Education – Cheap Research Essays

Introduction
This week we examine the role of colleges and universities (HEIs) in our society. Hopefully, this will give you a chance to think carefully about the nature of your own experiences in higher education – after all, each one of you is currently taking at least one university course!
Learning Objectives/Outcomes
This section further explores the role of higher educational institutions in our society by:
• Encouraging you to think about the non-trivial question: “What is a university?”
• Challenging you to consider the tension between the stated academic and social goals of most HEIs and the economic pressures that impose a more corporate-oriented model.
• Thinking about the concept of a “liberal arts” education and its alternatives.
Learning Activities
This topic contains two required readings and one short videos:
Readings
Bok, D. (2006). Our underachieving colleges : A candid look at how much students learn and why they should be learning more (pp. 1-21). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Menard, L. (2010). The marketplace of ideas: reform and resistance in the American university (pp. 13-20). New York, NY: Norton.
Video
Ted Talks. (2009, February). Liz Coleman: A call to reinvent liberal arts education (Links to an external site.) [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/liz_coleman_s_call_to_reinvent_liberal_arts_education.html
Liz Coleman: A call to reinvent liberal arts education (Links to an external site.)

Assignments
Online group discussion
Think about the tensions that you perceive in the debate over what universities should do and how they should achieve their goals. Consider your own experiences at SFU and at any other post-secondary institutions that you have attended. What ideas from Bok, Coleman, and Menand resonate with your experiences? Which ideas seem distant or “out there”? What one recommendation would you make to the President of SFU regarding improving the quality of undergraduate education? Share your opinions and reactions with your group members. Make your own post in the discussion forum and respond to two other students in your discussion group.
**Please do remember that the purpose of this exercise is to engage in thoughtful scholarly discourse, not to complain or defame current, former, or future members of either the SFU community or a community to which you have belonged. Frame your responses with non-identifiable information and offer suggestions about what could be improved, and what particularly worked well for you.
Commentary
Simply by taking this course, you are a part of a university community. It is common for people to aim to attend university with little idea about what a university is, or should do, other than function as a place to learn and attain a degree. Teaching has been and always will be a part of what universities do. But how do they decide which programs to offer? What kind of research goes on in universities? How is this research different from that which is done in the private sector? Why do some universities have medical schools and some don’t? And what is the role of colleges nowadays, particularly given that more and more offer “bridging programs” that lead to degree programs? Increasingly, the literature uses the term multiversity to refer to the multiple roles that universities fill in society. Over a decade ago, Milojević (1998, 596-597) articulated six models of the university:
1. The university as corporation, an independent business, or place for vocational training.
2. The university as a place of academic leadership, acquisition of knowledge and search for truth.
3. The university as a cultural coordinator for the nation, educating people for citizenship.
4. Poliversities and multiversities; instead of universities and even diversities.
5. The global electronic university.
6. The university as a community-based institution.
Consider any changes you would make to this list, based on your work this week.