As published in the June 1, 2008 Toledo Business Journal
Lloyd Jacobs
University of Toledo
UT to transform
education approach
Toledo Business Journal recently interviewed Lloyd Jacobs, president of the University of Toledo (UT). He shared the following thoughts.
Toledo Business Journal: You have stated that higher education in America is broken. Can you discuss your thoughts on this matter?
Lloyd Jacobs: I appreciate the opportunity to define a little bit what I mean. Higher education in America is the best in the world. Higher education has enabled the great strength of our economy. So, for me to say it’s broken, I want to say that in careful context.
What is wrong? What needs to change? How are we falling short of where we think we need to be? Well, our economy is not growing at the rate as some would have it; it’s growing at about 2% per year while economies of China and India are growing at double digit rates each year. And, because I believe that the single most important factor in economic growth, prosperity, and health is higher education, there’s clearly something that needs to be studied very carefully and looked at.
So, I think that “broken” might be a little strong, but I think it’s worth looking to see what parts are working and what parts are not in a very careful way.
A number of lines of evidence – or at least lines of logic or assertion that would support that – [can be found in] the Spellings Report. It is a report by the Secretary of Education at the federal level that pointed out that we weren’t meeting business needs; higher education was not supporting economic growth, job development, and so forth.
In Ohio, the governor’s Commission on Higher Education and the Economy made the same observations and suggested a need to focus on certain disciplines; the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines is one approach.
More recently, the chancellor of the State of Ohio issued a strategic plan, and the introductory sentences were along the same lines – we’re not meeting the needs of business people, we’re not meeting the needs of the economy, we’re not meeting the needs of the State, and we’re not growing. And to the extent that I believe that higher education is probably one of the most important things in anyone’s life, we need to take seriously those assertions and try to figure out what they mean.
So that’s what I meant when I said higher education is broken. It may be broken, but it is also the best system in the world. I think we’re the envy of everyone around the world, but I think if we ever stop thinking about what we can do better, then we’re in trouble. And that’s why I made that statement.
TBJ: You have used the expression, “mass customization.” Can you explain this approach?
LJ: The best example of mass customization that people are aware of is with Dell computers. At least up until a few weeks ago, it made computers to order. More important though than that particular methodology is the emphasis, the fundamental emphasis on what it is the customer wants, what the customer needs, and the customer’s expectations.
Now, I’ll translate that to students. What do students need to live a prosperous, healthy, long, fulfilled life? That goes back to what I said about the brokenness, that we’re not creating people whose lives will be part of the integrated society and will fully participate in society. If we’re not sending students out with the wherewithal for a healthy and fulfilled prosperous life, then we’re not meeting their needs.
So, [regarding] mass customization, the customization idea speaks to the meeting of the needs of the customer, in this case the student. What do they need to live that kind of life? As opposed to what I enjoy teaching, what do I know best? My own comfort would be to teach what I know best and hope that it coincides with what the real needs are.
So it’s a matter of shifting one’s priorities a little bit.
TBJ: You have also used the expression, “extreme student centeredness.” Can you explain this approach?
LJ: Well, I used those two terms more or less synonymously. I connected them in a single sentence to say one is similar to the other, and I believe that’s the case.
To center your institutional life on the student as opposed to on yourself – not what we know, not what we teach, not what we enjoy teaching, not what we’ve always done; this is about being centered on the students’ needs as opposed to our traditions, desires, or habits.
Now, that sounds easy, but actually it’s a radical shift in viewpoint. It’s a radical shift in how you look at the world and how you look at the institution.
TBJ: What major changes are needed to implement mass customization and extreme student centeredness at the University of Toledo?
LJ: It goes back to that pretty radical shift in viewpoint, and accomplishing a major viewpoint shift is not easy. It pulls you out of your comfort zone; it makes you see things that you haven’t seen before and maybe don’t want to see. It creates anxieties. A shift in viewpoint is very difficult to accomplish.
Shifting the viewpoint from what institutions have done traditionally to a focus of trying to meet the needs of the students and the society and their subsequent employers – that’s a major shift in viewpoint, and there’s a lot of anxiety associated with it.
TBJ: What concerns exist for students designing a curriculum with easy courses, and what role will enhanced assessment efforts play?
LJ: There’s a viewpoint, I suppose, that if we’re attempting to meet students’ needs and their aspirations are paltry, that college education will become something less valuable. I don’t subscribe to that. On the contrary, I happen to think that today’s students are committed, smart, interested in their welfare, and they’re more [socially active] and oriented than I think we were [years ago]. I think that looking at the world through their eyes is a pretty safe bet.
However, for those folks who are worried about that, I think enhanced assessment will answer that question. Is what I am proposing – to see the world through the students’ eyes – necessarily dangerous in terms of dumbing down a college education?
I think that, in enhanced assessment, there are a number of tools available. Assessment isn’t easy, because it invites the criticism that you’re teaching to the test… But there are some very sophisticated tools for assessment. One of them is the College Learning Assessment and we are exploring that. It teaches life skills such that, if you teach to the test, you’re still teaching the right thing.
I hope that we’re going to explore that, and maybe that will help us be sure that we’re doing the right thing. Ultimately if the assessment tool is in fact measuring the students’ needs and viewpoints, then it will help us with this student centeredness idea.
TBJ: Can you discuss specific planned changes for the provost’s office at the University?
LJ: In a certain sense, the provost’s office is not going to change, and I’m not going to change it, because it is led by provost Rosemary Haggett on this campus who is in charge of most of the undergraduate curriculum. I’m very pleased with her leadership and I’m very confident in it, and so I’m not going to change the provost’s office.
She is going to make some changes internal to the provost’s office, creating a number of associate provost positions aimed at some of these items: a faculty development associate provost, distance learning and computer assisted learning associate provost, and so forth. So the changes are going to be internal.
I’m not going to change the provost’s office from where the president sits. Dr. Haggett’s working on some changes internally, one of which will be to gather a number of these special programs and strengthen them and, instead of trying to have 100 programs from 100 different groups, to create something that looks a little bit more seamless that will serve everyone.
TBJ: Regarding the provost’s office, you had talked at one time about a “new entity.” Is there a name now for this new entity and is it under the provost?
LJ: That new entity is going to be a gathering of a whole bunch of support services – student learning center and so forth – and trying to coordinate them and strengthen them. That new entity now has a name, and the new entity name is University of Toledo Learning Collaborative.
TBJ: Can you discuss the role of distance learning and computer-assisted learning in the University’s future?
LJ: There’s just a huge amount of evidence that computer assisted learning produces better results. What are better results? Well, [the results are] more learning, more knowledge, and knowledge that sticks longer because students tend to engage with computer-assisted learning. There’s just a lot of data on that.
There’s also a lot of data that supports that not everyone can get to the classroom, so we have distance learners. A couple are in Iraq and other such places. So I think both of these are going to revolutionize what it means to become an educated person. And I think the line between the two will blur. I think it’s already beginning to blur.
At the one end of the spectrum, a soldier in Iraq may not be able to have a face-to-face interaction, and at another end of the spectrum some professors may feel they need a seminar course that is entirely face-to-face. But the great majority of the teaching is going to be in the middle, and it’s going to be blurred. And every classroom experience is going to have at least an electronic notebook, electronic assignments, and possibly electronic textbooks.
Even the distance learning is probably going to evolve to a place where you do distance learning and you come to campus for one seminar a weekend or something like that. The two fields are going to be merging and overlapping in about five or ten years, or sooner I expect. So we won’t be speaking of distance learning and computer assisted classroom learning. It’s going to be pretty much one and the same. There will always be the outlying person in Iraq or a pure seminar course. Most of it is going to be a mix, and most of it is going to be hybrid. The future is in hybrid between distance learning and classroom learning.
We’ll see developments in the next five to seven years that are almost unimaginable at this point. Can you imagine most of a course being downloaded on an iPod? Can you imagine having most of the vocabulary for a foreign language being available electronically? If you can’t imagine it, start thinking about it. Almost all teaching is going to be hybrid of some sort.
TBJ: Can you share reactions and resistance from faculty to these planned changes?
LJ: The great majority of the reactions are excitement and willingness to embrace [the changes]. Faculty members in great universities are willing to explore, are willing to embrace change, and do embrace change. And that’s by far and away the general reaction to what’s going on in the world of higher education. And, because the squeaky wheel gets the attention, there are a few people whose anxieties about change come to the fore and get enunciated or noticed. But it’s a very small minority. Most of the faculty at this university and universities like it are excited and interested and willing in embracing this change.
Then there are a few people whose anxieties are such that they voice them a little bit. I even have anxieties about all of this; this is a lot of change that’s going on. If you don’t have anxieties, you’re missing something. But for the most part, a little anxiety is fun. Some folks don’t quite enjoy it as much as others.
TBJ: Are there any other issues you would like to discuss?
LJ: This institution has as its mission making life better, longer, more fulfilled, happier, healthier, and more prosperous and to focus on what it is that students need in order for them to accomplish what this is all about. That’s what I mean when I say student centered. To focus not on what we have done traditionally or historically and what we like to do best, but to focus on what it is that will best equip them for that kind of a future.