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David Rosowsky explores the mounting pressures facing U.S. higher education, from eroding public trust and widening wealth gaps to rigid institutional traditions. He argues that most universities have been slow to adapt, clinging to nostalgic models that no longer meet today’s societal and workforce needs. Without a seismic shift in how institutions think and operate, higher education risks becoming less relevant and less relied upon. Rosowsky calls for bold, forward-looking strategies that align universities with the rapid pace of change in the world around them.
I think they're behind the eight ball. To be candid, I think there are some schools that have been, more forward leaning than others in the last couple of decades, and they are perhaps in a better position by culture and by historical accomplishment to make the kinds of changes that are needed. But by and large, I believe most colleges and universities are stuck in a very traditional modality.
They are clinging to something that they care very deeply about. And they should, but they're allowing that sort of, nostalgic view of what higher education wants to prevent them from thinking about what higher education needs to be. Today, I mentioned previously that there's this gap between what we are able to deliver and what the society today is asking us to deliver.
The world has moved quickly. Higher education has moved very slowly, if at all. And so that gap has widened. Right now we're being challenged because the pace of change at higher education is traditionally so slow because of our own inherent systems and structures and policies and practices inherited. And as we stumble through incremental change, we're no closer to being aligned with where the rest of the world is by the time we get through that change.
So there is some sort of seismic shift needed. And you could argue that the politics locally and politics globally may be, the seismic shift or forcing the seismic shift that we need. Whatever is coming, whatever changes, are being forced upon us or will be forced to make as a federal government and world governments change their priorities, these are long overdue.
And so higher ed can either get on board and take stock of its own future and reposition itself to be that invaluable institution to public good and to societal prosperity. Or they can become less and less relevant and less and less dependent upon for evolving the country and producing the graduates for the workforce, and ultimately, there'll be fewer institutions because the demand will just be a lot lower.
You know, ours is an industry around the world that still dresses up a couple of times a year in medieval robes. Right. It's not that we don't value that. And it's not that we don't cherish the historical roots. And it's not that we don't want to respect our tradition, but the world is different. And if our shared governance system in its current incarnation is not, enabling the university to realize needed change, we should revisit that and think, how can we position shared governance, which is critically important?
It's second oldest only to the church at universities. How can we position shared governance to take its role in really helping to shape, drive and, secure the future of the university and tenure is, you know, look, those of us who were privileged enough to have earned tenure, we want to cling to tenure. I get that, but there have to be, multiple pathways, multiple types of faculty for bringing into the university, particularly as we move beyond, traditional domains of scholarship, particularly as we move beyond the teaching and research, and even teaching, research and outreach domains as we bring in more experiential learning, as we bring in, more career services, as we bring in more offsite education, as we allow students greater flexibility to to not only, study disparate topics, but to learn in different ways. The singular modality of instructional faculty or even at tenure track faculty. That's probably not going to serve us well in the future.