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Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium (2022)

Chapter: 3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System

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Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
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3

Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System

In considering how to transform undergraduate STEM education for 2040, pausing to reflect on past efforts at transformation in higher education can be informative. What were the goals of previous efforts? What were the outcomes? What assumptions and expectations drove the thinking behind them? What assumptions and expectations influenced the resulting actions? What changed and what remained resistant to change?

Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux authored and presented a paper to symposium participants on “Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System: Implications for Racial Equity,” which examined key historical moments and provided a framework for using past experiences to structure positive change for the future.1

IMPLICATIONS FOR RACIAL EQUITY

Racial inequity is endemic to the U.S. higher education system, which is “not news to anyone who follows STEM education and employment,” explained Malcom-Piqueux of Caltech. Students who are members of racially minoritized groups are more likely to attend college than in years past, but they still experience inequitable access to educational opportunity. She presented data showing that students of color are disproportionately attending Community Colleges and for-profit institutions rather than 4-year institutions (see Figure 3-1). As a result, students from

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1 A PDF of the paper is available at https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/10-21-2020/imagining-the-future-of-undergraduate-stem-education-symposium.

Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
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Image
FIGURE 3-1 Racial stratification in higher education.
SOURCE: Malcom-Piqueux symposium slides.

these groups are concentrated in institutions that do not offer the same breadth of STEM curriculum and provide fewer opportunities to engage in authentic STEM learning.

The institutions in which students from racially minoritized groups are most likely to be enrolled do offer pathways to STEM careers, but the STEM students from these groups are more likely to switch out of STEM majors and take longer to complete bachelor’s degrees. The effects of the challenges and constraints these students face are evident in the decreasing proportions of such students in master’s and doctoral degree programs, Malcom-Piqueux noted.

Inequities in STEM education and higher education generally reflect the broader sociopolitical context in the United States, she explained. Racial discrimination that was codified into law to deny minorities economic and educational opportunities in decades past continues to affect the lives of those in marginalized groups. Although postsecondary enrollment has increased for these groups, highly stratified patterns of attendance are the continuing legacy of past discrimination and segregation. “It is the underlying intent and logic of those policies [that has] led to the conditions that we observe today,” Malcom-Piqueux commented. She noted that researchers who have studied persistent underrepresentation point to the need to address the root causes of disparities in access and outcomes if STEM education is to be transformed.

Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
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THREE TRANSFORMATIONAL MOMENTS

Malcom-Piqueux analyzed three past efforts to expand access to higher education in the United States, which she called transformational moments, to gain insight into the complex motives for and effects of these efforts. Each in its own way, she explained, illustrates the lasting effects that policies, institutional actions, and beliefs about race in the United States have had on racial equity today.

The first of the three transformational developments was the passage of the Morrill Land Grant College Acts of 1862 and 1890, which created colleges that were to focus on military science, agriculture, and the mechanical arts (engineering). Through these acts, the federal government granted land, much of which belonged to dispossessed Native American tribes, to individual states, which could in turn sell the land in order to fund the establishment of the new colleges. Malcom-Piqueux pointed out that although the acts were explicitly intended to expand access to higher education, the new colleges admitted very few women, and African American students were permitted to attend only designated institutions (the original Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs). Although the acts did provide new opportunities for African American students, the new institutions maintained racial segregation in practice, giving states ways to underfund those that served African American students even though the second of the two acts specifically required equitable distribution of funds.

A second U.S. effort to dramatically expand postsecondary access was the G.I. Bill (the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944), which provided benefits, including tuition payments, to veterans of World War II. The G.I. Bill fueled a huge influx of enrollment in postsecondary institutions, including state colleges and universities, Community Colleges, and vocational schools, and for a minority of the returning veterans, elite institutions.

African-American G.I.s were eligible for these benefits, as Malcom-Piqueux explained, but the social context of the 1940s limited their access in practice. Many had attended racially segregated and under-resourced secondary schools and were not well prepared for college. They faced discriminatory admissions policies that restricted their access to many institutions, so Black G.I.s disproportionately enrolled in vocational programs or were not able to take advantage of the educational benefit at all. Even the chronically underfunded HBCUs turned away many G.I.s because they lacked sufficient resources to handle the influx. Additionally, many of those institutions lacked the accreditation necessary so that their graduates could be accepted at graduate and professional schools. Consequently, Malcom-Piqueux explained, the general widening of access accomplished by the G.I. Bill also had the effect of reinforcing racial stratification and inequality within higher education.

Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×

The third transformational event was the U.S. response to the launching of Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957. The U.S. government regarded this launch of the first human-made object into space as an indication of educational failure for the United States and immediately focused attention and funds on the goal of strengthening science research, public education, and workforce development. The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958 provided funds to the states to strengthen science education, a significant portion of which went to a small number of research universities to expand programs and facilities for research and development in science, engineering, and technology.

One goal of the NDEA was to foster equal access to high-quality science education, but as with the other two examples, Malcom-Piqueux explained, many people from racially minoritized populations were ultimately excluded from the benefits. The forms of aid available to students, the testing and guidance used to identify promising students for new programs, and continued support for segregated institutions, for example, all played a role in limiting the racial equity of the expanding education and research infrastructure.

THE EQUITY QUADRANT FRAMEWORK

Malcom-Piqueux presented the framework she used to analyze efforts such as the land grant acts, the G.I. Bill, and the NDEA in order to characterize their implications for racial equity in higher education, shown in Figure 3-2. The framework is modeled on a tool developed by the Center for Urban Education (CUE, 2020).

The quadrant uses two dimensions to assess policies that have effects on postsecondary opportunity for people from racially minoritized populations. The first dimension, policy intent, is a gauge of a policy’s intended effect on equity, whether to promote inclusion or exclusion. The second, racial logic, is a gauge of how consciously the policy’s designers tried to account for the effects of sociopolitical, historical, and cultural circumstances on the way the policies would operate in practice. Race-conscious policies, she explained, are those designed to reflect those realities, while race-neutral ones do not take into account racial attitudes. This second dimension, Malcom-Piqueux noted, could be either positive or negative, that is, it may identify the objective of fostering equity or of protecting racist ideas.

As Figure 3-2 shows, the three examples discussed fall in different parts of the quadrant. Malcom-Piqueux identified the Morrill Land Grant Acts as race-conscious policies designed to exclude members of racially minoritized groups. She identified the G.I. Bill as a race-neutral policy designed to include more members of those groups, but noted that it was compromised

Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×
Image
FIGURE 3-2 Equity quadrant framework for understanding race in higher education policies. SOURCE: Adapted from Malcom-Piqueux Symposium slides.

by a lack of attention to obstacles that would prevent an equitable distribution of the benefits. She classified the NDEA as race-neutral in that it also did not take racial attitudes into account and had both inclusionary and exclusionary effects.

LEARNING FROM THE PRESENT

Malcom-Piqueux closed with some broader reflections on considering racial equity and higher education. She pointed out that for the historical examples cited, there was generally no explicit discussion at the time of how the changes would impact racial equity. In order to improve equity in the future, though, the higher education community must have these conversations. She therefore offered some lessons to be learned from institutions that are currently advancing racial equity in STEM fields by making racial equity a central goal in their policies, particularly Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Community Colleges. “Those institutions that are successful at creating equitable conditions in relation to STEM as well as in relation to education more broadly have made it a mission to ensure that all students and racially minoritized students in particular are served well, and the cultures are supportive of these students,” she observed.

Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×

Dealing directly with race is essential, Malcom-Piqueux went on, because race-specific problems cannot be solved with race-neutral solutions. Institutions are most likely to effectively address the problems when they identify racial equity as a primary indicator of their success. She described some key elements of the systemic approach to race-conscious inclusion she regards as necessary. It is critical to ensure that students from racially minoritized groups understand the relevance of STEM to their lives and their careers, she noted, and incorporating a wide range of pedagogical and instructional approaches is one strategy for doing that.

Race-conscious inclusion also requires that faculty members, administrators, and staff recognize and discard deficit-based thinking about inequities. A deficit model for understanding inequity is one in which the inequitable results experienced by a disadvantaged group are attributed to perceived deficits within that community, without any attention to the historic denial of opportunity that created the inequities in the first place. Educators who reject the deficit model, Malcom-Piqueux explained, instead share responsibility for producing racial equity. They recognize that inequitable outcomes indicate that current practices are not working and need to be changed. Reconsidering the ways that STEM fields define merit and identify promising students is a key step. Reliance on standardized test scores, for example, has yielded inequitable results, she noted, whereas holistic reviews can better identify those with the potential to excel in STEM subjects.

Community Colleges and MSIs, including HBCUs, Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), and Asian American, Native American, and Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (ANAPISIs), are demonstrating the possibilities for rectifying educational inequities, Malcom-Piqueux explained. The MSIs in particular use culturally responsive approaches to instruction and assessment to foster an inclusive environment. They also typically have diverse faculty members who are invested in serving the institutions’ target populations.

Community Colleges also create multiple pathways to STEM careers and stress the importance and relevance of STEM to students’ goals, careers, and lives. Community Colleges can respond nimbly to labor market needs, and many develop partnerships with 4-year institutions, local industry, and other organizations to craft beneficial educational experiences for their students. Malcom-Piqueux noted that for-profit institutions play a large role in the way Black Americans are accessing higher education. Acknowledging concerns about student financing for these programs and other reasons for caution, she commented that the most successful for-profit institutions have used flexible modes of instructions, including online instruction, to meet student needs.

In conclusion, Malcom-Piqueux argued that racial equity should be a primary measure of success in the transformation of the undergraduate

Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×

STEM education system. She called for thinking about racial equity as an imperative rather than merely a nice thing to have and said that “if we do not achieve racial equity, then that means we are not being successful and we need to change our behavior in order to achieve success. Rather than it being an afterthought, have it lead how we think about how we are going to approach undergraduate STEM education in the future.” She pointed out that achieving systemic change requires targeting all aspects of undergraduate education from policy to institutions and schools to educators, as well as the surrounding context in which all of this is taking place, thus ensuring that we are targeting all aspects of the system rather than tinkering around the edges as has often been done up to now.

Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×

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Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×
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Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×
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Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×
Page 17
Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×
Page 18
Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×
Page 19
Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×
Page 20
Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×
Page 21
Suggested Citation:"3 Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Imagining the Future of Undergraduate STEM Education: Proceedings of a Virtual Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26314.
×
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In November 2020, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a multi-day virtual symposium on imaging the future of undergraduate STEM education. Speakers and participants pondered the future and the past and shared their goals, priorities, and dreams for improving undergraduate STEM education. Expert speakers presented information about today's students and approaches to undergraduate STEM education, as well as the history of transformation in higher education. Thoughtful discussions explored ideas for the future, how student-centered learning experiences could be created, and what issues to consider to facilitate a successful transformation. This publication summarizes the presentation and discussion of the symposium.

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