In Transition E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: J-B HE Single Issue Higher Education
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 175

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Take a candid look into how some traditional liberal arts colleges have incorporated nontraditional adult degree programs. This volume of case studies shows how a number of small, independent universities addressed various administrative and service functions for their adult programs. When taken together, it captures the emulsive nature of this imperfect blend as well as the fluidity of solutions. This issue covers: * The dynamics that an adult program can bring to an institution * Colleges that combine the adult program within university-wide, centralized processes * Colleges that have mostly autonomous programs * Institutions that developed a hybrid model * The current status of incorporating nontraditional programs into traditional colleges and universities. This is the 159th volume of this Jossey-Bass series. Addressed to higher education decision makers on all kinds of campuses, New Directions for Higher Education provides timely information and authoritative advice about major issues and administrative problems confronting every institution.

Leseprobe

Contents

Editors’ Notes

Chapter 1: The Win-Win of Adult Degree Programs

Centralized Governance

Distributed Authority

Hybrid Models of Governance

No Single Solution

Chapter 2: Mission Intentionality and Operational Integrity: The Essential Role of Faculty in Adult Degree Programs

Chapter 3: Relevant Adult Programs, Resilient Students, and Retention-Driven Administration

The Institution, the Program, Its Centralized Structure

The Context, the Challenge, the Transition to Centralized Administration

The Students, the Plans, the Outcomes

The Future

Chapter 4: One Body, Many Parts: An Adult Program Profile

Background

Centralized Structure

Challenges

Benefits

Conclusion

Chapter 5: Academic Autonomy for Adult Degree Programs: Independence with Integration

Independence: What Kind? What Cost?

Starting at the Margins

Building Cultural and Social Capital from the Margins

The School of Adult Learning: Academic Autonomy

Lessons from the Margins

Chapter 6: The Impact of Adult Degree Programs on the Private College or University

Introduction

A Brief History of Adult Degree Programs

The Impact of Adult Degree Programs

Institutions as Systems

Summary

Chapter 7: Practicing What We Teach: Learning from Experience to Improve Adult Program Administration

Administrative Structure: Registrar’s Office

Academic Structure: Program Development and Management

Learning from Experience: Optimally Effective Management Structures

Chapter 8: Starting from Scratch: The Evolution of One University’s Administrative Structure for Adult Programs

Background

A Hybrid System of Governance

ACU Online Today

Evaluating the Structure

Chapter 9: Hybrid Governance in an Adult Program: A Nuanced Relationship

Introduction

Program Description

ADCP’s Place in the University

Connections with University Offices

Connections with the Traditional Undergraduate Faculty

Benefits of the Hybrid Model

Challenges of the Hybrid Model

Mutually Beneficial Relationships Between Adult Degree Programs and the Liberal Arts

Conclusion

Chapter 10: Conclusion: Unique Adult Degree Programs with Unique Relationships to the Main Campus

Case Study Interpretations

Author Survey

Additional Survey

Final Observations

Index

In Transition: Adult Higher Education Governance in Private Institutions

J. Richard Ellis, Stephen D. Holtrop

New Directions for Higher Education, no. 159

Betsy Barefoot, Editor-in-Chief

Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except as permitted under sections 107 and 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher or authorization through the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923; [phone]; fax [phone]. The copyright notice appearing at the bottom of the first page of a chapter in this journal indicates the copyright holder’s consent that copies may be made for personal or internal use, or for personal or internal use of specific clients, on the condition that the copier pay for copying beyond that permitted by law. This consent does not extend to other kinds of copying, such as copying for general distribution, for advertising or promotional purposes, for creating collective works, or for resale. Such permission requests and other permission inquiries should be addressed to the Permissions Department, c/o John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030; [phone]; fax [phone]; www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Microfilm copies of issues and articles are available in 16mm and 35mm, as well as microfiche in 105mm, through University Microfilms Inc., 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346.

New Directions for Higher Education (ISSN 0271-0560, electronic ISSN 1536-0741) is part of The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series and is published quarterly by Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company, at Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594. Periodicals Postage Paid at San Francisco, California, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to New Directions for Higher Education, Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594.

New Directions for Higher Education is indexed in Current Index to Journals in Education (ERIC); Higher Education Abstracts.

Subscriptions cost $89 for individuals and $275 for institutions, agencies, and libraries. See ordering information page at end of journal.

Editorial correspondence should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief, Betsy Barefoot, Gardner Institute, Box 72, Brevard, NC 28712.

Cover photograph © Digital Vision

www.josseybass.com

Editors’ Notes

Just over thirty years ago, Lewis Mayhew (1980) authored the book Surviving the Eighties: Strategies and Procedures for Solving Fiscal and Enrollment Problems to address the commonly held expectation that American colleges and universities were about to enter an era of enrollment decline. The preface has this ominous prediction:

The comments and advice contained herein are based on the belief that higher education in the United States, after a century of gradual and then rapid expansion, must now anticipate several decades of no growth or even decline. Some well-established institutions will adjust to this steady or declining state with only minor difficulty. But others, especially the privately controlled institutions, may experience such travail as to have their very existence seriously jeopardized. (ix)

The academic community waited for the impending crash throughout the decade, but the students kept coming. By 1988, Harrington and Summ in an article in Academe asked the question, “Whatever Happened to College Enrollment Crisis?” The National Center for Education Statistics (2011) records that during the 1980s and 1990s, the number of eighteen-to twenty-four-year-old students declined as predicted, but college enrollments increased. Overall, U.S. colleges and universities grew from 12 million students in 1980 to over 20 million in 2010. How did this happen? Colleges began attracting new kinds of students. In the decade from 1999 to 2009, the number of traditionally aged undergraduate students grew by only 14 percent, but total college enrollment grew by 38 percent. Adult students became a growth market, and programs designed specifically for adults became the financial saviors for many of those privately controlled institutions whose futures seemed in jeopardy in 1980.

The increase in the number of adult students and the presence of academic programs designed to meet adults’ particular needs and circumstances created stress points in the administrative structures of traditional private institutions. In some cases, the programs were embraced as vital academic units that were logical extensions of the institution’s historic mission. At worst, they functioned as auxiliary enterprises whose singular purpose was to generate revenue to support traditional campus operations. Whatever the goal, the programs caused institutions to modify their structures to accommodate these new students and programs.

This publication is a candid look into how some traditional liberal arts colleges have incorporated nontraditional adult degree programs. Taken together, the authors capture the emulsive nature of this imperfect blend as well as the fluidity of solutions. Regardless of how the institutions have approached this dilemma, they all share a common history of periodic change. The directions of the changes are not the same, and indeed you will note that some institutions have abandoned organizational models that others are adopting. There is no attempt here to present a unified vision of the right way to organize an institution for success. Not only does one size NOT fit all but even those universities with extensive experience in administering adult degree programs realize that their model must continue to change.

The institutional approaches to directing adult programs are categorized into three broad paradigms according to their overall governance structure: centralized, decentralized, and hybrid.

In Chapter One, Ellis begins by offering an overview of the dynamics having an impact on traditional institutions once they initiate nontraditional adult programs. The next three chapters present universities whose current structures combine the operation of adult programs within university-wide, centralized processes. In Chapter Two, Blair describes an institution that moved from a decentralized model toward a centralized structure that resulted in an increase in academic quality. Sullivan and Pagano in Chapter Three present a similar situation that involved a physical move from remote facilities back to the home campus, and in Chapter Four, Clark relates some operational frustrations with a centralized structure but acknowledges that it has led to increased buy-in from a traditional campus community.

The next two chapters represent institutions that adopted the opposite approach. Curry in Chapter Five presents the example of a private university near Chicago whose mature adult studies program takes care of its own needs, including the hiring of full-time faculty members who are independent from their traditional campus counterparts. In Chapter Six, Giles reflects on the history of adult education as well as her own experience with the adult studies program at a rural university with multicampus locations statewide and in neighboring states. She concludes that traditional institutions must be designed to respond quickly to changes in the marketplace by creating new structures focused on the needs of adult studies programs.

The next three chapters feature institutions that have developed hybrid models incorporating some aspects of centralization and decentralization. Jass in Chapter Seven describes a model in which separate administrative structures and locations are maintained but remain very connected and integrated. The model Williams presents in Chapter Eight includes outsourced services in addition to decentralized and centralized features. Finally, the model described in Chapter Nine by Cockley demonstrates healthy internal relationships and cooperation within an institution where traditional and nontraditional programs share some functions and other functions are distinct.

In Chapter Ten, Holtrop summarizes the current status of the ongoing process to incorporate nontraditional programs in traditional colleges or universities. His chapter includes data from a 2011 survey that supplements the case studies and provides a ranking of the adult program administrative functions most likely to be decentralized among the surveyed institutions.

You will note that all the authors recognize the imperfect fit of their institution’s approach to addressing the oil and water of entrepreneurial programs on traditional campuses. It is hoped that their candor will make this publication a practical tool for institutions as well as a history and current picture of this under-recognized dynamic of independent colleges and universities in the United States at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century.

References

Harrington, P. E., and A. M. Summ. 1988. “Whatever Happened to the College Enrollment Crisis?” Academe 74: 17–22.

Mayhew, L. B. 1980. Surviving the Eighties: Strategies and Procedures for Solving Fiscal and Enrollment Problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

National Center for Education Statistics. 2011. Digest of Education Statistics 2010. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

J. Richard Ellis is dean of the Graduate School of John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.

Stephen D. Holtrop is dean of graduate and adult programs and professor of education at Huntington University in Huntington, Indiana.