The Integration of the Humanities and Arts with Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Higher Education Branches from the Same Tree (2018) / Chapter Skim
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2 Higher Education and the Demands of the Twenty-First Century
2 Higher Education and the Demands of the Twenty-First Century
Pages 25-56
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Indeed, the surveys reviewed in this chapter show that many Americans view higher education as a path to a "good job." Yet the evidence reviewed in this chapter also suggests that the educational outcomes employers are asking for today -- including written and oral communication skills, teamwork skills, ethical decision making, critical thinking, and the ability to apply knowledge in real-world settings -- are the same kinds of learning outcomes that many institutions of higher education believe will prepare graduates for work, life, and active, engaged citizenship. As Chapter 6 of this report will demonstrate, these are also the kinds of learning outcomes associated with certain integrative approaches in higher education.
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. At the same time, higher education in the United States has functioned in a purposeful, distinctive, and cohesive way, uniquely emphasizing liberal education alongside practical education as nations elsewhere in the world have not done.
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Community colleges, for example, have come to recognize the value of a broad, liberal education for even the most practically oriented degrees (Albertine, 2012; David, 2015)
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When science was incorporated into liberal education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was done in the name of holistic education that would prepare young people for participation in civic life (Science, 2014)
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demographics, dispute over the meaning and purpose of liberal education, and pressure from employers drove institutional leaders to propose curricular reforms, including reforms to general education. In 1991, Jerry G
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. Many Americans are struggling to understand the return on investment in a college education as they weigh the rising cost, which far outpaces inflation, with the fact that more and more employers are requiring a postsecondary degree for jobs that did not previously require one.4 But as other sections of this chapter will demonstrate, evidence suggests that employers, students, and proponents of liberal education now have greater agreement on many of the desired learning outcomes from higher education.
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First, the committee found instances in which, either implicitly or explicitly, the goals of disciplinary integration are to make connections between STEMM fields and other disciplines so that STEMM subjects (and hopefully STEMM careers) become more appealing to groups traditionally underrepresented, and at times actively excluded, from STEMM fields.
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Fortunately, as this report will demonstrate, the committee found that integrative models of higher education have emerged at almost all institutional types, including many of the community colleges and technical schools that serve a large proportion of the nation's underserved and underrepresented students (see Chapter 6)
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Within institutions, traditional disciplinary control of faculty positions and of promotion and tenure requirements can also be a significant bar 6 See http://download.hlcommission.org/FacultyGuidelines_2016_OPB.pdf. (Accessed August 18, 2017)
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Similarly, the shift toward more integrated curricula will demand multistakeholder discussion of the criteria for accreditation. At community colleges, there is an additional level of pressure to silo the disciplines that comes from the federal financial aid process, particu
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These restrictions, while intended to improve student success, have the unintended consequences of both inhibiting student exploration and limiting any creativity in the community college curriculum. Unless an integrated course has been carefully mapped to the learning goals of the disciplines integrated, and unless the receiving institutions have predetermined that an integrated course meets their requirements for general education, these kinds of non-disciplinespecific courses would not be accessible to students receiving federal aid.
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For example, in the AAS degrees at Mid Michigan Community College, students are required to take three 200-level integrative general education courses -- Integrative Science (SCI 200) , Integrative Humanities (HUM 200)
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They need the critical thinking, logical reasoning, and lifelong learning attitudes required to determine whether a news headline on social media is fake and misleading or whether it offers valid and useful information upon which to base a decision. These skills and abilities will serve graduates not only in their lives as citizens and individuals but in their professional pursuits.
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NOTE: In this illustration, the length of each circle segment indicates the proportion of people graduating in each college major and employed in each occupation group. The thickness of the lines between majors and occupations indicates the share of people in that major-occupation combination.
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or sometimes toward the end of the student's tenure in college as some kind of "culminating experience." But proponents of integration argue that helping students integrate and understand the big picture connections between the different courses they take should be a more consistent feature of higher education because it is likely to make learning easier, more relevant, and more engaging. They posit that the multiple ways in which the arts, humanities, and STEMM fields have developed to understand and answer problems can be harnessed to expand the breadth and power of conceptual frameworks.
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. THERE IS BROAD AGREEMENT BETWEEN EMPLOYERS AND INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION ON CERTAIN STUDENT LEARNING GOALS Surveys of employers and institutions of higher education have demonstrated that there is broad agreement on the types of learning outcomes that all graduates should leave higher education having achieved (Burning Glass Technologies, 2015; Hart Research Associates, 2016)
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These goals give priority to application, integration, and high-impact learning and emphasize student learning outcomes in inquiry and analysis, critical thinking, teamwork, written and oral communication skills, and ethical reasoning and action, among other learning outcomes (see Figure 2-3)
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But recent surveys of employers reveal that they see talent as more than deep technical expertise or familiarity with a particular technology. They are also looking for well-rounded individuals with a holistic education who can comprehend and solve complex problems embedded within sophisticated systems that transcend disciplines;
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(2002) , Taking Responsibility for the Quality of the For further SOURCE: Association of American Colleges and Universities.
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However, even among the highly technical fields a quarter to a third of the required skills deemed essential by employers fall within the baseline skills. The results suggest that 14 The 318 employers surveyed by Hart Research Associates were executives at private sector and nonprofit organizations, including owners, CEOs, presidents, C suite–level executives, and vice presidents, whose organizations have at least 25 employees and report that 25 percent or more of their new hires hold either an associate's degree from a 2-year college or a bachelor's degree from a 4-year college.
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The responses to the survey "show a lower frequency of use for the technical reasoning knowledge and a high frequency of use for communication based skills." The author concludes that this is "because technical knowledge is considered valuable to a specialized group of people, whereas the work environ ment skills are more career-independent." These data suggest the need for a rebalancing of subject matter and pedagogical approaches. higher education should equip all students with the baseline skills needed for success in a wide range of occupations and, to the extent possible, cater specific technical instruction to the student's intended career path (but, as noted in Figure 2-1, students are likely to actually be employed in many sectors besides what they studied in the college major)
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Other groups of employers conceive of the need for a range of skills and competencies as "capability platforms." A task force of the organization STEM Connector, consisting of more than 30 leaders from industry, government, education, and the nonprofit sectors, identified four capability platforms that members of the STEM workforce need to be successful: digital fluency, innovation excellence, "employability" skills, and disciplinespecific skills (STEM Innovation Task Force, 2014)
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survey, which is administered to more than 140,000 arts alumni nationally, indicates that students are receiving unparalleled training in art techniques but arts training is also encouraging experimentation, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving. Recent alumni who responded to the SNAAP survey articulated many ways that this approach to arts training assists them in their work lives and contributes to their health and well-being, their relationships with others, their ability to collaborate and provide constructive criticism, and their ability to creatively solve problems.
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23) As noted earlier, many of these skills overlap with the "essential learning outcomes" identified by AAC&U's LEAP initiative, including critical thinking, teamwork and problem solving, quantitative literacy, written and oral communication, and integrative and applied learning.
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From 2000 to 2016, the number of health humanities programs more than quadrupled, increasing from 14 to 57, with another 5 known programs currently in development. Increased enrollments in undergraduate public health programs, many of which pursue liberal arts outcomes, reveal a similar interest (Leider et al., 2015)
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. Conversely, the most successful products tend to marry mastery of technical design with functional or aesthetic insights about what people find useful, desirable, and beautiful.
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The Brighton Fuse Project has been studying the growth of successful cre ative and digital businesses in Brighton. Two-thirds of the firms are fused or super fused, meaning that they combine creative art and design skills with technological expertise.
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For example, the work of Robert and Michelle Root-Bernstein has shown very strong correlations between leadership in science and engagement with arts and crafts avocations. In a 2008 study, Bernstein and colleagues found that very accomplished scientists, including Nobel Laureates, National Academy of Sciences members, and Royal Society members, were significantly more likely to engage in arts and crafts and identify as artists than average scientists and the general public (Root-Bernstein et al., 2008)
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It might be the case that arts training makes for better scientists and entrepreneurs, but it might also be the case that Nobel Laureates who are concert pianists are simply extraordinary human beings, or alternatively, had more privileged and resourced upbringings than others. We cannot say with any certainty that an education that integrates the arts with the STEMM subjects will necessarily lead to new foundational breakthroughs in science, engineering, and medicine.
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The complex social, technological, and environmental problems of our histori cal moment demand creative solutions that are humane, technically robust, and elegant. Giving students broader repertoires for criti cal thinking and creative innovation has the potential not only to create a workforce and polity that can effectively confront these problems but also to uncover points of connection and synergy within and beyond academia that may prove generative.
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HIGHER EDUCATION AND DEMANDS OF THE 21ST CENTURY 55 ity. These commitments are as essential to productive professional environments as they are to wider civic life.
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