Raison d’Etre for Higher Education: Promoting Economic and Social Mobility of Students

By Dr. Sonny Ramaswamy
President, Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities
Board Member, QA Commons

“You can resist an invading army; you cannot resist an idea whose time has come.” Victor Hugo 

Formal (higher) education, as we know it today, i.e., a teacher or guru imparting knowledge via lecture and experiential learning, has its origins in religious teachings going back millennia to Mesopotamian, Indian, Greek, Chinese, and other cultures; for example, “gurukulas” in India, or synagogues, mosques, temples, and churches, which also controlled significant wealth, were the keepers and purveyors of knowledge. This connection between “church” and education continued over the centuries, including here in the United States with the establishment of colleges and universities affiliated with various religious orders and the education of clergy. The beneficiaries of such education practiced as clergy, and included the occasional individual, such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, and others, in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, also studying and teaching about “nature”.

As knowledge expanded and was applied to help society and to improve the human condition, the demands on teachers, aka educators, and students increased exponentially, and educational institutions became more “secular”.

Since European settling of the United States, a number of institutions of higher learning, such as Harvard, Yale, and others, mostly served the needs of the elites, particularly clergy. However, our nation’s Founding Fathers, particularly George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, called for the democratization of higher education, so the children of the masses could also aspire to higher education, which then could pull them out of the morass of poverty.

During the first half of the 19th century, individuals such as Jonathan Baldwin Turner in Illinois and others continued to push for publicly funded higher education. This culminated with the passage of the Land-Grant College Act, signed into law by Abraham Lincoln on July 5, 1862, who stated that these colleges would be the economic engine of the United States. The Land-Grant College Act, aka the First Morrill Act, was the brainchild of Vermont Congressman Justin Smith Morrill, who went on as a United States senator to author the Second Morrill Act of 1890, which established landgrant colleges for African-Americans.

The Morrill Act reads in part: “… without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education … .” The Morrill Act delivered on the dream of our Founding Fathers to democratize higher education in the United States, with three educational requirements and outcomes: foundational knowledge in the liberal arts, humanities, and science; practical education in the agriculture and mechanic arts; and military leadership.

In the ensuing decades, additional institutions of higher education were established in the United States, including public two- and four-year colleges and universities, vocational and technical colleges, denominational faith-based and private colleges and universities, and career colleges. All of these institutions have played a significant role in educating the youth of America and helped them achieve economic and social mobility.

Today, however, students are graduating later and then struggling to find jobs that pay well or are in line with their educational credentials and expectations; and at-risk or students from underrepresented or economically disadvantaged backgrounds have been impacted significantly worse.

Higher education as a public good is becoming a hard sell. Eroding public support has contributed to rapidly rising costs of education—up almost 250 percent during the last three decades, and out of control student debt—projected to be $2 trillion by 2022. Despite the latter situation, college education continues to be worth the investment; indeed, college graduates earn about two times as much as high school graduates, have greater economic and social mobility, and realize a better quality of life.

Along with the need to address the student debt crisis, another critical need of higher education in the 21st Century is to reinvigorate educational experiences, help graduates realize economic and social mobility, and contribute to societal well-being, which harkens back to the goals of education articulated by Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Turner, Morrill, and more recently the GI Bill.

Several recent studies and articles have addressed the issue of college students missing out on the opportunity to achieve economic and social mobility, in part, because many colleges are not inculcating skills in students to achieve the same.

To paraphrase Victor Hugo, you cannot resist an idea whose time has come, i.e., today, colleges must take the time and effort to help students achieve economic and social mobility. There are effective lessons from the past, i.e., focus on promoting core competencies, including general education, experiential learning, team work, and inculcation of leadership skills. To this end, institutions must provide students relevant social context, promote evidence and data driven approaches for students to have excellent grounding in core areas of liberal arts and humanities and in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines, along with experiential knowledge in their area of expertise—for example, by applying problem-based active learning—and grounded in knowledge of environmental and natural resources issues. Finally, colleges must help students develop the technical and experiential skills, writing and communication skills, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, professionalism, morality and ethics, digital competencies, teamwork, and the ability to live and work in a diverse society.

The cost of education, which is a significant constraint to students, needs to be contained as well. The possibility of using a combination of on-campus, on-line, or blended and hybrid, and technology driven education and learning models to create anytime, anywhere learning offered in an “open-campus” environment offer tantalizing possibilities to reduce costs, enhance retention and completion rates, and demonstrate the value proposition.

Economic and social mobility are affected by cultural, economic, and social capital, and institutions can address all three as they support student outcomes. These could include: creation of learning communities, which a number of NWCCU institutions and others have developed; targeted financial aid, including stipends for experiential learning opportunities; and creation of social networks, particularly using opportunities afforded by alumni and alumni associations. It will take a multi-pronged and concerted effort to help students realize economic and social mobility.

As NWCCU completes the development of its strategic direction and the revision of standards, and incorporates evidence and data-informed approaches to promote student success, we intend to work with our family of institutions to convene, help construct, and deploy best practices and effective approaches to create cultural, economic, and social capital for all students, but especially at-risk or students from underrepresented or economically disadvantaged backgrounds achieve social and economic mobility.

To quote Barack Obama, “… we don’t promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That’s an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.” Our higher education institutions have a critical role to play in helping students realize their dream of economic and social mobility.