Monthly Archives: August 2017

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Forward to the Past

In the 1985 movie, Back to the Future, Marty McFly travels 30 years back in time to change the future of his parents’ lives. In 2017, President Donald Trump seems intent on reversing certain of the actions of past presidential administrations, most notably those of President Barack Obama, to create a future in America that returns us to the past—hence, Forward to the Past.

I identified 13 threats to higher education and its values poised by Mr. Trump’s election in my essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education on Nov. 15, 2016.  Sadly, virtually all of them have either happened, or are in the offing.

Some of these threats have the potential to affect profoundly certain members of the Roger Williams University community. As the University’s president, it is my responsibility to declare our unwavering support of ALL of our community’s members, and I do so now with respect to three distinct threats.

Title IX

Rumblings out of the Department of Education represent cause for concern. First, the acting head of the department’s Office of Civil Rights, Candice Jackson, said that “90 percent” of campus rape cases involved alcohol and female students with subsequent regrets (a comment for which Ms. Jackson subsequently apologized, describing it as “flippant”). Then, Secretary DeVos scheduled a hearing at which those alleging to be sexual assault victims and those claiming to be wrongly accused of sexual assault each were given equal time to testify (implying that each side was somehow equivalent in numbers and therefore deserving of the same amount of attention).

Second, there are rising concerns that “preponderance of the evidence”—the most commonly used evidence standard on college campuses, and the one enshrined in the famous 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter during the Obama administration— may be replaced by “clear and convincing evidence”, a higher standard that would benefit the accused.

Over the years, campus surveys have consistently shown that about 20 percent of female students claim to have been victims of sexual assault during their college years. Sexual assault is a huge issue on college campuses, but one that, until quite recently, was not given the priority and attention it deserves. Campuses are still struggling to create policies and procedures that incorporate due process standards and that fairly and impartially balance the rights and interests of the parties—but to introduce a new evidentiary standard at this point would not only require rewriting campus protocols but would also (and much more importantly) roll back the rights and protections of female students, and return us to an era we in higher education thought had been permanently relegated to the past.

Until and unless the law is changed, RWU will continue to maintain our heightened protection of female students, and we will continue to use the “preponderance of the evidence” standard in sexual assault cases.

Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action began in the 1960s as a means of favoring members of underrepresented groups in hiring and college admissions decisions, and in the awarding of government contracts. At the time, the focus was almost exclusively on expanding opportunities for African-Americans.

Over the years, U.S. Courts of Appeal and Supreme Court decisions have severely narrowed the application of affirmative action such that, today, race may not be considered in hiring decisions, although it still is permitted as one of many factors that can properly be used in college admissions.

Recently, The New York Times reported that the Justice Department was seeking lawyers to pursue compliance investigations and federal lawsuits that would target affirmative action programs in college admissions. Interestingly, the report focused on a case involving Asian-Americans at Harvard. The issue was not that their admit numbers were disproportionately low, relative to the overall percentage of Asians in American society (there is actually a much higher percentage of Asian students at Harvard than there are Asians in the broader society). Rather, it was that, on purely meritocratic grounds, less able students of other races were being admitted to Harvard instead of more Asians.

If the Supreme Court were to rule in favor of the Asian students, thereby increasing their numbers at highly competitive colleges and universities across the country, most of the students who would be displaced would be white—and one wonders if white students displaced by Asians would be demanding reinstitution of affirmative action—but this time to favor white students!

The push against affirmative action comes from people who think that no race should be advantaged or disadvantaged relative to another race. Unfortunately, the myth that “all [people] are born equal” is belied by the reality of inequality of wealth and income at birth, to say nothing of continued discrimination based on race or ethnicity. Underrepresented groups are underrepresented in higher education in the first place because disproportionate numbers of them were born poor—and without the means to obtain a college education, they are likely to stay poor.

RWU will continue to consider race among the many factors we use in admissions decisions, but we are particularly focused on finding creative ways of opening our doors more widely to low-income students. Consideration of race or ethnicity may be in peril by the current administration, but at present it is still legal to advantage the poor.

Transgender and the Military

Recently, President Trump announced—first in a series of tweets and subsequently in an executive order to the Department of Defense—that he intends to ban transgender individuals from serving in the military “in any capacity.” That action would reverse a policy instituted by the Obama administration in July, 2015, permitting transgender individuals to serve in the armed forces. President Trump has now reversed his own position, stated at last year’s GOP convention, that he would “do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ individuals.”

The speed with which society changed its position on gay rights to include, for example, same-sex marriage was enough to cause whiplash for individuals who had, in recent years, been pushing (successfully, in several states) for legislation that defined marriage as being restricted to the union of two members of opposite sex. So it may not be surprising that there are people who would very much like to revisit the recent extensions of rights to gays.

But herein lies the danger. A worst case scenario would be for gay rights to be held prisoner to the party in power. History provides a dramatic example: the repeated reversal of religious rights in Tudor England. To obtain a divorce, Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic church in the 1530s, in favor of Protestantism. When Henry’s 10-year-old son, Edward VI, became king, Catholicism was banned—but when Edward VI died, at the age of 16, his half-sister Mary assumed the throne, and England became Catholic once again—but only for five years. Upon Mary’s death, Elizabeth I assumed the throne, and, during her reign, Protestantism was reinstituted as England’s official religion. Thus, for over 70 years, the people of England were forced to endure repeated flip flops in the country’s official religion, at times facing charges of heresy for failing to conform to the religion of the day—and a heresy conviction could bring prison, torture, or even a death sentence.

There is certainly no imminent danger of anyone being burned at the stake in 21st-centry America—but there is the very real danger that transgender individuals, having been encouraged by the Obama administration’s willingness to allow them to join the military to “come out” without fear of rejection, now will face discrimination and exclusion once again.

And that outcome strikes me as unfair in the most fundamental way. Our system of jurisprudence is designed to ensure that newly passed laws are applied only prospectively. That is, almost without exception, one cannot be prosecuted for an act that he or she did prior to the passage of the law. But this 180-degree pivot by the Trump administration regarding transgender individuals in the military effectively does just that: having relied on the rules established by the Obama administration, these individuals are now being told that they are no longer able to serve in the military. At present, that means that no additional transgender individuals will be allowed to enlist, but Mr. Trump’s executive order is written in such a way that some transgender people now serving can be discharged, although what isn’t clear is whether that discharge would be honorable or dishonorable.

Being discharged for the “crime” of being transgender would be the equivalent of retroactive prosecution, something our country normally does not allow.

But the harm is not limited to the capacity to serve in the military. Rather, it is the declaration by the government of the United States that transgender individuals have restrictions on certain of the rights enjoyed by all other members of our society—and that declaration will encourage testing the limits to see what additional rights might be taken from them. For example, several states have reintroduced bills to restrict the use of public restrooms to the gender of one’s birth, an action clearly directed at humiliating and discriminating against transgender individuals. And with the Department of Justice’s amicus brief in a civil case involving a gay individual’s discrimination claim, in which the Department of Justice argues that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not apply to sexual orientation, but only to gender, the rollback of rights recently extended to the LGBTQ community is clearly under way.

As would be true of any community of 4,000 or more, Roger Williams University has some number of students who identify as LGBTQ. We also have a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program (ROTC), in which some of our students participate (and receive significant financial assistance with their college costs). Finally, we have declared (as have most other institutions of higher education) that we do not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, or sexual orientation. How, then, under the current set of circumstances, are we to reconcile the presence of ROTC on the campus with the military’s now being ordered to disallow transgender individuals the right to serve? How do we accept that transgender people will be denied the opportunity available to every other student to receive financial support from the ROTC program?

To all of the members of the Roger Williams University community, let me make my position clear: I am not willing to accept discriminatory practices at our university, and if that means having a campus discussion that could lead to the termination of our ROTC program, so be it.

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A Statement on the Violence in Charlottesville

Under the guise of exercising their rights under the First Amendment, a collection of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, members of the alt-right, and anti-Semitics gathered in Charlottesville on Friday and, outfitted for violence, paraded through the campus of the University of Virginia, brandishing torches and shouting racist and homophobic slurs as they confronted counter-demonstrators. Regrettably but not surprisingly, violence ensued, resulting in three deaths and almost two dozen injuries serious enough to require hospitalization. One white supremacist drove his car into a group of counter-demonstrators, an act that Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s national security adviser, subsequently labeled ‘terrorism.’

I repudiate in the strongest possible terms the hate speech and violence we all witnessed on Friday in Charlottesville, and I reiterate my personal support for ALL members of the Roger Williams University community, representing a variety of races, ethnicities, national origins, sexual orientations, gender identities, religions, and socio-economic backgrounds.

As college and university campuses, including RWU, are preparing to reopen for the coming academic year, campus presidents need to find the right words to communicate to their students, faculty, and staff. How do we balance our inherent commitment to the First Amendment with the reality that there are provocateurs whose goal it is to inflame the passions of members of the campus community and, if at all possible, to incite violence?

I think it is imperative that we separate the exercise of the freedom of speech from the initiation or instigation of violence. Violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment, and neither is incitement to riot.

And it is equally important that university presidents speak to the messaging itself. Whenever challenged, institutions of higher education must go on record to reaffirm the principles that guide us and that form our core values. So let me be clear: Racism, anti-Semitism, and all expressions of intolerance and hate are in direct opposition to RWU’s commitment to equality and inclusion, and have no place on our campus.

Finally, I ask that you join with me in keeping the families and friends of those killed or injured in Charlottesville in our hearts and thoughts.

Donald J. Farish,

President

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Is the Role of Higher Education to be Inclusive or Exclusive?

(Extended version of my essay in The Providence Journal, Aug. 10, 2017)

The United States is on a collision course with disaster. Unless we change our current model of higher education, our country will never have the educated workforce it needs to support and grow its economy.

A 2016 report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found that, of the 11.6 million new jobs created since the beginning of the Great Recession, 8.3 million (73 percent) required a four-year degree — powerful evidence that we are continuing the transition from a manufacturing to a knowledge-based economy. Yet a 2017 report from the Lumina Foundation showed that only about 32 percent of American adults have a four-year or graduate degree — a percentage that has changed little in the past decade. In the absence of a sufficient supply of college graduates, how can American business and industry grow? And if American business and industry does not grow, how can the American economy expand?

Don’t assume that the law of supply and demand will take care of this problem. That’s not the appropriate model when it comes to higher education because, overwhelmingly, individual institutions of higher education are focused more on maintaining, and if possible enhancing, their own reputation than they are on producing more graduates. In other words, their obsession with quality (often equated with ranking) eclipses society’s need for quantity — a statement supported by findings from a just-released New America survey of 1,600 American adults (“Varying Degrees”).

This obsession manifests itself in two distinct ways, both of which hurt the American economy. First, almost all four-year colleges and universities seek to admit the very best high school graduates they are able to recruit — with “best” being those with the highest GPAs and test scores, ideally from high schools with reputations for being strong academically. Because the publications that rank colleges and universities use, as one criterion, the percentage of college freshmen at a given college who are in the top 10 percent, or 25 percent, of their high school graduating class, these are the students most in demand. But if the American economy needs 70 percent of its workers with a four-year degree, which are the colleges willing to take students from the bottom half of their high school class? The answer is that these students have few college options and, for the most part, those options are unattractive. Colleges prove their worth and enhance their reputations by being exclusive — not inclusive.

Second, the emphasis on “quality” creates a grading system that ensures some number of college students must fall short of an instructor’s expectations, and falling short in enough courses causes the student to leave without graduating. The four-year graduation rate of less selective colleges is often below 20 percent — just one in five receives the degree on time, and the six-year graduation rate is commonly below 40 percent.

How can this model be changed to meet today’s societal needs? Here are three answers:

  1. Colleges and universities must dramatically increase their graduation rates. It is unconscionable that there are institutions graduating less than 20 percent of the freshmen they admitted four years earlier. These low graduation rates are a national disgrace, and the American public should demand better. As a nation, we literally cannot afford to have half of each entering class of students failing to graduate within six years (“half” being the national average graduation rate across all higher education sectors). What other business or industry could survive if half of its input never made it out the door as marketable product?

Too many institutions of higher education continue to miss the point of their mandate. A college education should not be seen as the civilian equivalent of Army Ranger School, where a majority of would-be Rangers are expected to wash out. Colleges choose who they admit — and by choosing in this way, they establish what might be seen as a quasi-contractual relationship with their students to do everything in their power to help them achieve their educational aims. Instead, too many institutions still act more as judges than as advocates; more as inquisitors than mentors; more as auditors than as teachers. And when students fall short of expectations, the conclusion is that they are poor learners, not that the institution is doing a poor job of teaching.

The response to these criticisms is, of course, predictable. “Gasp! You would have us lower our standards of quality in order to give students outcomes they neither earned nor deserve!” To which I respond: Nonsense! We can provide far more guidance and assistance to students without in any way compromising the expectations we have of what and how they learn. We can enliven in-class and out-of-class instruction to make learning far more interesting. We can move away from counting the hours a student must spend in a classroom to earn three credits, and move towards a direct assessment of the learning outcomes we have for the course. These changes are all within our reach and ability, yet for the most part we ignore them — because there is not yet sufficient pressure and expectation for us to change the standard model.

Suppose the regional accreditors (or the federal government) set an outcome standard of, say, 75 percent graduation in four years of all full-time students (those taking 15 or more credits each semester). Institutions failing to meet that standard would be placed on probation by their accreditors or lose some portion of federal funding. Does anyone seriously believe that we would not immediately see far greater attention being paid to successful student learning? Why should it take the threat of penalties to motivate colleges and universities to do a better job of graduating their students?

  1. Lower income students must be given significantly greater opportunity and support. Institutions of higher learning do a respectable job with students from the top quarter of family income, many of whom have college-educated parents, and almost all of whom are the product of quite good K-12 school systems. About 77 percent of students in this income bracket will ultimately earn a four-year degree.

However, colleges and universities have had much less success with students from the bottom quarter of family income, only 9 percent of whom will earn a four-year degree. If the United States is to see a significant increase in the percentage of adults with a four-year degree, we must work to make students from the bottom quarter of family income more successful.

Creating greater access and better educational outcomes for low-income students is not an insurmountable problem; we’re just choosing not to address it.

Many of these students did not attend high quality K-12 schools; most will be first-generation college students; they may or may not receive moral support from their families; they are generally unfamiliar with how colleges operate, and often feel out-of-place trying to navigate an unfamiliar landscape. By providing them with educational “coaches” — individuals dedicated to helping them in every facet of their lives — a few institutions have seen dramatic increases in retention and graduation. This model should be the norm, not the exception.

And we have to stop punishing people just for being poor. Low-income families tend to live in areas where the K-12 school system is often terrible; where the neighborhood is often dangerous; where families routinely confront food and housing insecurity, and move frequently, often disrupting the children’s education. Then, when the children finish high school, too often their only educational option is a community college, where funding on a per-student basis is far lower than at state colleges and universities, to say nothing of most non-profit private institutions. And we wonder why low-income students are one-eighth as likely to earn a four-year degree as are high-income students, who overwhelmingly attend colleges and universities that are far better funded on a per-student basis?

Why does our society find it in any way acceptable to provide the most financial support for those who need it least (students from the top quarter of family incomes), and to provide the least financial support for those who need it most (students from the bottom quarter of family incomes)?

  1. A new educational model is needed for working adults who require additional skills, or who want to complete their undergraduate degree. There are literally millions of American adults who have more than a high school diploma, but less than a four-year degree. Virtually all of them would be economically better off with a four-year degree, and surveys find that about 75 percent of them would very much like to have a four-year degree. But the opportunity to do so is just not available.

The traditional model for a college degree requires four years of full-time study, typically in residence. This model is all but useless for a working adult who cannot give up employment to attend college, and whose time is limited by job and family responsibilities. Not-for-profit higher education has been painfully slow to respond to this need, a fact that provided the opportunity for for-profit institutions to enter the market and develop what can most charitably be described as a “mixed” record.

America’s need for a far better-educated workforce cannot be met simply by enrolling more high school graduates. We must also develop new methodologies to serve working adults, who neither need nor want a “seat time” education (that is, one based on the input of how many hours a person spends in a lecture hall to earn a college credit). Rather, they need to earn credits based on the output of academic competencies achieved. This model is moving with glacial slowness in the world of traditional higher education; change has to happen far more quickly, in order that the educational needs of millions of adult Americans can be met, and in order that we can create the larger pool of college-educated workers that our economy so desperately needs.

Accomplishing even one of these three changes will be challenging. Achieving all three may seem impossible. Yet while there is a real sense of urgency on the part of both the American public and the American economy, it is not necessary that all of higher education responds overnight. It is enough that some institutions, public or private, decide that there are certain actions that they can take that will address these three changes. And they can do so while still protecting their ranking:

  • Programs for adults can be developed in such a way that they will not interfere with the current college ranking system, which is based on measures relating only to first-time, full-time freshmen.
  • Working to increase graduation rates will help an institution’s ranking, because graduation rate is an important criterion in the ranking process.
  • Creating access for low-income students, on the other hand, may affect an institution’s ranking (because these students generally score lower on standardized tests and on high school GPA), but these institutions will have to ask themselves whether they exist solely for the purpose of establishing a high ranking for themselves, or whether their more fundamental purpose is to meet the needs American society has of them.

As even a few institutions respond to one or more of these needs, they will demonstrate that so much of what we think of as being fundamental and ingrained in higher education is, in fact, a product of the model we are using — and that model can be changed. Indeed, it must be changed, if America’s economic strength is not to be undermined in the coming decades by an educationally ill-prepared workforce. Higher education needs to hold itself accountable in ensuring that this gloomy forecast does not actually occur. And the first step in being accountable is to adopt inclusivity — not exclusivity — as higher education’s watchword.