Making the Big Campus Feel Small
Jeff Selingo
Bestselling author | Special Advisor to President, Arizona State U. | College admissions and early career expert | Contributor, The Atlantic | Angel investor | Editor, Next newsletter | Co-host, FutureU podcast
Excerpts from my newsletter, NEXT. Sign-up here.
??Welcome to 2022!
It’s been two years since the relaunch of this newsletter as Next. Thank you for subscribing and reading.
The new year is, of course, a time for predictions and resolutions.
?Making any predictions in a pandemic world seems like a futile exercise. As for resolutions, most of us have probably?given up on them by now. One of my resolutions is to be more consistent on the Peloton this year. What has helped recently is Peloton’s introduction of Sessions. It allows those of us who can rarely join live classes to be part of a community of other riders who get on the bike for a recorded class—?and all start the "session" at the same time.
The idea behind Sessions is that cohorts make the big seem small and support us in performing our best.?It’s an approach that has been tried in higher ed with varying success over the years as we’ll examine in today’s edition of Next.
?But first two announcements…
The first “Next Office Hour” of the new year will be?Thursday, January 27?at 2 p.m. ET.?Join me for a conversation about how colleges can build more equitable pathways to careers.
???Sign up here?(registration required)
The New “Buyers and Sellers” list is now live.?Thanks for your feedback on how we visualized the data for this year’s edition. You can take a look at the list or download it at?jeffselingo.com/buyersandsellers.
The Student Experience, Post-Pandemic
Relationships are central to the higher education experience.?Any of us who went to college can easily recall a professor, a classmate, a coach, or an advisor who made an impression on our lives a lot more than we can remember anything we learned in Econ 101.
Why it matters:?Providing an engaging student experience will be critical for colleges to attract and keep students after the pandemic.
Background:?The structures colleges historically created in the name of student engagement— assigning mentors, freshman seminars, and living-and-learning communities—are sometimes forced, and thus don’t work,?Chambliss said.
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Yes, but:?Cohorts still matter to college success. Small groups with overlapping interests make a big campus feel smaller for students.?
—One of the best example of cohorts that work in college are athletic teams.
—Colleges have tried to replicate the athletic team model elsewhere with mixed success.
The bottom line:?Faculty are critical to students finding a sense of belonging and purpose in college.
Higher Ed Trend-Spotting, 2022
So I won't make predictions for the year ahead, but I did recently poll my LinkedIn followers on the trends they’re watching in 2022. Since LinkedIn limits how many items you can have in a poll,?also read the comments to the post.
In addition to these three issues, here’s what else I’m watching:
Institutional transformation:?The pandemic gave colleges space to experiment with everything from online learning to remote work to new academic calendars. The big story of the year is what from the pandemic will stick for the long run and how will institutional leaders use this moment to push for further changes to the financial model of higher education.?
Federal aid:?The?$70 billion?provided by the federal government?to higher education in Covid relief?packages will run out in 2022, putting pressure on?universities to cut costs or develop new revenue?streams quickly. The result: a fiscal cliff for institutions that were already living on the edge pre-Covid. Will more campuses merge or close?
Presidents:?The early days of 2022 have already seen some presidents step down at?Elizabethtown College?in Pennsylvania (effective immediately) and the?University of Florida?(at the end of the year). Given the political divide in this midterm election year, fatigue over leading campuses through a pandemic, and the end of Covid aid, expect a wave of presidential departures this year.
Admissions testing:?Stanford and Harvard led the way at the end of 2021 by extending their test-optional policies in admissions. What I’ll be watching for in 2022 is how many institutions return to a testing requirement, and if test-optional policies at selective colleges reduces the number of students taking the ACT/SAT overall (which in the past it hasn’t).
Research:?Will Covid-19 produce a surge in funding for biomedical research? The last huge increase in the?budget of the National Institutes of Health was two decades ago when Congress doubled the budget of the agency over five years in the hopes that it would lead?to?new treatments for some of the most serious diseases.
Until next time, Cheers — Jeff
Founder of College Solutions Windermere
3 年Combining my two favorite things-exercise & education in a way only you can! Thanks for the great read-high five ?
Health care advocate
3 年Love the connection you make. Don’t forget to give a ‘high five’ on the leaderboard.
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3 年I think universities can do so much with Live sessions on the admissions side where prospective students can speak with current students, financial aid and the enrollment team. But from a classroom perspective, I would love to see more flipped classrooms where students get together in smaller groups and discuss what was taught in the lecture, build on each other's ideas, ideate, and then present back what came of their time together. There are so many tools to help facilitate these types of discussions like Miro boards. I do a lot of higher ed secret shopping, and I even enroll at different universities. I am often underwhelmed by their online delivery of information, their lack of interaction in the courses, not using adaptive learning courseware, or analytics, or early alerts, not using net promoter scores in the classroom, video content, and little instructor engagement. The course is the product universities are selling, yet, they spend such little time identifying if their product is the best it can be and iterating. I spoke to an MBA professor and he said I don't get paid extra to spend extra time creating my course. My course evals may go up a little bit, but it's not worth all the extra time. Sad ;(
Innovation Maestro + Growth Advisor | TEDx Speaker x2 | Board Member | Host, 'A Few Things' Pod | Super Connector | Nurturing Ecosystems + Driving Collaborations | Author | AI Strategist/Educator | Girl Dad
3 年Good insights .... thanks Jeff Selingo