Academy Of Arts, Sciences Establishes New Commission
By BRIAN ZINK
Purdue University News Service
CAMBRIDGE — The American Academy of Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday, Nov. 4, the formation of The Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education.
Through the next three years, this initiative will examine learning options available to high school graduates. It will study how well the existing system serves today’s students and will seek to identify challenges and opportunities higher education will encounter in the decades ahead.
Historically, America’s investments in schools and colleges have been vital to the strength of its economy and society and to its tradition of widespread economic opportunity. The commission will offer recommendations aimed at ensuring that higher education will build on those strengths and respond effectively to the demographic, technological, financial and other developments that lie ahead.
Today, about two-thirds of U.S. high school graduates begin some form of higher education within 18 months of graduation. More than one-third of undergraduates are older adults returning to school. At any given time, some 17 million Americans are enrolled at least part-time in some form of postsecondary learning. These students confront an array of alternatives.
Despite this and despite the fact that college enrollment is near a historic high, more than half of all students fail to complete their educational programs. There are widespread worries about the cost of college and the burden of indebtedness, and doubts in many quarters that colleges are prepared to take advantage of emerging technical opportunities to teach better at a lower cost. Perhaps most worrisome, for all the progress in increasing access to college, the gaps in college completion rates by race and by income level continue to grow.
The commission has convened an advisory group to curate available data to create a portrait of how Americans are receiving postsecondary education and identify the trend, then identify problems and promise inherent in those trends. The commission will also use the curated research to develop a working hypothesis about what the United States will look like if those trends persist and recommend corresponding changes to benefit students.
The academy has received $2.2 million from Carnegie Corporation of New York for the initiative. Spencer Foundation President Michael S. McPherson and TIAA-CREF President and CEO Roger W. Ferguson Jr. will co-chair the commission.
Other members include Mitch E. Daniels Jr., president, Purdue University; Joseph E. Aoun, president, Northeastern University; Deborah Loewenberg Ball, dean, University of Michigan School of Education; Sandy Baum, senior fellow, the Urban Institute; Rebecca M. Blank, chancellor, University of Wisconsin-Madison; John Seely Brown, former director, Xerox PARC research; Carl A. Cohn, clinical professor of education, Claremont Graduate University; John J. DeGioia, president, Georgetown University; Jonathan F. Fanton, president, American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Robert Hormats, vice chairman, Kissinger Associates, former under-secretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment; Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Jennifer L. Jennings, professor of sociology, New York University; Jeremy Johnson, co-founder, CEO, Andela; Daphne Koller, president, co-founder, Coursera, Inc., professor, Stanford University; Sherry Lansing, founder, CEO, Sherry Lansing Foundation; Nicholas Lemann, professor, former dean, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; J. Michael Locke, former CEO, Rasmussen, Inc.; Gail O. Mellow, president, LaGuardia Community College; Diana Natalicio, president, University of Texas, El Paso; Hilary Pennington, vice president, Ford Foundation; Beverly Daniel Tatum, former president, Spelman College; Shirley M. Tilghman, former president, Princeton University; P. Roy Vagelos, former president, CEO, chairman, Merck; and Michelle Weise, executive director, Sandbox ColLABorative, Southern New Hampshire University.