Guest columnist
Funding must catch up to higher-ed evolution

By George S. Bridges
Special to The Times

George S. Bridges, dean of undergraduate education, vice provost and professor of sociology at the University of Washington

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

OVER the next several months, voters, elected officials and administrators of state agencies will make critical decisions about funding for higher education in Washington state. The vote on Initiative 884 and the 2005-2007 proposed budget loom as watershed events in the political life course of our public colleges and universities.

Funding for higher education has lagged behind growth of the college-aged population to the point that Washington's colleges and universities are overenrolled (and underfunded) by nearly 12,000 students. At UW, classes have grown larger and the quality of education accessible to our students is threatened.

Debate thus far has focused on funding to increase access to our four-year institutions, ensuring that more students gain admission. This issue is indeed critical, particularly at UW, because hundreds of qualified students are being turned away.

However, another funding issue that few are considering looms even larger. The resource needs of colleges are rising across the country as the very nature of undergraduate education undergoes a remarkable (and expensive) transformation. New students now enter learning environments that differ dramatically from that which many of us encountered at the same colleges and universities years earlier. If we base increased funding for our public colleges and universities solely on increasing the number of students we admit, we will be unable to deliver the quality of education students must receive.

An emphasis on learning that links academic knowledge to the solution of real-world problems now permeates thinking on our campuses. Undergraduate involvement in faculty scholarship and research is increasingly an expectation. And innovative approaches to making big campuses act as though they are small colleges are integral parts of this transformation.

While these approaches to higher education should make each and every one of us proud, they are also far more costly (in comparable dollars) than the education many of us received years ago, or even than schools like UW or WSU offered as recently as a decade ago.

Many universities have become much more focused on the nature of student learning and the analytical and communication skills undergraduates are developing.

At research universities, this new approach to undergraduate learning has extended the reach of the college experience into the labs of highly respected scientists, into research and community projects with noted faculty in the humanities and social sciences, and into studios with artist-professors dedicated both to the arts and to nurturing the talents of new artists.

At UW, the number of undergraduates annually involved in intensive faculty research, projects and service experiences has skyrocketed since the mid-1990s. Indeed, these experiences have become the gold standard of undergraduate education and are now what many students expect from their college years.

The National Research Council's systematic report on adult learning, "How People Learn," reinforces our belief that these changes are the best for students. The NRC study concludes that the very best learning occurs when persons apply their academic knowledge to meaningful action. Students learn and remember most when their academic work links the theories and ideas discussed in classes to applications and problems beyond the classroom. Working collaboratively in solving these problems in laboratories, research projects and creative endeavors with others extends the learning even further.

A major challenge of this type of student-centered education, however, is cost. Liberal arts colleges have offered these types of learning environments for decades at tuition levels four- and five-fold that of most public colleges and universities. Creating similar types of experiences for all undergraduates at schools like UW and WSU would mean that faculty members would devote much more of their time and energy to small, project-based experiences for their students.

At the current levels of state funding, implementing this shift in emphasis for most students would bring the research engine that drives these universities (and our local economies) to a screeching halt. And yet, this type of learning is precisely what most undergraduates need.

They will leave college and enter a working world that is far more complex than the world their parents and grandparents entered. They will need impressive skills in analyzing and interpreting information, in solving problems in collaborative work environments, and in communicating ideas clearly and effectively. And as the pace of change in our society accelerates, they must be interested in and capable of learning over the entire course of their lives.

An approach to funding our public colleges and universities that focuses solely on creating enough "seats" to respond to the growing population, ignores the types of learning that higher education must deliver now and in the future.

Clearly, much more funding is needed simply to keep pace with demand. But as a UW alum, faculty member and administrator, I am very concerned that we will place much more emphasis on getting students into college than on ensuring how capable they are when they leave.

George S. Bridges is dean of undergraduate education, vice provost and professor of sociology at the University of Washington.