This section is particularly relevant to a reading of Chapters VI ("Teaching and Learning") and VIII ("New Directions"), the two themes most directly concerned with academic excellence, change in the educational program of the university, and educational effectiveness assessment. We have structured our self-study report around (a) the challenges in our internal and external environment, (b) the findings of the research we have conducted on the university, and (c) the recommendations we wish to make to the campus that address those challenges and findings. The challenges discussed in this section are considered to emanate from outside this particular university and to apply generally to all our themes as a broad, fluid sociocultural, political, and economic framework within which we must do our educational work. If the authors have a general ideological bias in our interpretation of the pertinent events, it is the rather conservative one favoring the sustenance of the institutional distinctiveness of university-level (and, in fact, all) education as opposed to the blurring of their difference from commercial institutions; further, we tend to value institutional diversity and freedom over standards-driven homogeneity and externally-defined productivity. We prize and advocate the aggressive democratization and opening up of higher education and cherish the process by which we question the tenets of thought we regard as fundamental — today — including those in which we anchor our professional lives. We recognize that there is a variety of opinion regarding these issues, including some that are diametrically opposed to our perspective stated above, and acknowledge regretfully that we do not have space here to conduct a review of the literature of all persuasions. Many specific challenges are also listed in Annex A11.

The central question facing all institutions of education is: What is education good for? Is it good for the individual? the community? the marketplace? all of the above? And what is education? knowing things? being able to do things? relating to others? exhibiting certain conduct or characteristics? a state of mind? Is it a property of individuals? of groups, generations, society at large? Who decides? We used to know the answers to these questions, but we don’t any more. The demand that education change seems to have begun in the 1970s, so the current debate is recent only in its specific details (Bowen 1977).

The consensus as to higher education’s purpose seems to be falling to pieces (cf., e.g., Herron 1988). One of the pieces, let’s call them the canon-ites, advocates a ‘return’ to the familiar ‘fundamentals’ — Western civilization (not Afrocentric history), Shakespeare (not Soyinka), Deuteronomy (not deconstruction), the traditional Occidental sciences and mathematics. Whether this diet should be cooked up by every institution is not made clear. Another one of the pieces also promotes a broad civilizing, enlightening function for higher education, in which a universal content that is not canonical is contended to be possible. This content would draw from non-western histories and literatures, from post-colonial and critical theory, from social movements, queer studies, post-modern science, and political economics. The canon-ites think the multicultural movement undermines standards or quality. The multicultural movement activists think the canon-ites are more interested in retaining power in white, male, heterosexual hands than in education per se. The relationship of education to society — whether it can or should change, serve, or merely reflect it — has long been pondered, but the hope for agreement on this issue seems in our time to be remote (Elton 1979).

Another piece of the fallen consensus has to do with preparation for the workforce and professions. Some discussants of the role of higher education appear to think that it should be solely dedicated to provisioning the ranks of business organizations, according to the latter’s specifications (Oblinger and Verville 1998). The burgeoning of training institutions (some identifying as colleges or universities and awarding bachelor’s degrees), training divisions within corporations, for-profit training programs, and certification and training programs within universities indicate a need for specialized or tailored education beyond the purview of ordinary higher education. In a broader perspective, the rationale for a more potent international and multicultural educational program that is frequently given is related to the future employment prospects of graduates, i.e., that they will be working in a globalized opportunity structure. Thus, even the traditional bringing-out, broadening role of education is framed as a kind of training for high-earning positions.

Obviously, the relationship of education to work has re-dimensioned. The uncritical prioritizing of economics over education for its own sake has had a major impact on higher education. By and large, people obtain more education so as to work at a higher level in the economy. Education is not primarily for intellectual or spiritual growth, contentment, contribution to the community, or broad horizons, although it offers these things as a happy by-product, a ‘free gift’ in the box. The new emphasis on life-long learning reminds us that we are always at risk of falling behind, that our skills are never sufficient. We are not life-long learners motivated by curiosity about plants or interest in art, who avail ourselves of the resources of the local university avocationally. Rather, we learn so we will remain competitive, we learn so we can live. Adults in our economy are not those who already know enough to live, in our Meadian post-figurative society. The effort to appropriate many functions of the public sector by private interests has also affected schooling (Baker 1999). Where church and state used to divide up the labor of initiating youth and making them into followers, with some assistance from various guilds and secret societies, the distinction between public and private was invidious and threatened no displacement of the aristocracy. In the contemporary setting, the churches are among many private organizations, the state and municipalities are the sole resort of public action, and the aristocracy of money seeks to define both as loci for capital investment, i.e., potential generators of profit. Thus, we see the withdrawal of public agency from higher education, including ‘state’ institutions.

A concern many have about some changes in higher education is that what is driving them is the commoditization and commercialism that pervade our society. The justified suspicion of commercial colonialism does not entitle us to jettison all new directions, however. Learning outcomes assessment, technology-mediated instruction, self-study and other innovations hold promise for improved connection among colleagues and with students. Critically deployed, these can be instruments for re-positioning the academy into a more favorable public light and out of the domination of private interest. Some think that the pressures of the market can produce improvements in educational effectiveness in much the same way they have increased the power of computing technology or the efficiency of the worldwide distribution of goods.

One of our significant challenges then is to work out the relationship between the need for training and the goals of education, seen as a more profound cultural and social commitment. Institutions like Cal Poly Pomona should be natural leaders in this endeavor, though the financial pressure on them appears to be thrusting them in the direction of providing more training than education. Public institutions have been put in the peculiar position of losing the independence formerly afforded them by the support of the citizenry, while having no substantial endowment, track record of grant or contract success, or well-oiled internal machinery for obtaining external funding. The pressure for efficiency forces us to consider economies of teaching/learning that put the living students, in all their variety, onto a spreadsheet. Planning and development documents of higher educational institutions read to their own faculty as imperial missives from the corporate world (Mokhiber and Weissman 1999).

Scholarship and research are undergoing a parallel transformation. As Boyer and other scholars have noted, the pressures on working researchers in the university are such as to have metamorphosed the ordinary tools, activities, and surroundings of the teacher’s trade into objects for analysis themselves (1990). Creditable and tenurable publication is no longer confined to esoteric journals. Education administration has become a discrete profession, transforming former professors into members of an elite managerial class whose characteristics are far more like those of business executives than those of teacher/scholars (Kanter 1992).

The student is now seen as a customer or consumer. To employ the industrial metaphor, the student is at once the product and the consumer of higher education. It is now commonplace to hear of students who complain about attendance requirements, saying, "I paid tuition for this course!" or who dislike the behavior of a professor, saying, "I pay your salary!" They are claiming that the financial transaction completes the educational relationship, so far as they are concerned. The notion of student-centeredness appears to be a more benign statement of the effort in higher education to accommodate the needs, characteristics, and vicissitudes of life-styles of contemporary students to a greater extent. It is a challenge to find out exactly what these are and what they entail in terms of the curriculum and pedagogy. The consumer, commuter culture in which we all participate is in conflict with the demands of higher learning; our value system is driving us ineluctably to force an accommodation of education to the economic system, not a provision on the part of the latter for the former. A corollary movement is toward profound changes in the delivery mechanisms for what is taught and learned. Distance learning, a widely touted means of expanding the reach of campuses without requiring them to grow physically, has been embraced by many universities (Grossman 1999). Whether it will, can, or should actually replace face-to-face dialogue as the principal medium of educational exchange remains to be seen. (Noble 1997 presents a cultural critique.)

The real issues of quality, accessibility, and accountability that concern us are the surface discourse enclosing the deep text of social economic process (Wills 1999). Alongside and related to the latter process, the demographic re-configuration has prompted a probe of higher education’s purposes. The democratic imperative, not to mention the demands of the marketplace for skilled technical workers, impels the production of graduates regardless of their gender, age, class, ethnic, linguistic, or other characteristics. It seems this production must be able to take place under almost any circumstances: at a distance, with very large groups co-present, using non-personal transmission methods, involving few or no texts, chunking time differently, awarding credit for non-course activity, and so on. The discussion of standards, preparedness, and excellence in the context of the discussion of diversity has instigated the renaissance of some ancient enmities. Some of the people talking about a ‘return’ to the basics, the lowering of standards, etc., are really talking about supposed differences between the races. One of the ironies of richness in our society is our failure (or reluctance) to exploit the tremendous resource of cultural diversity in enhancing the education and growth of all, so far. Another irony of richness is a remarkable effect of the economic boom of the ‘90s: investment in public and community projects has actually declined, and the income disparity is worse by far than in any other industrialized nation. And, of course, some of the reform of schooling done in the name of access, standards, and excellence has not addressed, let alone improved, the educational conditions of the economically disadvantaged, who are disproportionately families of color (e.g., Henig, Hula, Orr and Pedescleaux 2000 and the works of Jonathan Kozol). So we are rich in cultural resources and rich in GDP, but neither the diversity nor the economic boom lead directly to educational enrichment.

An excellent overview of the major issues facing higher education can be found in Zusman 1999:107-148. Levine also presents an interesting critique of current trends in higher education, seen as a mature industry now subject to increasing regulation (1998).