance indicators that influence funding.
It is a major challenge for institutions and teachers to enable as many students as possible to succeed, given the wide diversity of the student body. More focus on teaching methods that lead to student success, more individualization of learning and more flexible delivery are all needed to meet the challenge of an increasingly diverse student body. These developments put much more responsibility on the shoulders of teachers and instructors (as well as students) and require a much higher level of skill in teaching.
Fortunately, over the last 100 years, there has been a great deal of research into how people learn, and a lot of research into teaching methods that lead to student success. Unfortunately, that research is not known or applied by the vast majority of university and college instructors, who still rely mainly on teaching methods that were perhaps appropriate when there were small classes and elite students, but are no longer appropriate today (For instance, Christensen Hughes and Mighty, 2010). Thus, a different approach to teaching, and a better use of technology to help instructors increase their effectiveness across a diverse student body, are now needed.