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More Evolution than Revolution? The Work and Workplaces in Higher Education

described in the previous section are truly interesting and exciting. At the same time, most change in higher education, now and in the future, will likely occur in the context of existing institutions, structures, and programs. Without dismissing the possibility of, and even need for, rethinking many our ways of doing business, improving the work of colleges and universities is probably more evolution than revolution. The essays in this section suggest many positive changes that have evolved in response to changing student populations, societal needs, and understandings of teaching and learning. Carol Schneider’s sweeping essay about the “practical turn” in liberal education describes a range of changes in how liberal education is understood and, more important, increasingly practiced in colleges and universities. The basic aims of liberal education, “powers of the mind, responsibilities to self and others, and empowering knowledge,” remain constant, she notes, but also change “as educators’ approaches to those purposes are constantly in flux and constantly, often fiercely, debated.” The trends she describes turn away from disinterested, disciplinary-based study and a rigid distinction between general education and the major toward practices such as inquiry-driven and applied learning, interdisciplinary study and civic engagement. Equally or more important, these practices are and should be part of all students’ experience, regardless of institution or area of study since “the next Change era must be a season of farreaching redesign, equitably, for all students.” The essays by George Kuh and Gwendolyn Dungy underline and illustrate the shifts that Schneider describes. Kuh suggests that the current emphasis on producing job ready graduates misses fifty years of an evolving understanding of holistic student development, “the inextricably intertwined cognitive/intellectual and personal/social attributes.” The decades of literature and research on holistic student development is congruent with the current “groundswell of interest by stakeholders in ... what often have been labeled ineffable, ‘soft skills,’ yet their affinity with holistic student development is compelling.” Colleges and universities need to promote experiences in and out of the classroom—especially through high-impact practices and experiential learning— that will equip students for the contemporary workplace, and for society and citizenship. Indeed, “the need has never been greater for educating the whole student by addressing one’s intellectual, social, emotional, ethical, physical, and spiritual attributes.” Gwen Dungy, Executive Director Emeritra of NASPAStudent Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, describes the evolution of the work of student affairs in contributing to the developmental project Kuh describes. That contribution has involved responding to changing student More Evolution than Revolution? The Work and Workplaces in Higher Education