Johns Hopkins University
Commission on Undergraduate Education
Final Report | May 15, 2003

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CHAPTER 2
The National Landscape

Early in the last decade of the 20th century, Johns Hopkins was one of the first institutions of higher education to form a Committee for the 21st Century to examine critically the entire University in order to recommend ways in which it could remain at the forefront of higher education in the next century. President William C. Richardson established eight "strategic study groups," one of which focused on undergraduate education. The Committee's final report, issued in September 1994, suggest a set of institutional imperatives and 23 specific recommendations to strengthen Johns Hopkins. The recommendations related to the Hopkins undergraduate experience were to devise tangible ways to encourage and reward excellence in undergraduate teaching and advising; make the undergraduate experience more personal; build greater educational coherence over the term of study; increase flexibility in the length of programs; and involve faculty from across the University in undergraduate education. Readers of the recommendations from the current Commission on Undergraduate Education will find this language familiar.

Stanford University established a Commission on Undergraduate Education to conduct its comprehensive review of the undergraduate experience in 1994. Based on the Commission's findings, Stanford developed a series of new programs that allow more students to pursue original work. As a result, there are more seminars and research projects that offer every student the opportunity for first hand discovery. More recently, in May 2000, Stanford's Faculty Senate endorsed "The Undergraduate Major: Guidelines and Policy," prepared by its Committee on Undergraduate Studies. The policy document provides criteria for reviewing all undergraduate majors at Stanford and specifies that each school should adopt a suitable process by which to review each departmental major every six to eight years. Finally, Stanford has linked its renewal of undergraduate education to the "Campaign for Undergraduate Education" with the goal of raising $1 billion, mostly in endowment, to sustain campus innovations in undergraduate education.

In the fall of 1994, the University of Pennsylvania's 21st Century Project began with six committees that dealt with: "(1) the challenge of engaging freshmen and sophomores in research activities; (2) the academic standards and models for service-oriented academic programs; (3) the issue of advising; (4) the curriculum; (5) the issue of symbolic reasoning across the curriculum; and (6) enhancing internationalization." In the following year, the Provost's Committee on Undergraduate Education (PCUE) set the stage for Penn's Undergraduate Experience Initiative. At the same time, Penn's Student Committee on Undergraduate Education (SCUE) released a "White Paper on Undergraduate Education." In addition to a curricular restructuring of each undergraduate school, the SCUE paper proposed a holistic approach to learning and a common intellectual experience for all undergraduates. New course offerings in each of the three "Penn Sectors" -- Community, Society, and Traditions -- emphasize citizenship, cross-disciplinary study, and practical application of theory as well as writing, speaking, analysis, research, interpersonal skills, and technology.

In 1998, the University of California at Berkeley formed a Commission on Undergraduate Education that was charged with assessing the University's efforts to provide the highest quality undergraduate education at Berkeley and recommending further steps that it might take to enhance the undergraduate experience. The final report, issued in September 2000, made four key recommendations: "(1) integrate inquiry-based learning into every phase of the undergraduate education; (2) ensure that all undergraduates have the opportunity to become literate and numerate across a broad range of disciplines by the time they graduate; (3) improve the availability and quality of advising for both declared and undeclared students; and (4) regularize the institutional assessment of undergraduate education on the Berkeley campus."

Columbia University's 1998 comprehensive review of undergraduate education was aimed at upgrading facilities and improving the quality of student life both inside and outside the classroom. As a first step, the institution undertook a thorough overhaul of student services, including dining services. As a result, construction of a new student center was authorized. In addition, reforms taken at the departmental level included the restructuring and resequencing of courses, the institution of capstone senior projects, and the design of specialized courses intended to introduce students to the approaches and techniques of their major.

In October 2001, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University embarked on an ambitious review of the undergraduate experience, with an emphasis on curricular and space planning. In March 2002, the faculty voted to reduce the number of Core Curriculum requirements, the first change since the Core was implemented in the 1970s. The review continues in 2002-2003 with four foci: concentrations, general education, forms of teaching, and students' academic experience, including extra- curriculars.

More recently, in the spring of 2002, President Richard Levin of Yale University commissioned a "Committee on Yale College Education" to focus on the state of undergraduate education, the first in 30 years. Four working groups were created to examine how to integrate undergraduate education into various University-wide initiatives and to consider how undergraduates can take better advantages of University resources, such as graduate and professional schools, arts institutions, and libraries. The final report was issued in the spring of 2003.

As states confronted tight budgets in the mid-1990s, a number of higher education reforms were initiated by their legislatures and implemented by their higher education governing bodies. Leaders in both Virginia and Illinois required colleges and universities to demonstrate that they were addressing issues of quality and productivity. As a result, Illinois cut over 200 low-priority and duplicative academic programs and reinvested more than $100 million in undergraduate education and other priority areas through its "Priorities, Quality, and Productivity" initiative. Virginia required campuses to develop plans for reducing costs and focusing their efforts on the highest public priorities, including an expected growth in undergraduate enrollment.

In 1996, the state of California, facing significant fiscal constraints, increasing enrollments, declining instructional quality, and the early retirement of 2000 faculty, contracted with the Rand Corporation to review the purposes and design of its Master Plan for Higher Education (also known as the Kerr plan), adopted in 1960.

Several national higher education associations have in many ways taken the lead in the review of higher education at the turn of the century. Often they focused on teaching and learning as well as assessment of student learning at the undergraduate level. Early in the last decade of the 20th century, three associations -- American Association of Higher Education (AAHE), the American College Personnel Association (ACPA), and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) -- collaborated to form a Joint Task Force on Student Learning to analyze how instructors can be most helpful in facilitating student learning. Their report established ten principles of learning that are widely used today and often form the backbone of campus-based reform initiatives.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) chose to focus on undergraduate education in the context of America's research universities. The report of the 1995 CFAT Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University entitled Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities provided a "call to action" for American research universities. The report outlines ten priorities: "(1) make research-based learning the standard; (2) construct an inquiry-based freshman year; (3) build on the freshman foundation; (4) remove barriers to interdisciplinary education; (5) link communication skills and course work; (6) use information technology creatively; (7) culminate with a capstone experience; (8) educate graduate students as apprentice teachers; (9) change faculty reward systems; and (10) cultivate a sense of community."

The CFAT Boyer Commission reconvened in 2001 to examine the development of undergraduate programs in the years since the first Boyer Commission report. Reinventing Undergraduate Education: Three Years After the Boyer Report records the current state of affairs and describes the extent to which research universities are dealing with the first report's recommendations. Simply stated, its conclusion is that although some progress was made, conversion to a new model of undergraduate education is not complete.

Most recently (September 2002), after two years' work, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) released Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College. The initiative outlines a vision for a "New Academy" that provides a high quality liberal education to all students in an era of near- universal access. A number of research organizations also examined American higher education in the last decade of the 20th century. The National Research Council of the National Academies focused their activities on a much narrower slice of American higher education, that is, biology education. In 2000, it convened a Committee on Undergraduate Biology Education to Prepare Research Scientists for the 21st Century. Their final report, Bio2010: Undergraduate Education to Prepare Biomedical Research Scientists, called for more research and interdisciplinary study opportunities for undergraduates as well as more seminar- type courses.

In fall 2001, the Policy Center on the First Year of College initiated a project called "Strengthening First- Year Student Learning at Doctoral/Research-Extensive Universities." This project resulted in a searchable database of programs and strategies supporting positive learning outcomes for first-year students at research universities and builds on over two decades of work on the freshman year by John Gardner at the University of South Carolina.

In a three-phase, five-year study, the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement at Stanford examined organizational and administrative support for student assessment in postsecondary institutions.

Finally, during the past several years, regional accreditation organizations have undergone a series of revisions in their approach to standards for accreditation. In general, these modifications have shifted the bodies' emphasis from assuring that institutions meet basic standards to using accreditation to enhance effectiveness. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which accredits Johns Hopkins, approved changes in January 2002 that place greater emphasis on institutional assessment and assessment of student learning. Similarly, in order to strengthen institutional ability for systematic quality improvement, the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools designed an alternative accreditation review process called Academic Quality Improvement Project (AQIP).

All of these initiatives seek to enhance undergraduate education by more self-conscious focus and systematic evaluation. There is a growing public consensus that, given its cost, undergraduate education should be better than it is and that the stakes are high enough to warrant the investment in improving the undergraduate experience.

© 2003 The Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore, Maryland. All rights reserved.
Last updated 17May03 by dgips@jhu.edu