what is the importance of tertiary education

Tertiary Education

Tertiary Education is instrumental in fostering growth, reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. It benefits not just the individual, but the entire educational system.

Tertiary education refers to all formal post-secondary education, including public and private universities, colleges, technical training institutes, and vocational schools. Tertiary education is instrumental in fostering growth, reducing poverty, and boosting shared prosperity. A highly skilled workforce, with lifelong access to a solid post-secondary education, is a prerequisite for innovation and growth: well-educated people are more employable and productive, earn higher wages, and cope with economic shocks better.

Tertiary education benefits not just the individual, but society as a whole. Graduates of tertiary education are more environmentally conscious, have healthier habits, and have a higher level of civic participation. Also, increased tax revenues from higher earnings, healthier children, and reduced family size all build stronger nations. In short, tertiary education institutions prepare individuals not only by providing them with adequate and relevant job skills, but also by preparing them to be active members of their communities and societies. 

The economic returns for tertiary education graduates are the  highest in the entire educational system  – an estimated 17% increase in earnings as compared with 10% for primary and 7% for secondary education.   These high returns are even greater in Sub-Saharan Africa, at an estimated 21% increase in earning for tertiary education graduates.

As the youth population continues to swell and graduation rates through elementary and secondary education increase dramatically, especially in regions like South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa, there is an intensifying demand for expanded access to tertiary education of good quality. Diversification of institution types and delivery modalities will become increasingly more central to meeting this expanded demand. Tertiary technical and vocational education and training, as one example, can provide an effective and efficient complement to traditional university studies in providing students with skills and knowledge relevant to the labor market. 

Governments are increasingly recognizing that the entire educational system – from early childhood through tertiary education – must reflect and be responsive to rapidly evolving social and economic demands and needs within an expanding globalized knowledge economy, which increasingly demands a better-trained, more skilled, and adaptable workforce. 

There are around 222 million students enrolled in tertiary education globally, up from 100 million in 2000. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the number of students in tertiary education programs has increased since the early 2000’s, but quality concerns remain . In Sub-Saharan Africa, enrollments have doubled every twenty years since the late 1970s. This massive growth remains critical as a student with a tertiary education degree in the region will earn more than twice as much as a student with just a high school diploma over a lifetime, though, of course, a variety of factors such as social capital and networks, institution quality, and academic program selection are among the factors that lead to notable heterogeneity of outcomes at for individual students in every country. 

Across the expanding pool of graduates of tertiary education, matching the skills developed today to the needs of the labor market of both today and of the future remains a major challenge. At the same time, expanded enrollments increase the strain on publicly funded institutions of higher learning, and many countries with limited resources are struggling to finance the growing needs of a larger student body, without compromising the quality of their educational offerings. Tertiary education also remains out of reach for many of the world’s poorest and most marginalized. In Latin America and the Caribbean, on average, the poorest 50% of the population only represented 25% of tertiary education students in 2013.  In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 9% of the traditional aged cohort for tertiary education continues from secondary to tertiary education – the lowest regional enrollment rate in the world.

Countries all over the world have undertaken major restructuring of their tertiary education systems to enhance their reach and effectiveness. However, progress has been uneven. All countries engaging in strategic reforms of their tertiary sectors benefit from ensuring that their national strategies and policies prioritize equitable access, improved learning and skills development, efficient retention, and considerations of the employment and education outcomes sought by graduates and the labor market.  Both policies and academic degrees need to be strategically tailored to fit the needs of the local society and economy.  Only then can governments realize the gains in primary and secondary school attainment through tertiary education access and progression and turn these successes into increased and sustained economic and social development.

Last Updated: Apr 09, 2024

STRATEGIC POLICY ADVICE

As the world seeks to build back better into a new era of green and equitable economic growth, tertiary education systems are at the heart of the big transformations required throughout economies and societies. Tertiary education is vital for the development of human capital and innovation. Strategic and effective investments in tertiary education can serve every country – from the poorest to the richest – by developing its talent and leadership pool, generating, and applying knowledge to local and global challenges, and participating in the global knowledge economy. Effective tertiary education systems ensure that countries have well-trained doctors, nurses, teachers, managers, engineers, and technicians who are the main actors of effective education and health service delivery and public and private sector development. 

The imperative for investing in tertiary education derives from two major questions: What are the benefits of investing, and what are the consequences of not investing? The benefits include higher employment levels (that is, lower levels of unemployment), higher wages, greater social stability, increased civic engagement, and better health outcomes. Even more significant and, perhaps, revealing, is examining what happens when countries underinvest in their tertiary education systems. The consequences of underinvestment include brain drain and talent loss, limited access to applied research capacity for local problem solving, limitations to economic growth due to low levels of skills in the workforce, low-quality teaching and learning at every level of education, and, perhaps most glaringly, expanded wealth inequality within and among nations, with those investing proportionately more experiencing resultant growth rates far outpacing those with lower levels of investment and strategic development.

Key elements of strategic policy advice for tertiary education

Decades of insufficient and ineffective investment in postsecondary education and the advanced skills developed through higher learning opportunities have only exacerbated global equity gaps. The World Bank’s STEERing Tertiary Education: Toward Resilient Systems that Delivery for All  policy approach paper describes the approach of the World Bank to support the development of effective, equitable, efficient, and resilient tertiary education systems and institutions. 

The paper seeks to: (i) reinforce the imperative that every country – regardless of level of development – invest thoughtfully and strategically in diversified, well-articulated, and inclusive tertiary education systems; (ii) provide a framework for policymakers and other tertiary education stakeholders to examine critical traits responding to the needs for advanced skills and lifelong learning in support of growth and development and key interventions for tertiary education systems in the decades ahead; (iii) examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global tertiary education sector and share ideas that promote a resilient recovery from the crisis; and (iv) provide key information about the decades of commitment the World Bank has shown to utilizing tertiary education for sustainable development, including context, concepts, and scale of the World Bank’s operational and analytical work.

Within this steering framework and with a view to turning the challenges wrought by the COVID-19 crisis into opportunities for impactful reforms, this paper encourages tertiary education policymakers and stakeholders to STEER their tertiary systems and institutions toward greater relevance and impact, utilizing five framing principles:

I.  Strategically diversified systems  — supporting all postsecondary institutions, ensuring agile, articulated pathways and diversity of forms, functions, and missions

• Developing  future-oriented strategies  that center on a strong contribution of tertiary education not only to growth and competitiveness but also to social cohesion and human development more broadly for the tertiary education sector, subsectors, and institutions. This is an agenda for high- and middle-income countries but is particularly important for fragile and low-income countries that need to kick-start the technological innovation and adaption engine and provide the young generation a productive and peaceful future.
• Positioning tertiary education in a  lifelong learning  context with flexible pathways, second-chance options, and greater adaptability to the needs and opportunities afforded by employers, civil society, and governments. This means permeability across pathways and providers, modularization of learning offers, and student-centered credit systems to allow for flexible pathways as well as bridging and mentoring programs to boost tertiary remedial education to give everyone a good start and adequate support in tertiary education.

II.  Technology  — designed and applied in a purposeful and equitable manner

• Harnessing  the power of technology  to improve teaching and research capacity while simultaneously acknowledging and countering the impact of expanding digital divides. With tertiary education sectors massively expanding across the globe and low-income groups and countries trailing behind, technology might be the only way to effectively ensure equity and resilience.
• Building a digital ecosystem with the help of  National Research and Education Networks (NRENs)  and effective collaboration across government portfolios. Harnessing the power of technology means that tertiary education institutions not only profit from digitalization but also advance digitalization through the development of digital skills, and application of digitalization across its functions and related research and development.

III.  Equity  — a universal approach to the benefits and opportunities of postsecondary learning

• Acknowledging that  inequity is a form of injustice .
• Acting to ensure that  equity and inclusion in access and success  are a driving ethos for an effective and relevant tertiary education system.

IV.  Efficiency  — a goal-oriented, effective use of resources

• Improving  information systems  so that sectors, subsectors, and institutions can be managed and enhanced utilizing evidence and sound information.
• For  financing , this means, for example, that systems and institutions diversify their funding base and reduce dependency on a single income source (which will require revisiting questions of cost-recovery and are thinking of student grant and loan schemes in many countries) and use innovative funding mechanisms.
• For  quality  assurance, this means that remote options for accreditation and evolution are established and applied when the environment requires such agility in ensuring quality under all conditions.
• For  governance , this means ensuring the external governance — legislative and ministerial oversight — and institutional governance — boards and oversight bodies — are developed and operated in such a manner that promotes effective connections with external actors and the world of work and allows for rapid innovations to be tested and embraced in such a way that institutions can continue their operations within the scope of their charters and missions.

V.  Resilience  — the ability to persist, flourish, and deliver agreed goals despite adversity

• Acknowledging the need for  resilience planning , by taking stock of the successes and failures of the COVID-19 response at the systems and institutional levels and analyzing options that would have mitigated the failures.
• Utilizing  adaptive governance frameworks  to embed immediate, strategic resilience interventions to address significant short- and long-term challenges facing tertiary education systems and institutions as a result of the shocks brought on by the pandemic, including diminished resources for institutions, personal and academic challenges for institutions and students, demand for improved infrastructure to support continued distance and blended learning models, reduced mobility placing pressures to improve regional and local tertiary institutions, questions of sustainability of funding models, and much more.

These five priorities present critical building blocks with which leaders and institutions can reframe and strengthen their tertiary education systems for greater impact on learning, growth, innovation, and social development.

The World Bank Group (WBG) has a highly diversified portfolio of lending and technical assistance projects in tertiary education, which deal with a variety of specific areas, including quality assurance, performance-based funding schemes, alignment of academic offerings with market needs, public-private partnerships, and governance reform, among others. The tertiary education portfolio represents approximately 25% of the total WBG investment in education.

Tanzania : The  Higher Education for Economic Transformation project  aims to strengthen the learning environment, ensure greater alignment of priority degree programs to labor market needs, and improve the management of the higher education system . HEET will achieve its objective by (i) strengthening and building the capacity of 14 public higher education institutions in both Mainland and Zanzibar to become high quality centers of learning, focusing on areas with the greatest potential for growth over the coming decade; and (ii) enhancing the management of the higher education system through the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, and subsidiary agencies. Expected results include the addition of over 260 academic programs within priority areas at participating universities, and over 100,000 students benefiting from direct interventions to enhance learning. 

Colombia : Since 2017, the WBG has been supporting the  Program for Higher Education Access and Quality  (PACES, in Spanish) project, which works to enhance the quality of tertiary education , while also improving access for economically and regionally disadvantaged students. PACES provides loans for poor students, as well as grants for master’s and doctoral programs in the world’s leading universities, while giving priority to victims of the country’s armed conflict.

Vietnam : The WBG’s  Vietnam University Development Project , financed through a US$295-million credit, will improve teaching and research capacity at Vietnam National University-Hanoi, Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh City and the University of Danang. Through investments in modern infrastructure, cutting-edge equipment, and knowledge transfer, it will help accelerate the transformation of these three universities into regionally competitive institutions with advanced teaching and research capabilities.

Africa :  The Africa Centers of Excellence project (ACEs) is Africa's first large-scale regional and groundbreaking higher education initiative funded by the World Bank and Agence Française de Développement (AFD). It addresses higher-level skills development needs and research and innovation requirements for the continent’s priority sectors in five main areas: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); agriculture; health; environment; applied social sciences; and education. Since its start in 2014, the program has supported over 80 centers in more than 50 universities across 20 countries across the continent . Under the program, thousands of students –more than one-third of whom are female-- have enrolled in postgraduate programs that meet international standards in delivering quality training and regional specializations to fulfill labor market demands on the continent.

Romania : The  Romania Secondary Education Project  (ROSE) supports 80% of Romania’s public high schools and 85% of tertiary education faculties in addressing factors preventing Romanian students from successfully transitioning from upper secondary to tertiary education and completing the first year of university. ROSE targets support to address both academic and personal factors that lead students to drop out of tertiary education, supporting interventions such as: remediation and socialization activities and supports, tutoring, counseling, extracurricular activities, internships, summer bridge programs and on-campus learning centers.

India : The Multidisciplinary Education and Research Improvement in Technical Education Project  through a $255.5 million loan, sets out to help India improve the quality of its technical education and provide more career opportunities to students. Over the next five years, the project will support around 275 government-run technical institutions in selected states across the country, benefitting more than 350,000 students each year.

Tertiary education in India has been growing steadily from 29 million enrolled students in 2011-12 to 39 million enrolled students across 40,000 institutions in 2019-20. While India’s tertiary education sector is among the largest in the world, recent studies note increased gaps in both technical and non-technical skills such as reasoning, interpersonal communication, and conflict resolution.

The Multidisciplinary Education and Research Improvement in Technical Education Project will support improving student skills and employability by focusing on better research, entrepreneurship, and innovation; and improve governance in technical institutions. As part of the project, students will get access to upgraded curricula including emerging technologies in communication and climate resilience. They will also benefit from better internship and placement services, including opportunities to network with professional associations.

The World Bank Group works in coordination with several academic institutions and multinational organizations across the world. These include the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR); the British Council; the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO); the International Association of Universities (IAU); the Association of Arab Universities (AArU); the Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) at Boston College; the Inter-University Council of East Africa (IUCEA); and the Association of African Universities (AAU).

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Tertiary education is essential for opportunity, competitiveness, and growth

Mamta murthi, nina arnhold, roberta malee bassett.

Most of us remember being asked as a child, what do you want to be when you grow up? Many of us would eagerly answer: a teacher, an engineer, a scientist. As we grew older, we realized that pursuing any of these essential jobs in the 21st century requires higher levels of education. Tertiary education has become the aspiration of more and more young people around the globe while at the same time a fundamental requirement for employment in the sectors and industries that drive development in every country.

At the World Bank, we encourage countries to strengthen their tertiary education systems to build the professional expertise necessary to drive public and private sector development; to produce the doctors, nurses, teachers, scientists, managers and so on needed to support growing economies.

We have been engaged in tertiary education reforms since 1963; currently, the Bank has an active portfolio of over US$9 billion in projects supporting post-secondary education efforts across all regions. This makes the World Bank the largest external source of funding for tertiary education in the world.

As we build upon decades of learning and experience in tertiary education reform, we continue to ask ourselves key questions to ensure we are grounding our work in the current conditions and with a focus on outcomes that can best serve our clients.  

Four of these key questions are:

1.    Should low-income countries invest public resources in tertiary education, including research, even when resources are needed to strengthen primary and secondary education as well?

Yes.  Economic research unequivocally demonstrates high rates of private and social return on investments in tertiary education, including research. The benefits include higher employment and earnings, increased productivity and innovation, greater social stability, more effective public administrations, increased civic engagement, and better health outcomes.  And these outcomes are critical for low-income countries’ development today, in the same way they were for today’s rich countries when they were much poorer 200 or even 1,000 years ago when they started investing in tertiary education. 

The consequences of underinvesting in tertiary education include loss of talent, limited access to applied research capacity needed for local problem solving, hindered economic growth due to low levels of skills in the workforce, low-quality teaching and learning at every level of education, and, perhaps most glaringly, expanded wealth inequality both within countries and among nations, with those investing more experiencing higher levels of innovation and attraction of investment. 

There is ample evidence of the role of education, including tertiary education, has played in boosting economic growth. One such example is the Republic of Korea which in 1948, was one of the poorest countries in the world. It grew to be the world’s 15th richest economy, however, by investing in and strengthening education at all levels, including providing universal access to tertiary education. Interestingly, already in the early 1980s, Korea started placing higher education in a lifelong learning context and has reaped the benefits of this decision ever since.

2.    Should digital skills and digital technologies be part of the investments made in tertiary education in low-income countries?

Yes. Digital technology and capabilities are essential to more resilient tertiary education systems. The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly revealed that digital technologies are the primary instrument for resilience in tertiary education, and that all types of tertiary education institutions will need to embrace and adapt to remote delivery and online settings. The expansion of ‘Open Universities’ around the world—including in Turkey, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe, for example—reflects the access and delivery opportunities afforded by embracing digital delivery in tertiary education. Building individual- and organizational-level digital skills can support: high-quality, adaptive teaching for students; new opportunities in digital research tools and methods; and digital competences. Without investments in digitalization and digital skills, individuals and systems will fall further behind, as has been exposed by the shifts in education delivery forced by the COVID-19 pandemic: in Sub-Saharan Africa, where over 80% of tertiary education students do not have access to reliable internet, the shift to on-line education during lockdown was not sustainable. 

3.    Will the sustained expansion of accessibility ensure the closing of equity gaps in tertiary education?

No, not without further measures including a combination of merit- and need-based approaches to student support and a diversity of other options. To date, tertiary education expansion has generally not meant equitable access—that is, more students accessing tertiary education globally has not resulted in proportionally more students enrolling from low socioeconomic status or underrepresented groups. 

To address these issues, countries need to have deliberate and sound policies to concomitantly enable access to disadvantaged groups such as means-based scholarships, grants and student loan programs, and remedial intervention to ensure readiness for postsecondary studies. Moreover, countries should foster the development of a high-quality ecosystem of tertiary education with a variety of options and flexible pathways, including high-quality, short-cycle tertiary education programs, as has been developed with long-term benefits in California, for instance, via the “Master Plan for Higher Education” and in many countries in Central and Eastern Europe, including Hungary, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.  

4.    Should countries invest in tertiary education only after they can ensure jobs for graduates?

No. The march of technology, the emergence of big data, AI and other elements of the ‘fourth’ industrial revolution are changing the nature of production and work all over the world.  Countries with a workforce lacking the required skills are less likely to keep up with technological advancement - as well as R&D-intensive domestic or foreign investments. Moreover, there is a lag in the response in the supply of tertiary graduates to the labor market demand from firms. Investments and policy reforms to improve other important aspects of the investment climate such as infrastructure, taxes, and regulations, can take a shorter time than to produce an adequately skilled supply of graduates. While this lag may seem troubling, perceptions of social unrest increasing when there are greater numbers of un- or under-employed educated people can make some policy makers look to delaying investments in tertiary education. However, there is little rigorous evidence that bears out this anecdotal perception that improved education in environments lacking opportunities leads to unrest.  Moreover, the alternative is simply unacceptable—no country should forgo developing the skills of its people as highly as possible in a globe dominated by knowledge economies.  Limiting education results in limited development—it’s as simple as that.

Every government must be purposeful in supporting and steering its tertiary education systems , including universities, polytechnics, community colleges, and other institutions, to build the human capital vital to the 21st century knowledge economy. As hubs for advanced education and skill development in every country, regardless of GDP and income status, these institutions have the potential to produce the skilled workers and leaders needed to create stable foundations for sound governance and dynamic economic growth, and address pressing challenges like global pandemics and climate change to promote opportunities today and into the future. The World Bank will continue to advance its support for the global tertiary education sector to prepare systems and institutions for the challenges of the 21st century.

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Home > Blog > Tips for Online Students > Higher Education News > What is Tertiary Education? Why Does It Matter?

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What is Tertiary Education? Why Does It Matter?

Updated: June 19, 2024

Published: October 21, 2021

There’s primary, secondary, and tertiary education. But what is tertiary education exactly? And what are the benefits of tertiary education?

As a provider of tertiary education, we at University of the People, are strong proponents of continued higher education. We will share everything you should know about the tertiary education meaning so that you can figure out whether or not it is something you wish to pursue.

What is Tertiary Education?

Tertiary education refers to any academic pursuit beyond a high school education. Tertiary education is more commonly called postsecondary education.

As such, tertiary education includes:

• Certificates
• Associate’s degrees
• Bachelor’s degrees
• Master’s degrees
• Doctoral degrees

Tertiary education can take place at:

• Community colleges
• Universities
• Technical schools
• Vocational schools

Facts About Tertiary Education

​​Given the array of different types of tertiary education options, as well as the means by which you can achieve them, it’s nice to understand some of the basic facts.

These include:

Online Options

Online options are available across various degree levels, including: associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. This is also true of certificate programs that happen at the undergraduate or graduate level.

For example, University of the People provides tertiary education options that are tuition-free for students around the world. Our students get to choose to earn their associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, or certificates entirely online (which offers immense flexibility).

Financial Aid

If you choose not to attend a tuition-free program, the price of tertiary education can quickly skyrocket. To help to offset the costs associated with school, students can utilize various forms of financial aid. Financial aid may be offered from your university, the federal and state government, and private organizations. There are different types of financial aid, including scholarships, grants, and student loans. 

Prerequisites

Depending on the institution at which you decide to obtain your form of tertiary education, there are prerequisites to enroll. For undergraduate programs, most institutions require high school transcripts (and potentially a minimum GPA), standardized test score submission ( SAT or ACT) , and a personal statement. Graduate degrees typically require students to provide proof of their undergraduate degree, letters of recommendation, a resume or CV , transcripts, and possibly graduate standardized test scores.

A Look at Some Types of Tertiary Education

So, what’s the difference between the forms of tertiary education available?

Here’s a quick look at some options so you can figure out which is right for you based on your current situation and future goals.

Certificate Programs

Certificate programs are geared towards students who seek career training to enter a career within a short amount of time. Certificate programs can generally be completed within 6 months to a year. Check out the University of the People’s certificate programs to see some examples.

Undergraduate Degrees

Undergraduate degrees take about two years (for an associate’s degree) to four years (for a bachelor’s degree) to complete. Students can earn their undergraduate degree at any time in their life, but it often happens right after completing high school.

Within these programs, students spend the first year or two on general education and then take specialized courses based on their major of choice. Along with core coursework, students will take some electives within different disciplines to secure a well-rounded education.

Undergraduate degrees open the door to more degree possibilities and a higher earning potential than just having a high school diploma.

Graduate Degree Programs

If you take the route of completing a bachelor’s degree, then you have the option to continue onto graduate degree programs, which consist of master’s degrees and doctoral degrees. Some fields require that their professionals have a graduate degree to work. For example, this is the case for careers in research or professions like law and medicine.

Graduate Certificate Programs

For those who have completed an undergraduate degree, graduate certificate programs provide an option to further expand knowledge and skills without committing all the time and money required for a graduate degree program. However, should you enroll in a graduate certificate program and then decide that you do wish to earn a master’s degree, some schools will allow that coursework to count toward credits for the degree.

Benefits of Tertiary Education

Choosing to attend any form of tertiary education often comes along with a cost/benefits analysis. Since you will need to commit time, energy, and funds to the endeavor, you’ll likely find yourself asking what you may get out of doing so.

The truth is that there are many advantages to tertiary education, some of which include:

Higher Earning Potential and Employability

Many careers require applicants to possess some kind of degree or certificate. Typically, the higher the education that you earn, the greater your earning potential becomes.

For example, when comparing a person with a bachelor’s degree to one with a high school diploma, data shows that the person with the degree is half as likely to be unemployed and also will make $1 million more in additional earnings over their lifetime than the high school diploma holder.

Career Specialization

When students are in high school, they are able to learn more about their interests and the topics they care to continue learning about. With this knowledge, they can specialize and choose a career path during the college experience. Depending on the position you wish to obtain, you may require a degree or certificate to even enter the field.

Personal Development

Along with the earnings and knowledge associated with tertiary education, the experience aids in personal development. Students who continue their education will hone skills like time management, communication skills, critical thinking, and more.

Last but not least, enrolling in tertiary education grants the possibility to network with people from all different walks of life. Even if you enroll in an online school, you get to communicate with peers from all over the world and learn from their experiences.

When you are pursuing your education, you have the opportunity to apply for internships and network with professionals so that once you earn your degree or certificate, you may have already connected with the people you wish to work with in your career.

The Bottom Line

You now have the answer to the question: What is tertiary education? Now, the next question is: Do you want to pursue tertiary education?

If the answer is yes, then you will undoubtedly get to reap the many upsides that come along with it. And, the good news is that if you wish to attend an institution of tertiary education at an affordable price, then options are available to you in the form of online education .

In this article

At UoPeople, our blog writers are thinkers, researchers, and experts dedicated to curating articles relevant to our mission: making higher education accessible to everyone. Read More

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What’s the Value of Higher Education?

Have political and fiscal debates about higher education lost sight of the value of education for individuals and society? Dr. Johnnetta Cole discusses how universities can inform and inspire.

• Dr. Johnnetta Cole President Emerita, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art; President Emerita, Spelman College and Bennett College

This interview was conducted at the Yale Higher Education Leadership Summit , hosted by Yale SOM’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute on January 30, 2018.

The value of a college degree can be measured in a number of different ways: increased lifetime earnings potential, a network of classmates and fellow alumni, subject-matter expertise, a signal of stick-to-itiveness, potentially a marker of class or the capacity to move across classes. There are also less tangible benefits, like becoming a more well-rounded individual and part of a well-informed public.

Yale Insights recently talked with Dr. Johnnetta Cole about how she measures the value of higher education. Cole is the former president of Spelman College and Bennett College, the only two historically black colleges and universities that are exclusively women’s colleges. After retiring from academia, she served as the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. In addition, she served on the boards of a number of corporations, including Home Depot, Merck, and Coca-Cola. She was the first African-American chair of the board for the United Way of America.

Q: Why does higher education matter?

I would say that we could get widespread agreement on what I’m going to call the first purpose of higher education: through this amazingly powerful process of teaching and learning, students come to better understand the world.

There might be some disagreement on the second purpose. I’d say it is to inspire students to figure out how they can contribute to helping to make the world better. Certainly, higher education is about scholarship, but it’s also about service. It’s about creativity. It’s about matters of the mind, but it’s also, or at least it should be, about matters of the heart and the soul.

Q: Has the public perception of universities changed in recent years?

Throughout the history—and herstory—of higher education, there have been doubters, those who have critiqued it. But I have a concern, and some polls tell us, in this period in which we are living, many people believe that higher education is not contributing in a positive way to American life.

That’s something that we need to work on, those of us who are deeply engaged in and care about higher education, because I think when one looks with as much objectivity as possible, the truth is, and it’s always been, that higher education contributes substantially.

Q: You’ve led two historically black colleges for women. What is the role of special mission institutions?

In my view, we still need special mission institutions. Remember Brandeis, Notre Dame, and Brigham Young are special mission institutions.

With respect to historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), not every African American wants to or does go to an HBCU. The same is true of women and women’s colleges. But for those who wish that kind of education, and if the fit is right, it’s almost magical.

I think it is as basic as having an entire community believe that you can. On these campuses, we believe that black students can do whatever they set their minds to do. On the women’s campuses, we believe that women can reach heights that have not been imagined for women.

HBCUs are not totally free of racism. Women’s colleges are not utopias where there are no expressions of gender inequality or sexism. But they come far closer than at our predominately white and co-ed institutions.

Q: One of the big issues with higher education now is cost. How do we solve the affordability problem?

The affordability question is highly complex and serious. James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed that is not faced.” I believe that this is a perfect example. Colleges and universities are not just raising tuitions so they can make big profits. Pell grants are no longer at least a reasonable response to the affordability question.

We’ve got to figure this out because, in a democracy, accessibility to education is fundamental. The idea that something as precious, as powerful, as a solid education is only accessible to some and not to others, is an assault upon democracy.

Q: You came out of retirement to lead the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Why was the draw so strong?

I’ve managed, systematically, to get a failing grade in retirement.

I grew up in the South, in the days of legalized segregation—you could also call it state-sponsored racism. I didn’t have access to symphony halls. I didn’t have access to art museums. I still remember the library that I went to in order to travel the world through books, was the A. L. Lewis Colored Public Library.

As a young girl, I fell in love with the visual arts, especially African and African-American art. I went off to Fisk University at age 15 and began to see the real works of art for which we only had reproductions in my home. From Fisk, I went to Oberlin, where the Allen Memorial Art Gallery was a special place of solace for me

The opportunity with the Smithsonian wasn’t something I sought; I was asked to apply. My doctorate is in anthropology, not art history, so I was reluctant, but they told me they were looking for a leader, not an art historian. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. The work was an almost indescribable joy.

Generally, our museums across America do not reflect who America is, nor do they reflect how our world looks. They need to be far more diverse in terms of their boards, staff, exhibitions, educational programs, and visitorship.

What the African art museum has is a unique opportunity because it can speak to something that binds us together. If one is human, just go back far enough, I mean way back, and we have all come from a single place. It is called Africa.

Here’s a museum that says to its visitors, “No matter who you are, by race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, ability or disability, or nationality, come to a place where the visual arts connect you to the very cradle of humanity.”

During those eight years when I had the joy of being the director of the National Museum of African Art, I would greet our visitors by saying “Welcome home! Welcome to a place that presents the diverse and dynamic, the exquisite arts of Africa, humanity’s original home.”

Q: Do you think that our education and cultural institutions are properly valued in our society?

I have to say no. Because if we did, we would take better care of them. If we did, we would make sure that not some but all of our educational institutions from kindergarten through post-secondary education, into graduate and professional schools, have the means to do what needs to be done.

If we really value all of our cultural expressions, whether it’s dance or music, visual arts, theater, when there is a budget shortfall, we wouldn’t say, “These are the first things to go.” We wouldn’t say, “Kids can do without music in their public school.” It’s one thing to say we love an institution; it’s another to care for and protect an institution. I think we can do far better.

What you need to know about higher education

UNESCO, as the only United Nations agency with a mandate in higher education, works with countries to ensure all students have equal opportunities to access and complete good quality higher education with internationally recognized qualifications. It places special focus on developing countries, notably Africa. 

Why does higher education matter?  

Higher education is a rich cultural and scientific asset which enables personal development and promotes economic, technological and social change. It promotes the exchange of knowledge, research and innovation and equips students with the skills needed to meet ever changing labour markets. For students in vulnerable circumstances, it is a passport to economic security and a stable future. 

What is the current situation? 

Higher education has changed dramatically over the past decades with increasing enrolment, student mobility, diversity of provision, research dynamics and technology. Some 254 million students are enrolled in universities around the world – a number that has more than doubled in the last 20 years and is set to expand. Yet despite the boom in demand, the overall enrolment ratio is 42% with large differences between countries and regions. More than 6.4 million students are pursuing their further education abroad. And among the world’s more than 82 million refugees, only 7% of eligible youth are enrolled in higher education, whereas comparative figures for primary and secondary education are 68% and 34%, respectively ( UNHCR) . The COVID-19 pandemic further disrupted the way higher education was provided.

What does UNESCO do to ensure access for everyone to higher education? 

UNESCO's work is aligned with Target 4.3 of SDG 4 which aims, by 2030, “to ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university”. To achieve this, UNESCO supports countries by providing knowledge, evidence-based information and technical assistance in the development of higher education systems and policies based on the equal distribution of opportunities for all students. 

UNESCO supports countries to enhance recognition, mobility and inter-university cooperation through the ratification and implementation of the Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education and regional recognition conventions . To tackle the low rate of refugee youth in higher education UNESCO has developed the UNESCO Qualifications Passport for Refugees and Vulnerable Migrants , a tool which makes it easier for those groups with qualifications to move between countries. The passport brings together information on educational and other qualifications, language, work history. UNESCO places a special focus on Africa with projects such as the Higher Technical Education in Africa project for a technical and innovative workforce supported by China Funds-in-Trust.  

​​​​​​​How does UNESCO ensure the quality of higher education? 

The explosion in demand for higher education and increasing internationalization means UNESCO is expanding its work on quality assurance, helping Member States countries to establish their own agencies and mechanisms to enhance quality and develop policies particularly in developing countries and based on the Conventions. Such bodies are absent in many countries, making learners more vulnerable to exploitative providers.  

It also facilitates the sharing of good practices and innovative approaches to widen inclusion in higher education. As part of this work, it collaborates with the International Association of Universities to produce the World Higher Education Database which provides information on higher education systems, credentials and institutions worldwide. 

​​​​​​​How does UNESCO keep pace with digital change?  

The expansion of connectivity worldwide has boosted the growth of online and blended learning, and revealed the importance of digital services, such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Higher Education Management Information Systems in helping higher education institutions utilize data for better planning, financing and quality. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this transformation and increased the number of providers and the range of degree offerings from cross-border to offshore education. The Organization provides technical support and policy advice on innovative approaches to widening access and inclusion including through the use of ICTs and by developing new types of learning opportunities both on-campus and online. 

How does UNESCO address the needs of a changing job market?

Labour markets are experiencing rapid changes, with increased digitization and greening of economies, but also the rising internationalization of higher education. UNESCO places a strong emphasis on developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, indispensable to sustainable development and innovation. It aims to strengthen skills development for youth and adults, particularly literacy, TVET, STEM and higher education to meet individual, labour market and societal demands.  

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Meaning, Purpose & Objectives of of Higher Education

Introduction:  Higher education, often regarded as the pinnacle of academic pursuit, represents a transformative phase in the educational journey of individuals. Beyond elementary and secondary schooling, higher education encompasses specialized and advanced learning, nurturing intellect, critical thinking, and personal growth. Through a diverse array of disciplines and fields, higher education is a gateway to knowledge, expertise, and innovation, empowering students to become specialists in their chosen areas. As an integral part of societal progress, it fosters a culture of research and intellectual curiosity, shaping well-rounded individuals poised to make meaningful contributions to their communities and the world. At its core, higher education embodies the pursuit of excellence and self-discovery, preparing learners for future challenges while enriching their lives with the transformative power of education.

1.1 What is Higher Education ?

Higher education refers to the advanced level beyond the primary and secondary levels. It typically includes education provided by universities, colleges, professional schools, and other institutions that offer specialized academic and vocational programs. Higher education focuses on in-depth learning in specific fields of study, enabling individuals to develop expertise and advanced knowledge in their chosen areas.

At the higher education level, students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees, such as Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate degrees, depending on their academic and career aspirations. The curriculum is more specialized and research-oriented than earlier education stages, encouraging critical thinking, analytical skills, and independent research.

Higher education serves various purposes, including:

• Specialization: It allows students to focus on their areas of interest and expertise, preparing them for careers in specific industries or professions.
• Research and Innovation: Higher education institutions are centers of research and development, contributing to the advancement of knowledge and the development of new technologies, ideas, and solutions.
• Personal Growth: Beyond academic knowledge, higher education fosters personal development, character building, and a sense of social responsibility.
• Career Advancement: Higher education equips individuals with the necessary skills and qualifications to pursue higher-level positions and leadership roles in their fields.
• Lifelong Learning: It instills a love for learning beyond graduation, encouraging continuous education and personal growth.

Higher education is a key driver of societal progress and economic development. Nations with well-developed higher education systems tend to have a more skilled and innovative workforce, contributing to overall prosperity and competitiveness in the global market. It plays a crucial role in shaping the future of individuals and society, empowering learners to become responsible and contributing members of their communities.

1.2 The Objectives of Higher Education

The objectives of higher education encompass a profound and multi-faceted purpose, elevating the pursuit of knowledge beyond mere academic instruction. At the heart of this noble endeavor lies the mission to equip learners with the tools to thrive in their chosen professions and as responsible and compassionate members of society. Higher education is a bastion of academic excellence, fostering critical thinking, innovation, and research that push the boundaries of human knowledge. Beyond specialization and career preparation, it seeks to nurture holistic personal development, cultivating ethical values, leadership qualities, and a global perspective. Higher education empowers individuals to adapt to evolving challenges, contribute meaningfully to their communities, and champion progress in a rapidly changing world by instilling a love for lifelong learning.

The objectives of higher education encompass a wide range of goals that aim to fulfill various roles in individuals’ personal, academic, and societal development. These objectives include:

• Academic Excellence: One of the primary objectives of higher education is to provide rigorous and comprehensive academic programs that promote excellence in learning. Institutions strive to maintain high education standards and ensure that students understand their chosen disciplines deeply.
• Specialization: Higher education allows students to specialize in specific fields of study, enabling them to acquire advanced knowledge and expertise in their areas of interest. The specialization prepares individuals for specialized careers and positions in their respective industries.
• Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving: Higher education fosters critical thinking skills, encouraging students to analyze and evaluate information critically. It cultivates problem-solving abilities that empower graduates to address complex challenges in their professional and personal lives.
• Research and Innovation: Higher education institutions are hubs of research and innovation. Encouraging students and faculty to engage in research contributes to advancing knowledge, technological breakthroughs, and developing solutions to real-world problems.
• Personal Development: Higher education aims to nurture holistic personal growth in students. It focuses on character building, ethical values, leadership qualities, and a sense of social responsibility, preparing individuals to be responsible and compassionate citizens.
• Global Awareness and Cultural Understanding: Higher education encourages exposure to diverse perspectives, cultures, and ideas. Promoting global awareness and cultural understanding helps students develop a more inclusive and open-minded worldview.
• Lifelong Learning: Instilling a love for learning that extends beyond graduation is an essential objective of higher education. Graduates are encouraged to embrace lifelong learning to adapt to changing circumstances, pursue professional development, and stay relevant in a rapidly evolving world.
• Employment and Career Preparation: Higher education equips students with the skills and qualifications to enter the workforce and pursue successful careers. It provides internships, practical experiences, and networking opportunities, enhancing graduates’ employability.
• Social and Economic Mobility: Higher education has the potential to uplift individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, providing opportunities for social and economic mobility. It can break barriers and open doors to better opportunities and improved quality of life.
• Contribution to Society: A significant objective of higher education is to foster a sense of civic responsibility and encourage graduates to contribute positively to their communities. Higher education is crucial in producing responsible and active citizens committed to making a difference in society.

Higher education institutions aim to empower individuals with the knowledge, skills, and values needed to lead fulfilling lives, positively impact society, and advance knowledge and human progress by pursuing these objectives.

The Radhakrishnan Commission 3 presented a comprehensive set of objectives and purposes for higher education, acknowledging the evolving political, social, and economic landscape. These aims are as follows:

• The Commission emphasized the development of an intellectual attitude among university students, fostering a thirst for knowledge and critical thinking.
• Higher education was seen as a means to create visionary and courageous leaders who would champion social reform, addressing societal challenges with intelligence and insight.
• The universities were encouraged to assume a pivotal role as cultural organs and intellectual leaders, guiding civilization’s progress and promoting scholarly pursuits.
• Higher education was envisioned as a catalyst for the success of democracy, nurturing informed and engaged citizens who actively participate in the democratic process.
• The Commission advocated for discovering and enhancing individuals’ innate qualities through suitable training, empowering them to realize their potential.
• Higher education aims to instill sentiments of national discipline, international awareness, justice, freedom, equality, and brotherhood, nurturing global citizens committed to ethical values and unity.

The Kothari Commission has articulated its vision for the objectives and ideals of higher education as follows:

• Pursuit of Knowledge and Truth: Higher _ education aims to seek knowledge within the framework of truth, blending tradition with new insights to adapt to changing circumstances.
• Contribution to Society: The commission stresses on producing educated and skilled individuals who can serve society in various domains such as arts, sciences, agriculture, medicine, and industries.
• Leadership Development: Higher _ education strives to nurture leadership qualities in students, empowering them to excel and take charge in every sphere of life.
• Promotion of Social Justice: The commission advocates for higher _ education to encourage social justice, fostering a more equitable and inclusive society.
• Nurturing Values: Higher _ education seeks to instill the correct values among students and teachers, promoting ethical behavior and a sense of responsibility towards society.
• Reducing Disparities: Addressing social and cultural disparities is an essential objective, ensuring that education becomes a pathway for bridging gaps and promoting equality.
• National Consciousness: Higher _ education is a means to develop a sense of national consciousness, nurturing a deep understanding of one’s cultural identity and contributing to the nation’s growth and unity.
• Adult Education Program: The commission emphasizes the development of programs for adult education, recognizing the importance of learning opportunities for individuals beyond traditional schooling age.

Through these multifaceted objectives, the Kothari Commission envisions higher education as a transformative force that enriches individuals, empowers society, and fosters a better future for the nation.

1.3 The Purpose of Higher Education:

The purpose of higher education is multifaceted and encompasses a broad range of objectives aimed at intellectual, personal, and societal development. While the specific goals and emphasis may vary among institutions, cultures, and individuals, the overarching purposes of higher _ education include:

• Knowledge Acquisition: Higher _ education is fundamentally about acquiring and deepening knowledge in various fields of study. It allows students to delve into subjects of interest, develop critical thinking skills, and gain expertise in specific disciplines.
• Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving: Higher _ education fosters critical thinking and problem-solving skills, encouraging students to analyze information, evaluate arguments, and develop creative solutions to complex problems.
• Personal Growth: College experiences contribute to personal growth and self-discovery. Students often better understand their values, beliefs, and identities, preparing them for a more meaningful and purposeful life.
• Professional Skills: Higher _ education equips students with the practical skills and knowledge needed for specific careers and professions. This preparation includes internships, hands-on experiences, and exposure to industry-relevant practices.
• Career Advancement: A college degree is often a key factor in career advancement. Higher education provides the qualifications and credentials necessary for entry into many professions and can enhance job opportunities and earning potential.
• Global Citizenship: Higher _ education promotes a sense of global citizenship by fostering an awareness of global issues, cultural diversity, and interconnectedness. It encourages students to engage in social and civic activities to contribute positively to their communities and the world.
• Ethical Decision-Making: Through exposure to ethical theories and discussions, higher _ education helps students develop a strong sense of ethics and integrity, preparing them to make principled decisions in their personal and professional lives.
• Advancement of Knowledge: Higher _ education institutions contribute to advancing knowledge through research and innovation. Faculty and students engage in cutting-edge research that expands the boundaries of human understanding in various fields.
• Technology and Discovery: Colleges and universities drive technological advancements and scientific discoveries. Research conducted in higher education institutions often leads to breakthroughs with broad societal impact.
• Artistic and Cultural Appreciation: Higher _ education encourages an appreciation for the arts, literature, and cultural diversity. Exposure to different perspectives fosters creativity, cultural competence, and a deeper world understanding.
• Intellectual Dialogue: Colleges and universities are hubs for intellectual dialogue and academic discourse. Students engage with diverse ideas, challenge assumptions, and participate in conversations that broaden their intellectual horizons.
• Adaptability and Lifelong Learning: Higher _ education instills a commitment to lifelong learning. It equips individuals with the skills to adapt to a rapidly changing world, fostering a mindset of continuous education and personal development.

In essence, the purpose of higher _ education extends beyond acquiring degrees and credentials. It seeks to cultivate well-rounded individuals who are intellectually curious, socially responsible, and equipped to contribute meaningfully to their communities and the broader global society. Higher education serves as a transformative journey that prepares individuals for the challenges and opportunities of the future.

Reference Articles:

• 1. Hijam, R. D. (2012). Management of the higher education in Manipur since 1972.  http://hdl.handle.net/10603/39238
• 2. Rao, M. S., & V, K. V. (2011). Quality management in higher education: A case study of MBA colleges in select districts coastal Andhra Pradesh, India. http://hdl.handle.net/10603/8364
• 3. Barnet.R. 1992 Bernett R. (1992). Learning to Effect. Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.
• 4. Bhatnagar Suresh: Modern Indian Education & its Problems, Surya Publication, Meerut, 1996.p/223

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Systems of higher education in France and Germany

The system of higher education in great britain.

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higher education , any of various types of education given in postsecondary institutions of learning and usually affording, at the end of a course of study, a named degree , diploma, or certificate of higher studies . Higher-educational institutions include not only universities and colleges but also various professional schools that provide preparation in such fields as law , theology , medicine , business, music , and art . Higher education also includes teacher-training schools, junior colleges, and institutes of technology. The basic entrance requirement for most higher-educational institutions is the completion of secondary education , and the usual entrance age is about 18 years. ( See also college ; university .)

(Read Arne Duncan’s Britannica essay on “Education: The Great Equalizer.”)

The system of higher education had its origin in Europe in the Middle Ages, when the first universities were established. In modern times the nature of higher education around the world has been largely determined by the models established in influential countries such as France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States .

Both France and Germany have systems of higher education that are basically administered by state agencies. Entrance requirements for students are also similar in both countries. In France an examination called the baccalauréat is given at the end of secondary education. Higher education in France is free and open to all students who have passed this examination. A passing mark admits students to a preparatory first year at a university, which terminates in another, more rigorous examination. Success in this examination allows students to attend universities for another three or four years until they have attained the first university degree, called a licence in France.

Basic differences, however, distinguish these two countries’ systems. French educational districts, called académies, are under the direction of a rector, an appointee of the national government who also is in charge of the university in each district. The uniformity in curriculum throughout the country leaves each university with little to distinguish itself. Hence, many students prefer to go to Paris, where there are better accommodations and more cultural amenities for students. Another difference is the existence in France of higher-educational institutions known as grandes écoles , which provide advanced professional and technical training. Most of these schools are not affiliated with the universities, although they too recruit their students by giving competitive examinations to candidates who possess a baccalauréat. The various grandes écoles provide a rigorous training in all branches of applied science and technology, and their diplomas have a somewhat higher standing than that of the ordinary licence .

In Germany, a country made up of what were once strong principalities, the regional universities have autonomy in determining their curriculum under the direction of rectors elected from within. Students in Germany change universities according to their interests and the strengths of each university. In fact, it is a custom for students to attend two, three, or even four different universities in the course of their undergraduate studies, and the majority of professors at a particular university may have taught in four or five others. This marked degree of mobility means that schemes of study and examination are marked by a freedom and individuality unknown in France.

Each of these countries has influenced higher education in other nations. The French, either through colonial influence or through the work of missionaries, introduced many aspects of their system in North and West Africa, the Caribbean, and the Far East. In the 1870s Japan’s growing university system was remodeled along French lines. France’s grandes écoles have been especially copied as models of technical schools. German influence has come about through philosophical concepts regarding the role of universities. The Germans were the first to stress the importance of universities as research facilities, and they also created a sense of them as emblems of a national mind. The doctoral degree, or Ph.D., invented in Germany, has gained popularity in systems around the world.

The autonomy of higher-educational institutions is strikingly pronounced in Great Britain. Its universities enjoy almost complete autonomy from national or local government in their administration and the determination of their curricula, despite the fact that the schools receive nearly all of their funding from the state. Entry requirements for British universities are rather complicated. A student must secure a General Certificate of Education (corresponding to the French baccalauréat ) by taking examinations in various subjects and receiving passing marks in them. The greater the number of “advanced level” passes, rather than General Certificate of Secondary Education (formerly “ordinary level”) passes, that a student acquires , the better his chances are of entering the university of his choice. (Britain has a centralized admissions bureau to which candidates for admission are able to give their choice of universities in an order of preference.) This selective admission to universities, combined with the close supervision of students through a tutorial system, makes it possible for most British undergraduates to complete a degree course in three years rather than the standard four years. Great Britain’s academic programs are more highly specialized than their European continental counterparts. Most undergraduates follow an “honours” course (leading to an honours degree) in one or, at the most, two subjects, while the remaining minority of students take “pass” courses that cover a variety of subjects. Great Britain’s model of higher education has been copied to varying degrees in Canada , Australia , India, South Africa , New Zealand , and other former British colonial territories in Africa, Southeast Asia , and the Pacific.

What Is the Purpose and Future of Higher Education?

A sociologist explores the history and future of higher education..

Posted February 18, 2019 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

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A recent story asked, “ Can small liberal arts colleges survive the next decade? ” This question is important as we see the closure of some small schools, mostly in areas away from big cities. Yet, as University of California Riverside sociology and public policy distinguished professor Steven G. Brint notes based on his new book Two Cheers for Higher Education , “There’s always been a small number of colleges that close every year—usually fewer than a dozen—and more are opened for the first time than closed.” This illustrates, among other things, why it is important to consider a historical perspective on higher education to place recent individual news stories in context. That’s exactly what his latest book does: It explores the rich history of higher education, leading him to argue that overall higher education appears to be doing quite well, but also that there remain important concerns for higher education on the horizon.

I asked Steven questions about the purpose of higher education, why he argues higher education is doing quite well, and what his concerns are for its future. Anyone interested in the rich history of higher education and how that informs the future of higher education should read this book. Going to college or university is increasingly a fixture and perhaps even an obsession for parents and students, and understanding the history of that industry is useful to help us think about why we encourage students to go to college in the first place.

What, in your view, is the purpose of higher education?

The aims of higher education change over time. In the United States, the original purposes were to prepare students for a few “learned professions,” especially the clergy, and to provide a strong, religiously tinged moral education. Many of the activities that we now associate with higher education—extra-curricular clubs, majoring in a defined specialization, faculty research, access for socioeconomically disadvantaged students—came later.

Today, we would have to start by recognizing the fundamental fact that the purposes of higher education are highly differentiated by the stratum in the system institutions occupy. The aims of community colleges are very different from those of research universities. I do not talk about community colleges in the book, though I did write a book on community colleges early in my career . The great majority of the 3,000 or so four-year colleges and universities are primarily devoted to teaching students, mainly in occupational fields that in theory equip graduates to obtain jobs. Students will receive a smattering of general education in lower-division and will have opportunities to participate in extra-curricular activities. The latter are more important for many students than classroom studies. Students hone interpersonal skills on campus, make contacts that can be useful for instrumental purposes as well as ends in themselves. For those who finish, their diplomas do provide a boost in the labor market, more for quantitative fields than for other fields.

Research universities are of course the most complex environments and the range of their activities is difficult to catalog in a short answer. In addition to providing instruction in hundreds of programs, they run hundreds of student clubs and organizations, contribute to the selection of high achieving students for graduate degrees, train and mentor graduate and professional students, produce thousands or tens of thousands of research papers annually, reach out to industrial partners, field semi-professional athletic teams, solve community problems, run tertiary care hospitals, patent new discoveries and attempt to create environments conducive to learning for a very wide variety of students. One could say that these activities, taken together, constitute the enacted purposes of research universities.

However, when you look at their activities from the perspective of public policy, the focus will tend to be on three main purposes: (1) human capital development (in other words, improving the cognitive and non-cognitive skills of students), (2) basic research and research in the national interest, and (3) the provision of access for students from lower-income and under-represented minority backgrounds. Implicitly, Two Cheers for Higher Education focuses more on these primary aims of public policy than on some of the ancillary activities of universities. Of course, some of the activities that could be considered ancillary—such as student clubs and the patenting of new discoveries—are clearly related to these public policy aims. For that reason, I do also discuss them at some length in the book.

At a time when we see stories of colleges closing, why is it that you argue that higher education is doing quite well?

We do see some colleges closing and more colleges merging. There’s always been a small number of colleges that close every year—usually fewer than a dozen—and more are opened for the first time than closed. We do hear a lot of talk about mergers in recent years, and some of the regional public universities in rural areas are definitely struggling. Where population is declining steadily, it becomes harder to make the case for the local college. But population is not declining in urban areas or in suburban areas around big cities. Here we see new colleges rising or existing colleges growing larger. Higher education is doing quite well in the parts of the country that are seeing growth in population and wealth. Sometimes higher education has been an important influence in attracting employers, new jobs, and new wealth. The state of Georgia is an interesting example. It now has the 10th largest economy of the 50 states, and the investments that state leaders and donors have made in Georgia Tech, Emory, the University of Georgia, and Georgia State University have played an important role in the state’s impressive development.

Though your book is largely positive about higher education, you note some concerns about the future of higher education. What are those?

According to public opinion surveys, the major concerns of Americans have to do with cost, the quality of undergraduate education, and liberal bias in the classroom. I address each of these issues in the book. One hopes that criminal justice reform may allow most of the 50 states to invest more heavily in higher education, reducing family’s burdens. I also advocate a universal, income-contingent loan repayment policy similar to the ones that already exist in England, Australia and several other countries. My research has led me to agree with the critics that the quality of undergraduate education is too low for too many. I show in the book how the lessons of the sciences of learning can be embedded without much more than forethought in even large lecture classes. The evidence on liberal bias is mixed. Clearly, minorities remain subject to many discriminatory and wounding acts on college campuses. At the same time, where we find a liberal orthodoxy there’s a risk that assumptions and commitments will substitute for evidence and reasoning. We do need more spaces on campus where contemporary social and political issues can be discussed and debated.

I also discuss what academic and political leaders can do about the threat to the physical campus represented by online competition , by the tremendous growth of campus administrative staff (compared to the slow growth of faculty), and the deplorable increase in poorly-paid and sometimes poorly-prepared adjunct instructors.

I hope that the evidence and recommendations that I provide will stimulate new thinking and action in each of these areas of concern. The U.S. is fortunate to have the strongest system of higher education in the world, but many problems arose during the period I cover. It will be important to address these problems before they undermine public support for institutions that are now central to the country’s future well-being.

Brint, S. G. (2018). Two cheers for higher education: Why American universities are stronger than ever--and how to meet the challenges they face . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jonathan Wai, Ph.D. , is Assistant Professor of Education Policy and Psychology and the 21st Century Endowed Chair in Education Policy at the University of Arkansas.

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Higher Education and the Opportunity Gap

Subscribe to the center for economic security and opportunity newsletter, isabel v. sawhill isabel v. sawhill senior fellow emeritus - economic studies , center for economic security and opportunity.

October 8, 2013

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America faces an opportunity gap. Those born in the bottom ranks have difficulty moving up. Although the United States has long thought of itself as a meritocracy, a place where anyone who gets an education and works hard can make it, the facts tell a somewhat different story. Children born into the top fifth of the income distribution have about twice as much of a chance of becoming middle class or better in their adult years as those born into the bottom fifth (Isaacs, Sawhill, & Haskins, 2008). One way that lower-income children can beat the odds is by getting a college degree. [1] Those who complete four-year degrees have a much better chance of becoming middle class than those who don’t — although still not as good of a chance as their more affluent peers. But the even bigger problem is that few actually manage to get the degree. Moreover, the link between parental income and college-going has increased in recent decades (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011). In short, higher education is not the kind of mobility-enhancing vehicle that it could be.

The obvious solution would seem to be this: First, encourage more low-income children to go to college; and second, finance their education in order to narrow the opportunity gap — a strategy that policymakers have been pursuing for the past few decades. This prescription is fine as far as it goes, and indeed some success has been achieved in both motivating the less advantaged to aspire to college and in providing the financial assistance enabling them to do so. Most high school graduates say that they plan on getting a degree, and spending on Pell grants has risen sharply in recent years, even as deficits have constrained other types of spending (U.S. Department of Treasury, 2012).

The flaw in this simple argument is that the primary problem is no longer enrollment, it is completion. Almost half of all college students and much higher proportions of poor and minority students drop out before they complete a degree. Community colleges, the sector that enrolls the majority of less advantaged and older students, have experienced staggering dropout rates. About 54% of their students don’t complete a degree, receive a certificate, or transfer to a four-year institution within six years (NCES, 2011).

The reasons for lack of completion are many, including rising tuition costs that have only partially been offset by increased government aid and are especially burdensome for the least well off; a lack of information about what aid is available, particularly at more selective schools; and the demands of work and family that may make full-time attendance difficult or impossible. But probably the most important factor explaining lack of completion is inadequate preparation for college in the K–12 years. According to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only a small fraction of high school seniors are at or above proficiency in math and reading: 26% and 38%, respectively (U.S. Department of Education, 2009). Yet roughly two-thirds of high school graduates enroll in college. [2]

This lack of preparation is not the fault of institutions of higher education. Most colleges, especially the less selective schools at the community college level, have poured time and money into providing remedial courses to help underprepared students succeed, but the effort has done little to overcome the dropout problem. There have also been experiments with providing community college students with various supports such as counseling, the creation of “learning communities” that keep students together for mutual support, or providing extra financial resources to help meet living costs. However, these programs are costly and have had only modest success (Bettinger, Boatman, & Long, 2013).

It is not as if the incentives for completion don’t exist. The wage premium for a college degree has skyrocketed in recent decades, nearly doubling since 1980. When compared to simply graduating from high school, a bachelor’s degree produces an increase in earnings over one’s career of nearly $600,000, even after accounting for the fact that college graduates tend to be more able than noncollege graduates for reasons that have nothing to do with going to college. An associate degree produces a smaller, but still highly significant gain.

It is clear that different segments of the high school population need different postsecondary opportunities. Some are academically able and should be applying to selective schools. Others are much less well prepared and might benefit more from a one-year certificate in a high-demand field such as health, computers, or welding. One size doesn’t fit all.

A more academic literature has shown that there is a small but significant number of low-income, high-achieving students who do not apply to more selective schools but instead enter the community college system or other less selective institutions where they are less likely to graduate. They are often unaware of the fact that many top-tier universities are seeking a more diverse student body and would provide generous financial aid enabling them to attend. Although there are far more high achievers from wealthier families than among those who are less well off, this “undermatching” of talent with available resources is another indicator that class matters in the U.S. (Hoxby & Avery, 2013; Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009).

At the other end of the spectrum are a large number of high school students who are simply not prepared for the rigors of college-level work. In an earlier paper, co-authored with Stephanie Owen and entitled “Should Everyone Go to College?” we argued that a college degree is a very good investment, on average, but not for every high school student. The benefits depend not only on whether one completes a degree or certificate, but also on the selectivity of the school, the student’s major, and the type of occupation in which she ends up. For example, the rate of return on a bachelor’s degree from a noncompetitive four-year private institution is under 6% while the rate of return on a bachelor’s degree at our most competitive public institutions is over 12%. The difference in lifetime earnings between someone majoring in engineering vs. someone majoring in the arts is a whopping $1.5 million.

Of course, the value of a college degree should not be measured solely in terms of the payoff in the labor market. Higher education creates more informed citizens, better health, better parents, more job satisfaction, and other noneconomic benefits. Still, students would do well to carefully consider their objectives and expectations before choosing an institution or a major. Efforts to make more information available and to help high school graduates and their parents navigate the complexity of the financial aid system — as well as the multitude of institutional choices available to them — should be increased. [3]

More fundamentally, for a lower-income family, higher education is simply not affordable without heavy subsidies from the government or scholarship aid. Faced with messages that a college degree is the ticket to the middle class, and tuition levels that are beyond their reach, borrowing by students and their families has soared. In part this reflects an increase in the number of borrowers (Greenstone & Looney, 2013). But the levels of debt are both worrisome and inconsistent with the idea that higher education should be accessible to all those able to benefit from it.

In the meantime, the federal government is spending $136 billion a year on Pell grants, student loans, tax credits, and other forms of assistance for undergraduate students. While Pell grants are aimed at providing help to low-income students, loans and tax credits are heavily tilted toward middle-class families (Dynarski & Scott-Clayton, 2013). [4] Some reallocation of funding from the middle class to the poor would probably help to close the opportunity gap. But more money for Pell grants, by itself, will not solve the dropout problem. There is no evidence that Pell grants have increased graduation rates, as opposed to enrollments. A higher level of assistance for low-income students but one also tied more closely to performance might help to level the playing field in a more cost-effective way while simultaneously providing stronger incentives for better preparation at the K–12 level. For example, West Virginia’s PROMISE scholarships provide free tuition and fees for up to four years to academically qualified students who maintain a minimum GPA and course load in college. Research has shown that the program increased on-time graduation rates by 7 percentage points (Dynarski & Scott-Clayton, 2013).

More controversially, it may be time to consider an approach that is common in European and Asian countries. These countries require students to demonstrate that they are prepared before they are admitted to a university, using national testing systems. Some countries, such as Germany, also provide far more opportunities for nonuniversity bound students to acquire valuable skills. For those with the requisite ability, the cost of higher education is free or highly subsidized. These systems provide an incentive for students to study hard in secondary school and for the schools to work hard to prepare them for the rigors of college-level work. Universities can then concentrate on educating those most able to benefit, and taxpayers don’t end up subsidizing students to learn in college what they should have learned earlier in their school careers. The European and Asian systems are often more meritocratic than the U.S. system and far more cost-effective from a societal perspective (NCES, 2013).

With the advent of the Common Core standards, a version of this approach could be gradually introduced in the U.S. and financial assistance tied more strongly to performance in high school and college. Because of our tradition of not tracking students and of providing open access to community colleges, and because it would take time for the K–12 system as well as individuals to respond to new incentives, any such modifications would need to be introduced very slowly, and careful attention would need to be paid to how performance is measured.

Even then, critics will charge that such a system would limit access to higher education. They would note that even a year or two of college that ends with the student dropping out has some value in the labor market. They would also argue that access is critical and that our system with its great diversity of institutions from open-access community colleges to elite private schools is designed to promote choice and opportunity. That said, the U.S. is falling behind in international rankings of what students know and how many graduate from college, and it is not clear that we can continue to compete using our current “open-access” model. European countries spend far less per capita on higher education than does the U.S. but get a much greater bang for the buck in terms of college completion rates. To those who worry that this is because they only educate a select few, it is worth pointing out that European levels of income inequality and social mobility compare favorably with those in the U.S.

There is no question that the workforce of the future will need more education, but some of that education may be more effectively provided in high school, in career and technical education programs customized to provide the skills that employers need, and through inexpensive online learning rather than in traditional college classrooms. Community colleges are, of course, providing a great deal of career and technical education, and especially where that education leads to a certification or skill with value in the market place (nursing is a good example), they are providing a vitally important service and deserve more resources for this purpose.

Over the longer term, the focus needs to be on improved productivity in the higher education system. [5] There is a burgeoning interest in online learning combined with more personalized approaches in the classroom. Real innovation and more cost-effective forms of education will require measuring what students learn and not just counting credit hours accumulated. These kinds of innovations will remain controversial within some portions of the higher education community, but they should be welcomed by taxpayers, families, and administrators looking for a way to broaden access without bankrupting either families or state and federal governments. By bringing college-level learning within the reach of the less advantaged and older, nontraditional students looking for ways to retool their skills, innovation can be one solution to America’s opportunity gap.

In summary, I have argued that, despite our dedication to the idea of a higher education system open to all, we are not doing a very good job of leveling the playing field. The result is that opportunity is still linked too strongly to class. In the longer term, the solution needs to involve improving the K–12 system. It also needs to involve making learning and access to skills beyond this level a less costly process and one that does not necessarily require four to six years of college. In the near term, more could be done to better inform students and their families about available options, including the availability of financial aid for well-prepared students from low-income families; the importance of matching one’s interests and skills with what different institutions have to offer; and the availability of more work-focused career and technical training for those most likely to drop out of college saddled with too much debt.

This essay was originally published in The College Board volume How College Shapes Lives: Understanding the Issues .

Bailey, M., & Dynarski, S. (2011). Gains and gaps: Changing inequality in U.S. college entry and completion (NBER Working Paper No. 17633). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Barrow, L., Brock, T., & Rouse, C. (2013). Postsecondary education in the United States: Introducing the issue. The Future of Children: Postsecondary Education in the United States , 23 (1), 3–16.

Baum, S., Kurose, C., & McPherson, M. S. (2013). An overview of American higher education. The Future of Children: Postsecondary Education in the United States , 23 (1), 17–39.

Bettinger, E., Boatman, A., & Long, B. (2013). Student supports: Developmental education and other academic programs. The Future of Children: Postsecondary Education in the United States , 23 (1), 93–115.

Bowen, W., Chingos, M., & McPherson, M. (2009). Crossing the finish line: Completing college at America’s public universities . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Dynarski, S., & Scott-Clayton, J. (2013). Financial aid policy: Lessons from research. The Future of Children: Postsecondary Education in the United States , 23 (1), 67–91.

Greenstone, M., & Looney, A. (2013). Rising student debt burdens: Factors behind the phenomenon. Washington, DC: The Hamilton Project, Brookings Institution.

Hoxby, C., & Avery, C. (2013). The missing one-offs: The hidden supply of high-achieving, low-income students. Conference draft. Brookings Panel on Economic Activity.

Isaacs, J., Sawhill, I., & Haskins, R. (2008). Getting ahead or losing ground: Economic mobility in America . Washington, DC: Brookings and Pew Economic Mobility Project.

National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. (2013). National student aid profile: Overview of 2013 federal programs. Retrieved from http://www.nasfaa.org/national-profile/

National Center for Education Statistics. (2011). Community college student outcomes: 1994–2009 . NCES 2012-253.

National Center for Education Statistics. (2013). Education expenditures by country. The Condition of Education . Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

Owen, S., & Sawhill, I. (2013). Should everyone go to college? (CCF Brief #50). Washington, DC: Center on Children and Families at Brookings.

U.S. Department of Education. (2009). National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2009 Reading Assessment. Institute of Education Sciences.

U.S. Department of Treasury. (2012). The economics of higher education . Retrieved from http://www.treasury.gov/connect/blog/Documents/20121212_Economics%20of%20Higher%20Ed_vFINAL.pdf

U.S. Census Bureau. (2012). Current population survey . Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm

Wildavsky, B., Kelly, A., & Carey, K. (2011). Reinventing higher education: The promise of innovation . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[1] For an excellent overview of the higher education system, see the articles in, The Future of Children: Postsecondary Education in the United States, 2013, especially the chapters by Lisa Barrow, Tom Brock, and Cecelia Rouse and by Sandy Baum, Charles Kurose, and Michael McPherson.

[2] In fall 2012, 66.2% of 2012 high school graduates were enrolled in college (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012).

[3] The College Scorecard, the Department of Education’s new tool for informing potential students about graduation rates, costs, and loan default rates at different colleges, is a step in the right direction as is a more simplified process for applying for financial aid.

[4] Roughly 40% of undergraduates receiving federal assistance are from families with income above $30,000 (National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, 2013).

[5] In their volume entitled Reinventing Higher Education, Ben Wildavsky, Andrew Kelly, and Kevin Carey argue that there is plenty of low-hanging fruit to be plucked here. Colleges such as the University of Minnesota at Rochester and organizations such as the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) are showing the way, as are some for-profits.

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The future of higher education: what it means for students and educators.

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The Future of Higher Education What It Means For Students and Educators

“The idea that one can earn a degree at the age of 22 and be set for a career has become as antiquated as the pocket watch.”

—Jeffrey R. Brown, dean at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois, from his position paper: “ It’s Time to Transform Higher Education ”

• How do we prepare students and workers to do jobs that don’t even exist yet?
• For challenges we can’t even imagine yet?
• To compete in industries and with business models that haven’t even been invented yet?

Higher education is facing one of its biggest periods of unknowns in recent memory. There’s not a single person or aspect of education that hasn’t been utterly shaken by the pandemic.

But that’s not the only source of uncertainty. Technology changes so fast, the skills we master in school are constantly changing and becoming outdated in a matter of years. Some of the most exciting career opportunities might be for roles that don’t even exist yet in industries we can’t even imagine.

We must acknowledge the pace at which technology evolves, and the extent to which the traditional model limits access to education. Experts across higher education suggest that education should look less structured and make room for more variety: calling for new paths, multiple streams, a wider array of credentials — so people can reskill as needed and put those skills to work immediately.

One of those experts is Jeffrey R. Brown, dean at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois, author of this report: “ It’s Time to Transform Higher Education .”

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He argues that to fully embrace their missions, higher education institutions and educators must think differently about the suite of educational “products” they offer. In his report, he calls for “new forms of content delivery, new ways to assess learning, and new ways to certify that a learner has mastered various concepts and skills.”

I had a conversation with him to explore those ideas further. He started with a reminder of the original purpose of higher education.

“If we go back to the classical, liberal education, the idea was to make us more rational, more thoughtful, more informed citizens,” he said. “And that has benefits not only to the individual receiving the education, but also to society at large – to teach us that there's a bigger world out there, to think about the world's problems.”

Higher education used to be a luxury for a small segment of society, but it’s become more of a necessity for people to be able to thrive, take care of their families, and solve the grand problems of the world. He said there’s still a role for traditional education, but what we also need today is lifelong, skills-based training that is available to people at any point in their lives.

“That's the transformation that needs to take place,” said Brown. “We're working with a very old model, and that old model is not as well-suited to the needs of today's citizens.”

He outlined three main ways higher education needs to evolve.

Transformation in higher education: 3 ways to make it more accessible, lifelong and skills-based

1. The future of higher education is democratized. He wants to democratize education by taking advantage of technology.

“We need to use technology to expand our educational offerings to be less expensive, to work around people's work and family lives, and to reach people who are not fortunate enough to live in an area where they have access to top scholars and top universities.”

2. The future of higher education is individualized. Once you're operating at scale and with technology, you can individualize education. He recommends expanding our idea of what types of credentials are valued – getting beyond the four-year degree to include sub-degrees or less-intensive credentials, certificates, or digital badges. Some people don’t necessarily need to spend two years getting an MBA, but they could benefit from learning cutting-edge material in business, finance or analytics. There should be recognized credentials for doing so.

“It might be enough for me to take three courses in these areas that I really need right now to reach that next level of excellence in my current job. I can individualize my educational needs to where I am in my life, where I am in my career.”

3. The future of higher education is accessible. He talked about breaking down the many barriers that exist for people to get the education they want. Those barriers might be that it’s too expensive, they’ve got a family and a full-time job, or there are no good schools within a 50-mile radius of their home. Leaders can demolish those barriers with some intentional design.

“We've tried to design our program not just in terms of your ability to choose content, but also with some scheduling flexibility to accommodate when you're able to jump in and out – to truly make it more accessible.”

For more insights on the future of higher education, listen to our conversation below.

Future Generations and Higher Education: Students need to Lead the Way

I have a seven-year-old daughter, so I asked Brown: What's the higher education experience going to look like for her?

“Children need to learn how to learn in multiple environments,” he said. “I know the pandemic was a painful time for lots of school-aged children. But they're going to need to learn to navigate in a world where they have face-to-face interaction, online interaction and, increasingly, virtual interactions – using augmented or virtual reality. Getting exposure to a wide range of learning modalities, in addition to a wide range of fields and materials, is going to be really important.”

Leaders in higher education, take note: change is coming whether you’re ready or not. As Brown put it: “You've basically got three choices. You can lead. You can be a very fast follower. Or you can become irrelevant.”

Higher education has been through the ringer over the past few years. Make sure you don’t simply rebuild what you’ve been doing since the 1600s and miss your opportunity to evolve.

"What makes a great leader today is the ability to tolerate and even welcome a future that's unknown," said Wendy York, dean of Clemson's Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business.

Are you ready to adapt? If you can’t change your institution, how can you claim the ability to shape the next generation of leaders that society needs?

To learn more about how leaders are preparing for the future of higher education, register free for the virtual version of the 2022 Leadership in the Age of Personalization Summit hosted by Clemson University’s Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business on October 14.

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The Role of Higher Education Institutions in the Transformation of Future-Fit Education

Education is a critical driver of the 2030 Agenda . Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) including universities and colleges worldwide are preparing future professionals, conducting meaningful research, and engaging with the community and stakeholders to tackle local, national, regional, and global challenges. These HEIs are at the forefront of the solutions required to advance the Sustainable Development Goals, which underscores the fundamental role of education in creating healthy and inclusive societies as envisioned in the 2030 Agenda. 

The role of HEIs is not confined to that exclusively of higher education per se. In practice, the contribution of HEIs is quite significant to creating a continuum between all levels of education while training future and current teachers, making curricula adjustments and developing new curricula, nurturing ideas and new pedagogical approaches, instilling fundamental values through various learning methods and platforms, and cultivating innovations -including technological ones- to improve the educational experience and educational outcomes.

The debate about the education we need for the future largely depends on the complexities we face and the several conflicting crises and emergencies around us. In this sense, universities and colleges are very well placed to assess such challenges and how they can be addressed. To analyze this, the  United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI)  within the context of the Transforming Education Summit convened by the United Nations, co-organized this event to be hosted by the Center for Global Affairs of New York University , a UNAI member institution in the United States:

Topic: THE ROLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF FUTURE-FIT EDUCATION

Date:  Thursday, 22 September 2022

Time:  10am - 12:30pm (EDT/New York time)

Venue: New York University (United States), with broadcast (further details to be announced prior to the event)

RSVP/Registration form:   Click here

Those who would like to attend this event in-person will need to upload proof of vaccination and booster if eligible to the New York University (NYU) portal and show a "Green" Daily Screener pass upon entry to the campus. Attendees will also be required to follow any mask requirements or COVID-19-related protocols in place. Attendees will receive more information via e-mail about accessing the campus 1-2 weeks before the event.

As of now, registrations for attending in-person are no longer possible.

Please note that UNAI cannot cover travel-related expenses to attend this event, if you decide to do so in-person. 

No certificate of attendance or participation will be provided.

**************************************************************************************************************************************

First panel:   The role of higher education in the transformation of education for the realization of the SDGs

• Mr. Robert Skinner , Deputy Director and Chief of Partnerships and Global Engagement at the Outreach Division of the United Nations Department for Global Communications

Presenters:

• Dr. Carolyn Kissane , Clinical Professor, Academic Director of the graduate programs in Global Affairs and Global Security, Conflict and Cybercrime at the Center for Global Affairs, and Director of the SPS Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab of New York University (United States)
• Mr. Sarmad Khan , Board Director of the Academic Council on the United Nations System. Co-author of the upcoming book The Sustainable University of the Future: Reimagining Higher Education and Research . Former Head and Senior Policy Adviser of the Resident Coordinator System Leadership Branch at the United Nations Development Operations Coordination Office.  
• Dr. Patrick Paul Walsh , Vice President of Education and Director of the SDG Academy at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Professor of International Development Studies and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development Studies at the University College Dublin (Ireland)
• Dr. Mette Morsing , Head of Principles for Responsible Management Education - PRME) at the United Nations Global Compact. Previous Professor, Misum Chair and Executive Director of the Misum Center for Sustainable Markets, Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden)
• Dr. Priyadarshani Joshi , Senior Research Officer at the Global Education Monitoring Report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – UNESCO. Specialist on Non-State Actors in Education and Education’s Role in the Sustainable Development Goals

Second panel:   Best practices and case studies from the UNAI SDG Hubs

• Dr. Waheguru Pal Singh , Clinical Professor and Director of the United Nations Specialization at the Center for Global Affairs of New York University (United States). Co-Author of the book The Future of Global Affairs Managing Discontinuity, Disruption and Destruction [2021]
• Prof. Juan José Vásquez , Legal Advisor and Professor of Conflict Resolution, Peace and Mediation at the University for Peace (Costa Rica) / SDG Hub for Goal 12
• Prof. Katja Enberg , Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Bergen (Norway) / SDG Hub for Goal 14
• Prof. Sheryl Hendriks , Professor and Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development at the University of Pretoria (South Africa) / SDG Hub for Goal 2
• Dr. Jonas Richard , Professor and Head of the Department of Social Work at Kristu Jayanti College (India) / SDG Hub for Goal 1

Advancing Sustainable Solutions: The Habitable Air Project at the UN HLPF

Prioritising local knowledge and community engagement in its innovative solutions, the Habitable Air Project, led by Dr Kerry Ryan Chance at UNAI SDG hub the University of Bergen (UiB) in Norway, has emerged as a leading voice in addressing the interconnected challenges of air pollution and climate change. Their recent participation at the United Nations High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) showcased their groundbreaking work and its crucial role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Texila American University Boosts Community Health with Blood Drives

Texila American University (TAU) has emerged as a leading force in promoting community welfare in Guyana through its proactive blood donation drives. As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives, TAU has been dedicated to addressing the pressing need for blood in the region, often heightened by medical emergencies and ongoing health conditions. One of the university’s most recent and impactful drives took place on June 21, 2024, in collaboration with the National Blood Transfusion Services (NBTS).

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Tertiary Education

• Reference work entry
• First Online: 01 January 2020
• Cite this reference work entry

• Steve Lambert 6  

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals ((ENUNSDG))

157 Accesses

Further education ; Higher education ; Post-compulsory education ; Tertiary education

The phase of education proceeding compulsory education, including higher education. Typically there is no upper limit to the age at which an individual can participate in tertiary education. It is sometimes referred to as lifelong learning given the lack of upper age limit. Tertiary education often bridges the skills and knowledge gap between the general education that an individual receives at school and work.

Introduction to Tertiary Education

A broad range of factors influences tertiary education globally. These include but are not limited to the labor markets they serve, the degree of state-led regulation of specific occupations, and historical structures of economics and industries. Yet despite these variances, the structure of tertiary education is broadly similar. Tertiary education also acts a bridge between the generalist education provided by compulsory schooling and the...

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Lambert, S. (2020). Tertiary Education. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A.M., Brandli, L., Özuyar, P.G., Wall, T. (eds) Quality Education. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95870-5_55

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• Published: 13 October 2017

Rethinking higher education and its relationship with social inequalities: past knowledge, present state and future potential

• Theocharis Kromydas 1  

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The purposes and impact of higher education on the economy and the broader society have been transformed through time in various ways. Higher education institutional and policy dynamics differ across time, but also between countries and political regimes and therefore context cannot be neglected. This article reviews the purpose of higher education and its institutional characteristics juxtaposing two, allegedly rival, conceptual frameworks; the instrumental and the intrinsic one. Various pedagogical traditions are critically reviewed and used as examples, which can potentially inform today’s policy making. Since, higher education cannot be seen as detached from all other lower levels of education appropriate conceptual links are offered throughout this article. Its significance lies on the organic synthesis of literature across social science, suggesting ways of going forward based on the traditions that already exist but seem underutilized so far because of overdependence in market-driven practices. This offers a new insight on how theories can inform policy making, through conceptual “bridging” and reconciliation. The debate on the purpose of higher education is placed under the context of the most recent developments of increasing social inequalities in the western world and its relation to the mass model of higher education and the relevant policy decisions for a continuous increase in participation. This article suggests that the current policy focus on labor market driven policies in higher education have led to an ever growing competition transforming this social institution to an ordinary market-place, where attainment and degrees are seen as a currency that can be converted to a labour market value. Education has become an instrument for economic progress moving away from its original role to provide context for human development. As a result, higher education becomes very expensive and even if policies are directed towards openness, in practice, just a few have the money to afford it. A shift toward a hybrid model, where the intrinsic purpose of higher education is equally acknowledged along with its instrumental purpose should be seen by policy makers as the way forward to create educational systems that are more inclusive and societies that are more knowledgeable and just.

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Introduction.

The mainstream view in the western world, as informed by the human capital theory sees education, as an ordinary investment and the main reason why someone consumes time and money to undertake higher levels of education, is the high returns expected from the corresponding wage premium, when enters the labour market (Becker, 1964 , 1993 ). Nevertheless, things in practice are more complicated and this sequence of events is unlikely to be sustained, especially in recession periods like the one we currently live in. On the contrary, one notion of education, related somewhat to the American liberal arts tradition, is the intrinsic notion, which interprets that the purpose of education is to ‘equip people to make their own free, autonomous choices about the life they will lead’ (Bridges, 1992 : 92). There might be an economic basis underpinning this individual choice, but the intrinsic notion permits more subjective motivations, which are not necessarily affected by economic circumstances.

Robinson and Aronica ( 2009 ) argue that education, have become an impersonal linear process, a type of assembly line, similar to a factory production. They challenge this view and call for a less standardised pedagogy; more personalised to students needs as well as talents. Education is not similar to a manufacturing production-line, since students are highly concerned about the quality of education they receive as opposed to motor cars, which are indifferent to the process by which they are manufactured. Along these lines, Waters ( 2012 ), following Weber’s ( 1947 , 1968 ) rationale on the role of bureaucracy in modern societies, adds that this manufacturing process is achieved through rigid, rationalised and productively efficient but totally impersonal bureaucracy, operated in a way that sees children as raw materials for the creation of adults, which is the final product properly equipped to reproduce “itself” by being a parent to a new born “raw material” and so forth. Durkheim ( 1956 , 2006 ) sees this as a mechanism where adults exercise their influence over the younger in order to maintain the status quo they desire. However, since education entails ontological as well as epistemological implications, primary focus should be given to learning in such a way that educative and social functions could be amalgamated, rather than solely focusing on the delivery of existing knowledge per se, which becomes a reiterated process and an unchallenged absolute truth (Freire, 1970 ; Heidegger, 1988 ; Dall’ Alba and Barnacle, 2007 ).

This article focus on higher education; since it is the last stage before somebody enters the labour market and thus the instrumental view becomes more dominant over the intrinsic view, compared to the lower levels of education. Higher education, is being traditionally offered by universities. The first established university in Europe is the University of Bologna, where the term “academic freedom” was introduced as the kernel of its culture (Newman, 1996 ). Graham ( 2013 ) distinguishes between three different models of higher education. These are: the university college, the research and the technical university. He provides a historical review of the origins of these three models. The university college is the oldest one, where Christian values were the core values. Later on, when scientific knowledge questioned the universal theological truth, another type of university has been established, where research was the ultimate goal of the scholarship. This type of university has subsequently transformed by the introduction of the liberal arts tradition, flourished in the US. The research university model, originated circa 16 th century in Cambridge and established in Berlin by the introduction of the Humboldian University, shared a common aim: the pursuit of knowledge and its dissemination to the greater society. The third model of university is the technical one. It has been established in an industrial revolution context in Scotland and particularly in Glasgow in the premises of what is currently known as the University of Strathclyde. While the introduction of capitalism changed radically the structure and the format of labour relations, the technical model was based on the idea that industrial skills had to be acquired by formal education and somehow verified institutionally in order to be applied to the broader society. This is the first time where the up to then distinct fields of education and industry, started to be conceived as inextricably tight in a rather linear way.

These different models of higher education cultures and traditions still exist, but in reality, Universities worldwide follow a hybrid approach, where all traditions collaborate with each other. However, there are some universities that still carry the reputation and tradition of a specific model and to some extent this tradition differentiates them from all others. It is not the scope of this research to analyse this in detail, as the main aim is to offer an institutional and policy narrative, exploring the purpose of higher education and its relationship with social inequalities, focusing primarily on the western world.

Nowadays, in a rapidly changing word, the major debate is placed under the forms of institutional transformation of higher education. Brennan ( 2004 ), based on Trow ( 1979 , 2000 ), allocates three forms of higher education. The first one is the elite form, which main aim is to prepare and shape the mind-set of students originated from the most dominant class. The second is the mass form of higher education, which transmits the knowledge and skills acquired in higher education into the technical and economic roles students subsequently perform in the labour market. Lastly, the third is the universal form, which main purpose is to adapt students and the general population to the rapid social and technological changes.

This article reviews the contemporary trends in higher education and its widespread diffusion as interacted with the evolutions in western economies and societies, where social inequalities persist and even become wider (Dorling and Dorling, 2015 ). The narrative used in this article is more suitable to conceptualise higher education in a western world context, though we acknowledge that via globalisation, the way education and particularly higher education is delivered in the rest of the world seems to follow similar to the Western worlds paths, despite the apparent differences in culture, social and economic systems as well as writing systems. Footnote 1

An interdisciplinary and critical synthesis of the relevant literature is conducted, presenting two stances that are largely considered as rival: The instrumental one that treats higher education as an ordinary investment with particular financial yields in the labour market and the more intrinsic one which sees higher education as mainly detached from the logic of economic costs and benefits. The theoretical rivalry is apparent since in the former approach higher education is an inevitable property of labour market and thus an indispensable part of the mainstream economic neoliberal regime, whereas the latter sees no logical link between higher education and labour market purposes and therefore the content and substance of learning and knowledge acquisition in education and specifically in higher education should not be market-driven or aligned to the functions of specific economic regimes. However, this article argues that educational systems, and particularly their higher levels, are amalgamated parts of contemporary societies and therefore theories and practices need to move away from rather futile binary rationales.

The remainder of this paper explains why both the intrinsic and instrumental approaches are doomed to fail in practice when used in isolation. In a rapidly diverging and polarised world, where social inequalities rise within as well as between countries, common sense dictates social theories and practices to move towards reconciliation rather than stubborn rivalry. In that spirit, this paper argues that the intrinsic and instrumental approach are in fact complementary to each other. Such view can inform policy making towards building more inclusive educational systems; organically tight with the broader society. The narrative this article uses departs and expands on the rationale of eminent critical pedagogists such as Freire, Bronfenbrenner, Bourdieu and Kozol in order to challenge the current instrumental world-view of education, at least as this is apparent in the western world. Then the article moves into offering a reasoning for an organic synthesis of existing knowledge in order the two rival theories to be actualised in practice as a unified and reconciled pedagogical strategy. This reasoning builds on the research conducted by Durst’s ( 1999 ), Payne ( 1999 ) and Lu and Horner ( 2009 ). Durst ( 1999 ) suggests a “reflective instrumentalism”, where student’s pragmatic view that education is just a way of finding a well-paid job, operated in tandem with critical pedagogical canons, is indeed possible. Payne ( 1999 ) proposes a similar approach, where students are equipped with the necessary tools to find a job in the labour market; however educators should engage students with this knowledge in a critical way in order to be able to produce something new. Likewise Lu and Horner ( 2009 ) note that educators and students need to work together in such a way that perceptions of both are amenable to change and career choices are critically discussed in a constantly changing social context.

The purpose of higher education in western societies

Mokyr ( 2002 ) suggests that education should be integrated by both inculcation and emancipation in order to serve individual intellectual development as well as social progression. Shapiro ( 2005 ) emphasizes the need for the higher education institutions to serve a public purpose moving beyond narrow self-serving concerns, as well as to enforce social change in order to reflect the nature of a society that its members desire. More recently, in philosophical terms Barnett ( 2017 , p 10) calls for a wider conceptual landscape in higher education where “The task of an adequate philosophy of higher education…is not merely to understand the university or even to defend it but to change it”. )

The purpose of education and its meaning in the contemporary western societies has been also criticised by Bo ( 2009 ), suggesting that education has become a contradictory notion that leaves no space for emancipation since it gives no opportunity for improvisation to students. Thus, the students feel encaged within the system instead of being liberated. Bo agrees with Mokyr, who highlighted the need for recalling the basic notions of education from ancient philosophies: that education should be integrated by both inculcation and emancipation in order to serve individual intellectual development as well as social progression (Mokyr, 2002 ; Bo, 2009 ).

Not all individuals and societies agree on the purposes and roles of higher education in the modern world. However, in any case, it is a place where teaching and research can be accommodated in an organised fashion for the promotion of various types of knowledge, applied and non-applied. It is a place where money and moral values compete and collaborate simultaneously, where the development of labour market skills and competences coexist with the identification and utilisations of people’s skills and talents as well as the pursuit of employment, morality and citizenship.

The post-WWII era has been characterised by the mass model of higher education. Before this, higher education was for those belonging to higher social classes (Brennan, 2004 ). This model became the kernel of educational policies in Europe and generally, in the western world (Shapiro, 2005 ). Such policies have been boosted by the advent of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which enhance commercial and non-commercial bonds between countries and higher education institutions, transforming the role of higher education even further, making it rather universal (Jongbloed et al., 2008 ). Higher education’s boundaries have become vague and the predefined “social contract” between its institutions and those participated in them, is more complicated to be defined in absolute terms. Higher education institutions are now characterised by economic competition in a strict global market environment, where governments are not the key players anymore (Brennan, 2004 ).

Moreover, student demographics in higher education are constantly changing. Higher education is now an industry operating in a global market. Competition to attract talents from around the world is growing rapidly as an increasing number of countries offer additional graduate and post graduate positions to non-nationals, usually at a higher cost compared to nationals (Barber et al., 2013 ). Countries such as China or Singapore that are growing economically very rapidly are investing huge amounts of money to develop their higher education system and make it more friendly to talented people from around the world. The advent of new technologies have changed the traditional model of higher education, where physical presence is not a necessary requirement anymore (Yuan et al., 2013 ). Studying while working is much easier and therefore more mature students have now the opportunity to study towards a graduate or post-graduate degree. All these developments have increased the potential for profit; however it also requires huge amount of money to be invested in new technologies and all kinds of infrastructures and resources. The need for diversification in funding sources is simply essential and therefore all other industries become inevitably more engaged (Kaiser et al., 2014 ). On top of all these, climate change, the rise of terrorism, the prolonged economic uncertainty and the automazation of labour will likely increase cross-national and intraoccupational mobility and therefore the demand for higher education, especially in the recipient countries of the economically developed western world will inevitably rise. Summing up, higher education institutions operate under a very fluid and unpredictable environment and therefore approaches that are informed by adaptability and flexibility are absolutely crucial. The hybrid approach we propose where instrumental and intrinsic values are reconciled is along these lines.

Modern views of higher education place its function under a digital knowledge-based society, where economy dominates. Labour markets demand for skills such as technological competence and complex problem-solving by critical thinking and multitasking, which increases competition and in turn, accelerates the pace of the working day (Westerheijden et al., 2007 ). Haigh and Clifford ( 2011 ) argue that high competency, in both hard and soft skills, is not enough, as higher education needs to go deeper into changing attitudes and behaviours becoming the core of a globalised knowledge-based-economy. However, the trends of transferring knowledge and skills by universities, which “increasingly instrumentalize, professionalize, vocationalize, corporatize, and ultimately technologize education” (Thomson, 2001 : 244), have been extensively criticised in epistemological as well as in ontological terms (Bourdieu, 1998 ; Dall’ Alba and Barnacle, 2007 ). Livingstone ( 2009 ) argues that education and labour market have different philosophical departures and institutional principles to fulfill and therefore conceptualising them as concomitant economic events, with strong causal conjunctions, leads to logical fallacies. Livingstone sees the intrinsic purposes of education and contemporary labour market as rather contradictory than complimentary and any attempt to see them as the latter, leads to arbitrary and ambiguous outcomes, which in turn mislead rather than inform policy making. The current article, building on the arguments of Durst’s ( 1999 ), Payne ( 1999 ) and Lu and Horner ( 2009 ) challenges this view introducing a “bridging” rationale between the two theories, which can be also actualized in practice and inform policy making.

When education, and especially higher education, is considered as a public social right that everyone should have access to, human capital, as solely informed by the investment approach, cannot be seen as the most appropriate tool to explain the benefits an individual and society can gain from education. Citizenship can be regarded as one of these tools and perhaps concepts, such as the social and c ultural capital or habitus , which contrary to human capital acknowledge that students are not engaged with education just to succeed high returns in the labour market but apart from the economic capital, should be of equal importance when we try to offer a better explanation of the individuals’ drivers to undertake higher education. (Bourdieu, 1986 ; Coleman, 1988 ). Footnote 2 For example, Bourdieu ( 1984 ) thinks that certificates and diplomas are neither indications of academic or applied to the labour market knowledge, nor signals of competences but rather take the form of tacit criteria set by the ruling class to identify people from a particular social origin. Yet, Bourdieu does not disregard the human capital theory as invalid; however he remains very sceptical on its narrow social meaning as it becomes a property of ruling class and used as a mechanism to maintain their power and tacitly reproduce social inequalities.

Higher education attainment cannot be examined irrespectively of someone’s capabilities, as its conceptual framework presupposes a social construction of interacting and competing individuals, fulfilling a certain and, sometimes common to all, task each time. Capabilities, certainly, exist in and out of this context, as it includes both innate traits and acquired skills in a dynamic social environment. Sen ( 1993 : 30) defines capability as “a person’s ability to do valuable acts or reach valuable states of being; [it] represents the alternative combinations of things a person is able to do or be”. Moreover, Sen argues that capabilities should not be seen only as a means for succeeding a certain goal, but rather as an end itself (Sen, 1985 ; Saito, 2003 ; Walker and Unterhalter, 2007 ).

Capabilities are a prerequisite of well-being and therefore, social institutions should direct people into fulfilling this aim in order to feel satisfied with their lives. However, since satisfaction is commonly understood as a subjective concept, it cannot be implied that equal levels of life satisfaction, as these perceived by people of different demographic and socio-economic characteristics, mean social and economic equality. Usually, the sense of life satisfaction is relative to future expectations, aspirations and past empirical experiences, informed by the socio-economic circumstances people live in (Saito, 2003 ).

According to the capability approach, assessing the educational attainment of individuals or the quality of teachers and curriculum are not such useful tasks, if not complemented by the capacity of a learner to convert resources into capabilities. Sen’s ( 1985 , 1993 ) capability approach, challenges the human capital theory, which sees education as an ordinary investment undertaken by individuals. It also remains sceptical towards structuralist and post-structruralist approaches, which support the dominance of institutional settings and power over the individual acts. According to Sen ( 1985 , 1993 ), educational outcomes, as these are measured by student enrolments, their performance on tests or their expected future income, are very poor indicators for evaluating the overall purpose of education, related to human well-being. Moreover, the capability approach does not imply that education can only enhance peoples’ capabilities. It also implies that education, can be detrimental, imposing severe life-long disadvantages to individuals and societies, if delivered poorly (Unterhalter, 2003 , 2005 ).

From Sen’s writings, it is not clear whether the capability approach imply a distinction between instrumental and intrinsic values. Even if someone attempts an interpretation of the capability approach by arguing that it is only means that have an instrumental value, whereas ends only an intrinsic one, it is still unclear how can we draw a line between means and ends in a rather objective way. Escaping from this rather dualistic interpretation, a common-sense argument seems apparent: Capabilities have both intrinsic and instrumental value. Material resources can be obtained through people’s innate talents and acquired skills; however through the same resources transformed into capabilities a person who does not see this as an end but rather as a means, can also become a trusted member of the community and a good citizen, given that some kind of freedom of choice exists. Thus, resources apart from their instrumental value can also have an intrinsic one, with the caveat that the person chooses to conceive them as means towards a socially responsible end.

The American tradition in student development goes back to the liberal arts tradition, which main aim is to build a free person as an active member of a civic society. The essence of this tradition can be found in Nussbaum ( 1998 : 8)

“When we ask about the relationship of a liberal education to citizenship, we are asking a question with a long history in the Western philosophical tradition. We are drawing on Socrates’ concept of ‘the examined life,’ on Aristotle’s notions of reflective citizenship, and above all on Greek and Roman Stoic notions of an education that is ‘liberal’ in that it liberates the mind from bondage of habit and custom, producing people who can function with sensitivity and alertness as citizens of the whole world.”

Nowadays, liberal arts tradition is regarded as the delivery of interdisciplinary education across the social sciences but also beyond that, aiming to prepare students for the challenges they are facing both as professionals and as members of civic society. However, as Kozol notes in reality things are quite different (Kozol, 2005 , 2012 ). Kozol devoted much of his work examining the social context of schools in the US by focusing on the interrelationships that exist, maintained or transformed between students, teachers and parents. He points out that segregation and local disparities in the US schools are continuously increasing. The US schools and especially urban schools are seen as distinctive examples of institutions where social discrimination propagates while the US educational system currently functions as a mechanism of reproducing social inequality. Kozol is very critical on the instrumental purpose of market-driven education as this places businesses and commerce as the “key players”, since they shape the purpose, content and curriculum of education. At the same time, students, their parents as well as teachers, whose roles should have been essential, are displaced into some kind of token participants.

Hess ( 2004 ) might agree that US schools have become vehicles of increasing social inequalities but he suggest a very different to Kozol’s approach. Since schools are social institutions that operate and constantly interact with the rest of economy they have to become accountable in the way that ordinary business are, at least when it comes to basic knowledge delivery. Hess insists that all schools across the US should be able to deliver high quality basic knowledge and literacy. Such knowledge can be easily standardised and a national curriculum, equal and identical to all US school can be designed. By this, all schools are able to deliver high quality basic knowledge and all pupils, irrespective of their social background, would be able to receive it. Then, each school, teacher and pupil are held accountable for their performance and failure to meet the national standards should result in schools closed down, teachers laid off and pupils change school environment or even lose their chance to graduate. Hess distinguishes between two types of reformers; the status quo reformers who do not challenge the state control education and the common-sense reformers who are in favour of a non-bureaucratic educational system, governed by market competition, subjected to accountability measures similar to those used in the ordinary business world.

While Hess presents evidence that the problem in higher education is not underfunding but efficiency in spending, the argument he makes that schools can only reformed and flourish through the laws of market competition is not adequately backed up as there are plenty of examples in many industrial sectors, where the actual implementation of market competition instead of opening up opportunities for the more disadvantaged, has finally generated huge multinationals corporations, which operate in a rather monopolistic or at best oligopolistic environment, satisfying their own interests on the expense of the most deprived and disadvantaged members of the society. The ever growing increasing competition in the financial, pharmaceutical or IT software and hardware (Apple Microsoft, IOS and Android software etc.) sectors have not really helped the disadvantaged or the sector itself but rather created powerful “too big to fail” corporations that dominate the market if not own it.

Hess indeed believes that the US educational system apart from preparing students for the labour market has a social role to fulfil. When the purpose of higher education is solely labour market-oriented teaching and learning become inadequate to respond to the social needs of a well-functioned civic democracy, which requires active learners and critical thinkers who, apart from having a job and a profession, are able “ to frame and express their thoughts and participate in their local and national communities”(p. 4) . Creating rigorous standards for basic knowledge in all US schools is a goal that is sound and rather achievable. However, when such goals are based on a Darwinian like competition and coercion where only the fittest can survive they become rather inapplicable for satisfying the needs of human development, equity and sustainable social progress.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory ( 1979 , 2005 , 2009 ) (subsequently named from Bronfenbrenner himself as bioecological systems theory) is also an example of schools as organic ingredients of a single concentric system that includes four sub systems; the micro, the meso, the exo and the macro as well as the chronosystem that refers to the change of the other four through time. The Micro system involves activities and roles that are experienced through interpersonal relationships such as the family, schools, religious or social institutions or any interactions with peers. The meso system includes the relationships developed between the various microsystem components, such as the relationship between school and workplace or family and schools. The exosystem comprises various interactions between systems that the person who is in the process of development does not directly participates but influence the way microsystems function and impact on the person. Some examples of exosystems are the relationships between family and peers of the developing person, family and schools, etc. The macrosystem incorporates all these things that can be considered as cultural environment and social context in which the developing person lives. Finally, the chronosystem introduces a time dimension, which encompasses all other sub-systems, subjecting them to the changes occurred through time. All these systems constantly interact, shaping a dynamic, complex but also natural ecological environment, in which a person develops its understanding of the world. In practical terms, this theory has found application in Finland, gradually transforming the Finish educational system to such a degree that is now considered the best all over the world (Määttä and Uusiautti, 2014 ; Takala et al., 2015 ). Finally, Bronfenbrenner is also an advocate that poverty and social inequalities are developed not because of differences in individual characteristics and capabilities but because of institutional constraints that are insurmountable to those from a lower socio-economic background.

Freire ( 1970 , 2009 ) criticizes the way schooling is delivered in contemporary societies. The term he uses to describe the current state of education is “banking education”, where teachers and students have very discrete roles with the former to be perceived as depositors of knowledge and the latter as depositories. This approach sees the knowledge acquired within the institutional premises of formal education as an absolute truth, where reality is perceived as something static aiming to preserve the status quo in education and in turn in society and satisfy the interests of the elite. This actual power play means that those who hold knowledge and accept its acquiring procedure as static, become the oppressors whereas those who either lack knowledge or even hold it but challenge it in order to transform it, the oppressed. From the one side the oppressors achieve to maintain their dominance over the oppressed and on the other side the oppressed accept their inferior role as an unchallenged normality where their destiny is predetermined and can never be transformed. Therefore, through this distinction of social roles, social inequalities are maintained and even intensified through time. Freire sees the “banking education” approach as a historical hubris since social reality is a process of constant transformation and hence, it is by definition dynamic and non-static. What we actually know today cannot determine our future social roles, neither can prohibit individuals from challenging and transforming it into something new (Freire, 1970 ; Giroux, 1983 ; Darder, 2003 ).

The banking education approach resembles very much the ethos of the human capital theory, where individuals utilise educational attainment as an investment instrument for succeeding higher wages in the future and also climb the levels of social hierarchy. The assumption of linearity between past individual actions and future economic and social outcomes is at the core of banking education and thus human capital theory. However, this assumption introduces a serious logical fallacy that surprisingly policy makers seem to value very little nowadays, at least in the Western societies. Freire ( 2009 ) apart from criticizing the current state of education argues that a pedagogical approach that “demythologize” and unveils reality by promoting dialogue between teachers and students create critical thinkers, who are engaged in inquiry in order to create social reality by constantly transforming it. This is the process of problem-posing education , which aligns its meaning with the intrinsic view of education that regards human development as mainly detached from the acquisition of material objects and accumulation of wealth through increased levels of educational attainment.

Originated in Germany, the term Bildung —at least as this was interpreted from 18 th century onwards, after Middle Ages era where everything was explained in the prism of a strict and theocratic society- shaped the philosophy by which the German educational system has been functioning even until nowadays (Waters, 2016 ). Bildung aims to provide the individual education with the appropriate context, through which can reach high levels of professional development as well as citizenship. It is a term strongly associated with the liberation of mind from superstition and social stereotypes. Education is assumed to have philosophical underpinnings but it needs, as philosophy itself as a whole does too, to be of some practical use and therefore some context needs to be provided Footnote 3 (Herder, 2002 ).

For Goethe ( 2006 ) Bildung , is a self-realisation process that the individual undertakes under a specific context, which aims to inculcate altruism where individual actions are consider benevolent only if they are able to serve the general society. Although Bildung tradition, from the one hand, assumes that educational process should be contextualised, it approach context as something fluid that is constantly changing. Therefore, it sees education as an interactive and dynamic process, where roles are predetermined; however at the same time they are also amenable to constant transformation (Hegel, 1977 ). Consequently, this means that Bildung tradition is more closely to what Freire calls problem-posing education and therefore to the intrinsic notion of education. Weber ( 1968 ), looked on the Bildung tradition as a means to educate scientists to be involved in policy making and overcome the problems of ineffective bureaucracy. Waters ( 2016 ) based on his experiences with teaching in German higher education argue that the Bildung tradition is still apparent today in the educational system in Germany.

However, higher education, as an institution, involves students, teachers, administrators, policy makers, workers, businessmen, marketers and generally, individuals with various social roles, different demographic characteristics and even different socio-economic backgrounds. It comes natural that their interests can be conflicting and thus, they perceive the purpose of higher education differently.

Higher education expansion and social inequalities: contemporary trends

Higher education enrolment rates have been continuously rising for the last 30 years. In Europe, and especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, policies are directed towards widening the access to higher education to a broader population (Bowl, 2012 ). However, it is very difficult for policy-makers to design a framework towards openness in higher education, mainly due to the heterogeneity of the population the policies are targeted upon. Such population includes individuals from various socio-economic, demographic, ethnic, innate ability, talent orientation or disability groups, as well as people with very different social commitments and therefore the vested interests of each group contradict each other, rendering policy-making an extremely complicated task (CFE and Edge Hill University, 2013 ).

A collection of essays, edited by Giroux and Myrsiades ( 2001 ), provided valuable insights to the humanities and social sciences literature regarding the notion of corporate university and its implications to society’s structure. As Williams ( 2001 : 18) notes in one of this essays:

“Universities are now being conscripted directly as training grounds for the corporate workforce…university work has been more directly construed to serve not only corporate-profit agendas via its grant-supplicant status, but universities have become franchises in their own right, reconfigured to corporate management, labor, and consumer models and delivering a name-brand product”.

Chang et al. ( 2013 ) argues that institutional purposes do not always coincide with the expectations students have from their studies. In most cases, students hold a more pragmatic and instrumental understanding towards the purpose of higher education, primarily aiming for a better-paid and high quality jobs.

Arum and Roksa ( 2011 ) claim that students during their studies in higher education make no real progress in critical thinking and complex problem-solving. Nonetheless, it is notable that those who state that they seek some “deeper meaning” in higher education, looking at a broader picture of things, tend to perform better than those who see university through instrumental lenses (Entwistle and Peterson, 2004 ). These findings question the validity of the instrumental view in higher education as it seems that those that are intrinsically motivated to attend higher education, end up performing much better in higher education and also later on in the labour market. Therefore, in practice, the theoretical rivalry between the intrinsic and instrumental approach operate in a rather dialectic manner, where interactions between social actors move towards a convergence, despite the focus given by policy makers on the instrumental view.

Bourdieu ( 1984 , 1986 , 1998 , 2000 ) based on his radical democratic politics, argued that education inequalities are just a transformation of social inequalities and a way of reproduction of social status quo. Aronowitz ( 2004 ) acknowledged that the main function of public education in the US is to prepare students to meet the changes, occurred in contemporary workplaces. Even if this instrumental model involves the broad expansion of educational attainment, it also fails to alleviate class-based inequalities. He is in line with Bourdieu’s argument that social class relations are reproduced through schooling, as schools reinforce, rather than reduce, class-based inequalities. More recently, similar findings from various countries are very common in the literature (Chapman et al., 2011 ; Stephens et al., 2015 )

Apple ( 2001 ) argues that despite neoliberalism’s claims that privatisation, marketization, harmonisation and generally the globalisation of educational systems increase the quality of education, there are considerable findings in numerous studies that show that the expansion of higher education happens in tandem with the increase of income inequality and the aggravation of racial, gender and class differences. Gouthro ( 2002 ) argues that there has been a misrepresentation of the basic notions that characterise the purpose of education, such as critical thinking, justice and equity. Ganding and Apple ( 2002 ) went one step further by suggesting an alternative solution, which lies on the decentralisation of educational systems, using the “Citizen School” as an example of an educational institution, which prioritises quality in education and its provision to impoverished people. Finally, they call for a radical structural reform on educational systems worldwide, where the relationship between various social communities and the state is based on social justice and not on power.

Brown and Lauder ( 2006 ) investigated the impact of the fundamental changes on education, as related to the influence that various socio-economic and cultural factors have on policy making. Remaining sceptical against the empirical validity of human capital theory, they conclude that it cannot be guaranteed that graduates will secure employment and higher wages. Contrary to Card and Lemieux’s ( 2001 ) findings, the authors argue that when the wage-premium is not measured by averages, but is split in deciles within graduates, it is only the high-earning graduates that have experienced an increasing wage-gap during this period. Increasing incidences of over-education, due to an ever-increasing supply of graduates compared to the relatively modest growth rates of high-skilled jobs, have also been observed. Any differences in pay, between graduates and non-graduates, can be ascribed more to the stagnation of non-graduates' pay, rather than to graduates’ additional pay, because of their higher educational attainment. More recently, Mettler ( 2014 ) argues that the focus on corporate interests in policy making in the US has transformed higher education into a caste system that reproduces and also intensifies social inequalities.

There are evidence, which illustrate that families play a distinctive role in encouraging children’s abilities and traits through a warm and friendly family environment. As higher education requires a significant amount of money to be invested, families with high-income have more chances and means to promote their children’s abilities and traits as well as their career prospects, when compared with the low-income ones. Certainly, there are other factors, which can affect children’s prospects, but the advantage in favour of high-income families is relatively apparent in the empirical literature (Solon, 1999 ).

Livingstone and Stowe ( 2007 ), based on the General Social Survey (GSS), conducted an empirical study on the school completion rates partitioning individuals into family and class origin, residential area as well as race and gender. They focused on the relatively low completion rates of low-class individuals, from the inner city and rural areas of the US. Their findings reveal that working-class children are being discriminated on their school completion rates, compared with the mid- and high-class children. Race and gender discrimination has been detected in rural areas but not in inner cities and suburb areas, where the completion rates are more balanced.

Stone ( 2013 ), finally sees things from a very different perspective, where inequalities exist mainly because of simply bad luck. He argues in favour of lots, when a university has to decide whether to accept an applicant or not. Even if, an argument like this seems highly controversial, it consists of something that has been implemented in many countries, several times in the past (Hyland, 2011 ). The argument that an individual deserves a place in university just because he/she scored higher marks in a standardised sorting examination test does not prove that he/she will perform better in his/her subsequent academic tasks. Likewise, if an individual, who failed to secure a place in university due to low marks, was given a chance to enter university through a different procedure, he/she might have performed exceptionally well. Yet, human society cannot solely depend on lotteries and computer random algorithms, but sometimes, up to a certain point and in the name of fairness and transparency, there is a strong case for also looking on the merits for using one (Stone, 2013 ).

Furthermore, Lowe ( 2000 ) argued that the widening of higher education participation can create a hyper-inflation of credentials, causing their serious devaluation in the labour market. This relates to the concept of diploma disease, where labour markets create a false impression that a higher degree is a prerequisite for a job and therefore, induce individuals to undertake them only for the sake of getting a job (Dore, 1976 ; Collins, 1979 ). This situation can create a highly competitive credential market, and even if there are indications of higher education expansion, individuals from lower social class do not have equal opportunities to get a degree, which can lead them to a more prestigious occupational category. This is, in turn, very similar to the Weberian theory of educational credentialism, where credentials determine social stratum (Brown, 2003 ; Karabel, 2006 ; Douthat, 2005 ; Waters, 2012 ).

The concept of credential inflation has been extensively debated from many scholars, who question the role of formal education and the usefulness of the acquisition of skills within universities (Dore 1997 ; Collins, 1979 ; Walters, 2004 ; Hayes and Wynard, 2006 ). Evans et al. ( 2004 ) focuses on the tacit skills, which cannot be acquired by formal learning, mainly obtained by work and life experience as well as informal learning. These skills are competences related to the way a complex situation could be best approached or resemble to personal traits, which can be used for handling unforeseen situations.

Policy implications

Higher educational attainment that leads to a specific academic degree is a dynamic procedure, but with a pre-defined end. This renders the knowledge acquired there, as obsolete. Policies, such as Bologna Declaration supports an agenda, where graduates should be further encouraged to engage with on-the-job training and life-long education programmes (Coffield, 1999 ). Other scholars argue that institutions should have a broader role, acknowledging the benefits that higher educational attainment bring to societies as a whole by the simultaneous promotion of productivity, innovation and democratisation as well as the mitigation of social inequalities (Harvey, 2000 ; Hayward and James, 2004 ). Boosting employability for graduates is crucial and many international organisations are working towards the establishment of a framework, which can ensure that higher education satisfies this aim (Diamond et al., 2011 ). Yet, this can have negative side-effects making the employability gap between high- and low-skilled even wider, since there is no any policy framework specifically designed for low-skilled non-graduates on a similar to Bologna Declaration, supranational context. Heinze and Knill ( 2008 ) argue that convergence in higher education policy-making, as a result of the Bologna Process, depends on a combination of cultural, institutional and socio-economic national characteristics. Even if, it can be assumed that more equal countries, in terms of these characteristics, can converge much easier, it is still questionable if and how much national policy developments have been affected by the Bologna Declaration.

However, the political narrative of equal opportunities in terms of higher education participation rates does not seem very convincing (Brown and Hesketh, 2004 ; The Milburn Commission, 2009 ). It appears that a consensus has been reached in the relevant literature that there is a bias towards graduates from the higher social classes, but it has been gradually decreasing since 1960 (Bekhradnia, 2003 ; Tight, 2012 ). Nonetheless, despite the fact that, during the last few decades, there has been an improvement in the participation rates for the most vulnerable groups, such as women and ethnic minorities, the inequality is still obvious in some occasions (Greenbank and Hepworth, 2008 ). Machin and Van Reenen ( 1998 ) trace the causes of the under-participation in an intergenerational context, arguing that the positive relationship between parental income and participation rates is apparent even from the secondary school. Likewise, Gorard ( 2008 ) identifies underrepresentation on the previous poor school performance, which leads to early drop-outs in the secondary education, or into poor grades, which do not allow for a place in higher education. Other researchers argue that paradoxically, educational inequality persists even nowadays, albeit the policy orientation worldwide towards the widening of higher education participation across all social classes (Burke, 2012 ; Bathmaker et al., 2013 ).

There are different aspects on the purpose of higher education, which particularly, under the context of the ongoing economic uncertainty, gain some recognition and greater respect from academics and policy-makers. Lorenz ( 2006 ) notes that the employability agenda, which is constantly promoted within higher education institutions lately, cannot stand as a sustainable rationale in a diverse global environment. This harmonisation and standardisation of higher education creates permanent winners and losers, centralising all the gains, monetary and non-monetary, towards the most dominant countries, particularly towards Anglo-phone countries and specific industries and therefore social inequalities increase between as well as within countries. Some scholars call this phenomenon as Englishization (Coleman, 2006 ; Phillipson, 2009 ).

Tomusk ( 2002 , 2004 ) positioned education within the general framework of the recent institutional changes and the rapid rise of the short-term profits of the financial global capital. Specifically, the author sees World Bank as a transnational organisation. Given this, any loan agreement planned from the World Bank regarding higher education reforms in developing countries, has the same ultimate, but tacit, goal, which is the continuous rise of the national debt and in turn, the vitiation of national fiscal and monetary policies, in order the human resources of the so called “recipient countries”, to be redistributed in favour of a transnational dominant class.

Hunter ( 2013 ) places the debate under a broader political framework, juxtaposing neo-liberalism with the trends formulated by the OECD. She concludes that OECD is a very complex and multi-vocal organisation and when it comes to higher education policy suggestions, there is not any clear trend, especially towards neo-liberalism. This does not mean that economic thinking is not dominant within the OECD. This is, in fact, OECD’s main concern and it is clear to all. Hunter ( 2013 : 15–16) accordingly states that:

“Some may feel offended by the vocational and economic foci in OECD discourse. Many would like to see HE held up for “higher” ideals. However, it is fair for OECD to be concerned with economics. They do not deny that they are primarily an organization concerned with economics. It is up to us, the readers, politicians, scholars, voters, teachers, administrators, and policy makers, to be aware that this is an economic organization and be careful of from whom we get our assumptions”.

Hyslop-Margison ( 2000 ) investigated how the market economy affects higher education in Canada, when international organisations and Canadian business interfere in higher education policy making, under the support of government agencies. He argues that such economy-oriented policies deteriorate curriculum theory and development.

Letizia ( 2013 ) criticises market-oriented reforms, enacted by The Virginia Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2011, placing them within the context of market-driven policies informed by neoliberalism, where social institutions, such as higher education, should be governed by the law of free market. According to Letizia, this will have very negative implications to the humanistic character of education, affecting people’s intellectual and critical thinking, while perpetuating social inequalities.

The term Mcdonaldisation has been also used recently to capture functional similarities and trends in common, between higher education and ordinary commercial businesses. Thus, efficiency, calculability, predictability and maximisation are high priorities in the American and British educational systems and because of their global influence, these characteristics are being expanding worldwide (Hayes and Wynard, 2006 ; Garland, 2008 ; Ritzer, 2010 ).

The notion of Mcdonaldisation is very well explained by Garland ( 2008 , no pagination):

“Mcdonaldisation can be seen as the tendency toward hyper-rationalisation of these same processes, in which each and every task is broken down into its most finite part, and over which the individual performing it has little or no control becoming all by interchangeable. It may be argued that the labour processes involved in advanced technological capitalism increasingly depend on either the handling and processing of information, or provision of services requiring instrumentalised forms of communication and interaction, just as the same “professional” roles frequently consist of largely mechanized, functional tasks requiring a minimum of individual input or initiative, let alone creative or critical thought, a process illustrated in blackly comic by the 1999 film Office Space”.

Realistically, higher education cannot be solely conceptualised by the human capital approach and similar quantitative interpretations, as it has cultural, psychological, idiosyncratic and social implications. Additionally, Hoxby ( 1996 ) argued that policy environment and systems of governance in higher education play a significant role to an individuals’ decision-making process to obtain further education and unfortunately, policy makers regard this aspect as static that can never be transformed.

Lepori and Bonaccorsi ( 2013 ), following Latour and Woolgar’s ( 1979 ) rationale of the high importance of vested interest in scientific endeavours, argue that higher education trends are too complex to be reduced and captured adequately, by the use of economic indicators as related to the labour market. However, the market and money value of higher education should not be neglected, especially in developing countries, as there is evidence that it can help people escape the vicious cycle of poverty and therefore it has a practical and more pragmatic purpose to fulfil (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2004 ). According to World Bank ( 2013 ), education can contribute to a significant decrease of the number of poor people globally and increase social mobility when it manages to provides greater opportunities for children coming from poor families. There are also other studies that do not only focus to strict economic factors, but also to the contribution of educational attainment to fertility and mortality rates as well as to the level of health and the creation of more responsible and participative citizens, bolstering democracy and social justice (Council of Europe, 2004 ; Osler and Starkey, 2006 ; Cogan and Derricott, 2014 ).

Mountford-Zimdars and Sabbagh ( 2013 ), analysing the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey, offer a plausible explanation on why the widening of participation in higher education is not that easy to be implemented politically, in the contemporary western democracies. The majority of the people, who have benefited from higher educational attainment in monetary and non-monetary terms, are reluctant to support the openness of higher education to a broader population. On the contrary, those that did not succeed or never tried to secure a place in a higher education institute, are very supportive of this idea. This clash of interests creates a political perplexity, making the process of policy-making rather dubious. Therefore, the apparent paradox of the increase in higher educational attainment, along with a stable rate in educational inequalities, does not seem that strange when vested interests of certain groups are taken into account.

Moreover, the decision for someone to undertake higher education is not solely influenced by its added value in the labour market. Since an individual is exposed to different experiences and influences, strategic decisions can easily change, especially when these are taken from adolescents or individuals in their early stages of their adulthood. Given this, perceptions and preferences do change with ageing and this is why there are some individuals who drop out from university, others who choose radical shifts in their career or others who return to education after having worked in the labour market for many years and in different types of jobs.

Higher education has expanded rapidly after WWII. The advent of new technologies dictates the enhancement of people’s talents and skills and the creation of a knowledge-based-economy, which in turn, demands for even more high-skilled workers. Policy aims for higher education in the western world is undoubtedly focusing on its diffusion to a broader population. This expansion is seen as a policy instrument to alleviate social and income inequalities. However, the implementation of such policies has been proved extremely difficult in practise, mainly because of existent conflicted interests between groups of people, but also because of its institutional incapacity to target the most vulnerable. Nonetheless, it has been observed a constant marketization process in higher education, making it less accessible to people from poor economic background. Concerns on the persistence of policy-makers to focus primarily on the economic values of higher education have been increasingly expressed, as strict economic reasoning in higher education contradicts with political claims for its continuing expansion.

On the other hand, there are studies arguing that the instrumental model can make the transition of graduates into the labour market smoother. Such studies are placed under the mainstream economics framework and are also informed by policy decisions implemented by the Bologna Process, where competitiveness, harmonisation and employability are the main policy axes. The Bologna Process and various other institutions (e.g., the EU, World Bank, OECD) have provided a framework under which higher education can be seen as inextricably linked with labour market dynamics; however, the intrinsic notion of higher education is treated more as a nuisance and less as a vital component on this framework. Nevertheless, this makes the job competition between graduates much more intense and also creates very negative implications for those that remain with low qualifications as they effectively become socially and economically marginalised.

The purpose of higher education and its role in modern societies remains a heated philosophical debate, with strong practical and policy implications. This article sheds more light to this debate by presenting a synthetic narrative of the relevant literature, which can be used as a basis for future theoretical and empirical research in understanding contemporary trends in higher education as interwoven with the evolutions in the broader socio-economic sphere. Specifically, two conflicting theoretical stances have been discussed. The mainstream view primarily aims to assist individuals to increase their income and their relative position in the labour market. On the other hand, the intrinsic notion focus on understanding its purpose under ontological and epistemological considerations. Under this conceptual framework, the enhancement of individual creativity and emancipation are in conflict with the contemporary institutional settings related to power, dominance and economic reasoning. This conflict can influence people’s perceptions on the purpose of higher education, which can in turn perpetuate or otherwise revolutionise social relations and roles.

However, even if the two theoretical stances presented are regarded as contradictory, this article argues that, in practical terms, they can be better seen as complementing each other. From one hand, using an instrumental perspective, an increase in higher education participation, focusing particularly on the most vulnerable and deprived members of society, can alleviate problems of income and social inequalities. The instrumental view of education has a very important role to play if focused on lower-income social classes, as it can become the mechanism towards the alleviation of income inequalities. On the other hand, apart from the pecuniary, there are also other non-pecuniary benefits associated with this, such as the improvement in the fertility and mortality and general health level rates or the boost of active democracy and citizenship even within workplaces and therefore a shift of higher education towards its intrinsic purposes is also needed. (Bowles and Gintis, 2002 ; Council of Europe, 2004 ; Brennan, 2004 ; Brown and Lauder, 2006 ; Wolff and Barsamian, 2012 ).

Summing up, education is not a simply just another market process. It is not just an institution that supply graduates as products that have some predetermined value in the labour market. Consequently, acquired knowledge in education verified by college degrees is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the labour market to create appropriate jobs, where graduates utilise and expand this knowledge. In fact, the increasing costs of higher education, mostly due to its internationalisation, and the rising levels of job mismatch create a rather gloomy picture of the current economic environment, which seems to preserve the well-paid jobs mostly to those from a certain socio-economic class background. At the same time, poor students are vastly disadvantaged to more wealthy ones, considering the huge differences in terms of higher as well as their past education, their parent’s education and also certain elitist traditions that work towards perpetuating power relations in favour of the dominant class.

As Castoriadis ( 1997 ) notes, it is impossible to separate education from its social context. We, as human beings, acquire knowledge, in the sense of what Castoriadis calls paideia , from the day we born until the day we die. We are being constantly developed and transformed along with the social transformations that happen around us. The transformation on the individual is in constant interaction with social transformations, where no cause and effect exists. Formal schooling has become nowadays an apathetic task where no real engagement with learning happens, while its major components such as educators, families and students are largely disconnected with each other. Educators, cynically execute the teaching task that a curriculum dictates each time, families’ main concern is to attach a market value to their children educational attainment, “labelling” them with a credential that the labour market allegedly desires, while students pay attention to anything else apart from the knowledge they get per se and therefore they care too little for its quality and also its practical use.

To tackle the ever-growing social inequalities due to the narrow economic policy making in education, we need a radical shift towards policies that are informed from Freire’s problem-posing education and Sen’s capabilities approach, get insights in terms of structure from Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory, while giving context according to the Bildung tradition also acknowledging that education, apart from instrument, is a vehicle towards liberation, cultural realisation as well as social transformation. In practical terms, real-world examples from Finland or Germany can be used, which policy makers from around the world should start paying more attention to, moving away from narrow and sterile instrumentalism that has spectacularly failed to tackle social inequalities.

In the context of a modern world where monetary costs and benefits are the basis of policy arguments, a massification and broader diffusion of higher education to a much broader population implies marketisation and commercialisation of its purpose and in turn its inclusion on an economy-oriented model where knowledge, skills, curriculum and academic credentials inevitably presuppose a money-value and have a financial purpose to fulfil. The policy trends towards an economy-based-knowledge, through a strict instrumental reasoning, rather than the alleged knowledge-based-economy seems to persist and prevail, albeit its poor performance on alleviating income and social inequalities. Yet, in a global context of a prolonged economic stagnation and a continuous deterioration of society’s democratic reflexes, a shift towards a model, where knowledge is not subdued to economic reasoning, can inform a new societal paradigm of a genuine knowledge-based-economy, where economy would become a means rather than an ultimate goal for human development and social progress.

Data availability

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

For example, Confucian tradition is very rich, when it comes to education and human development. It is indeed very interesting to see how the basic principles of Confucian education, such as humanism, harmony and hierarchy, has been transformed through time and especially after the change in China’s economic model by Den Xiaoping’s reforms towards a more open economic system and along this a more business-oriented and globalised educational system. Perhaps the Chinese tradition in education, which mainly regards education as a route to social status and material success based on merit and constant examination can explain why the human capital theory is more applicable. On the other hand, additional notions in the Confucian tradition that education should be open to all, irrespective of the social class each person belongs to (apart perhaps from women and servants that were rather considered as human beings with limited social rights), its focus on ethics and its purpose to prepare efficient and loyal practitioners for the government introduces an apparent paradox with human capital theory but not necessarily with the instrumental view of education. This contradiction deserves to be appropriately and thoroughly examined in a separate analysis before it is contrasted to the Western tradition. For this reason the current research focuses only on the Western world leaving the comparison analysis with educational traditions found around the world, among them the Confucian tradition, as a task that will be conducted in the near future.

The use of capital in Bourdieu is criticised by a stream of social science scholars as rather promiscuous and unfortunate (Goldthorpe, 2007 ). They argue that a paradox here is apparent as in English linguistic etymological terms, the word capital implies, if not presupposes market activity. The same time Bourdieu criticises Becker’s human capital tradition as solely market-driven and a tacit way where the ruling class maintain their power through universities and other institutions. Waters ( 2012 ) argue that the use of the term “capital” in both Becker’s and Bourdieu’s writings is unfortunate, while both use the term to mean different things. Bourdieu’s understanding on the nature of “habitus” is a much more applicable term to explain the social role of education systems. Habitus is not capital, even if there is constant interaction between the two. Becker on the other hand, seem to neglect social and cultural capital as well as Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, which in turn is about the reproduction of society and power relations by universities and other institutions.

Some might have valid ontological objections on this, in terms of the purpose of philosophy as a whole; however the concept of Bildung has given education a role within society that moves away from individualism and the constant pursuit of material objects as ultimate means of well-being.

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The Importance of Assessment in Higher Education

The importance of assessment in education has always been evident. However, the term itself has come to encompass a much broader and more detailed process in recent years. Aside from the traditional focus on what students can remember, assessment has taken on additional meaning thanks to innovative technology. Institutions can use assessment data to inform strategic decision-making, upgrade their curricula, and elevate the student learning experience.

The current assessment trends speak to this fundamental shift. They bring elements like different types of assessment, a focus on processes and experiences, and embracing technological innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) to create a more detailed and accurate picture of how institutions are meeting their objectives.

What Is Assessment in Higher Education?

Assessment in higher education has many meanings, but at its core, it measures what students know and what they can do. The process involves collecting information that measures the success of a course, program, or curriculum based on whether students have acquired the skills and knowledge associated with that program. It’s more than testing student competency and involves measuring an institution’s process toward its predetermined goals.

The assessment process is twofold — measuring student outcomes and an institution’s ability to provide students with the skills and knowledge they need to start meaningful careers. In return for holding students to a high standard, institutions receive actionable data to inform future improvements. While detailed and complex, innovative assessment processes can lead to improved results for students, faculty, and institutions as they tackle their relative opportunities for improvement with a firm overview of where to start and what steps to take.

Why Are We Assessing?

The importance of assessment goes beyond knowing what students have learned. Instead, it provides evidence of whether institutions and faculty members meet their objectives. In short, we assess to gain a holistic view of performance at all levels of an institution, from students to administration and leadership.

Although assessment serves many purposes, it focuses on ensuring students get the best possible education. To achieve this goal, higher education institutions must adopt a clear and realistic view of their strengths and weaknesses backed by data.

Traditionally, assessment was designed to measure what students could recall. Now, we assess for a different and more complex reason. We want to know how well we have prepared students to excel in their lives. To do that, we need to measure the skills we provide, such as critical thinking. In addition, we must measure their engagement and satisfaction with their course material to ensure they benefit most from their studies.

This shift in the focus of assessment has resulted in the need for institutions to evolve their assessment strategies to measure student knowledge in realistic situations and the ability of institutions to provide them with those skills. Assessment and feedback can change teaching and learning processes, engage students and faculty, and provide institutions with the data they need to foster a culture of continuous improvement.

Types and Methods of Assessment in Higher Education

As institutions have realized the value of a more holistic approach to assessment, they have had to create and fine-tune more detailed assessment methods to measure various outcomes. Although some assessment methods are more illuminating than others, each serves a purpose in an institution’s mission to give students the highest possible value. Consider the types of assessments below.

Summative Assessment

Summative assessment has been the traditional assessment model in education for decades. It’s primarily learning outcomes-based and takes place at the end of a period of study. Summative assessment includes examinations and final papers. While it’s a helpful method of providing institutions with information on student achievement patterns, it allows for no improvement during a course. Access to assessment information during a course will enable educators to modify their teaching strategies and encourage students to reflect and demonstrate growth in certain areas.

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment is the consistent evaluation of student learning and aims to enhance student learning during the learning process. Innovative technology gives higher education institutions access to this data in real-time, making it a more accessible form of measuring student learning than ever before. Assessing student performance through this model allows educators to engage with them more meaningfully, encouraging them to understand their strengths and weaknesses and tailor the remainder of their learning accordingly.

In addition to providing students with a more focused and engaged learning experience, formative assessments give faculty members real-time information on the effectiveness of their teaching strategies. They, too, can identify opportunities for improvement and enrich the learning experience during the program itself.

Self-Assessment

One of the goals of assessment is to provide students with information they can use to improve their learning experience and master skills needed in the workplace. Self-assessment empowers students to develop their judgment by assessing the process and product of their learning. It facilitates a sense of student ownership over their learning, leading to increased engagement, critical thinking, problem-solving, and leadership skills.

Using student assessment data to improve learning outcomes and teaching processes is an institutional form of self-assessment. Higher education institutions commit to their students to provide the best educational experience, and self-assessment is a powerful tool to turn student learning data into actionable improvements on an institutional level.

The Five Levels of Assessment in Higher Education

For institutions to realize the total value of assessment, it must occur on every level. Using a framework of five levels helps institutions pinpoint more specific improvement areas and focus their efforts. The five principal levels of assessment in higher education include:

1. Individual Student Learning Within Courses

This level aims to measure learning as the student progresses through a course. The chosen assessment tools should provide student strengths and weaknesses data and guide course development with actionable improvement recommendations.

A combination of formative and summative assessments yields excellent results on this level. However, institutions should deemphasize grades and look to more effective methods of providing the actionable feedback needed to strengthen student engagement and overall development. A focus on formative assessment allows administrators and faculty to evaluate a course while it is in progress — a powerful tool in a culture of ongoing improvement.

2. Individual Student Learning Across Courses

The second level of assessment aims to measure student development as they move through their specific program. It provides students with evidence of their growth across sources and gives them access to actionable feedback they can use to address their personal improvement areas.

Simultaneously, institutions have insight into how students perform against the program’s learning objectives. The data gathered at this level supports efforts to address gaps in student development, improving overall educational quality.

3. Course Assessment

In the third level of assessment, institutions can start taking a broader view of their performance by evaluating the effectiveness of courses in helping students meet learning objectives, lay the groundwork for future areas of study, and obtain the skills and knowledge expected of their learning level.

Institutions can use various assessment tools to gather this information, including formative and summative assessment methods, as well as high-impact practices designed to boost career readiness in real-world situations. The data gathered at this level helps institutions identify areas of the curriculum that represent opportunities to improve educational relevance, meeting students where they are and gaining a broad view of where the course fits into the bigger picture.

4. Programmatic Assessment

The goal of the fourth level of assessment is to measure the relationship between curriculum strategy and learning objectives . Assessments on a programmatic level provide valuable information on how successfully a program prepares students to meet learning objectives. In addition, it reveals further curriculum gaps that may only be apparent with a broader view of the program.

Programmatic assessment relies primarily on summative assessments, establishing whether a program contributes to its predefined outcomes, fulfills its purpose, and advances institutional goals. It also confirms whether courses flow coherently and in such a way that supports cumulative learning, allowing students to progress from one level to the next with confidence.

5. Institution Assessment

As the name suggests, institution assessment measures how well institutions meet their goal of educating students and readying them for future assessments. Institutions can use the results gathered at this level to support curriculum design improvements and improve education quality at all levels.

People at every level of an institution are responsible for assessment at this level, and collaboration is essential to establish a culture of assessment and continuous improvement, backed by systematic and data-driven processes. These processes also allow institutions to look at issues like student engagement, retention, and enrollment with fresh eyes and determine new approaches to strengthen these areas in the post-COVID-19 landscape .

The Importance of Assessment for Learning

Assessment directly impacts the quality of the learning environment through prioritizing skills like reflection, reasoning, and critical thinking. The chosen curriculum and the types of assignments faculty provide students determine how they will approach learning, what behaviors they use, and ultimately, what they gain from taking part.

“Assessment for learning” is an essential distinction, augmenting “assessment of learning,” and shifting the focus from the past to the present tense. Instead of asking what students learned, institutions focus on where students are in their current learning, the nature of their understanding, any challenges they face, and how to help them move forward.

Assessment integrates into the learning process, instead of happening afterward. Instead of measuring what students have learned, assessment becomes a method of understanding student learning. The better we know it, the more we can support student success.

The Importance of Assessment in the Classroom

Assessment has the potential to be a catalyst for institution-wide change. However, it’s vital to remember that its primary purpose is to serve student success. The importance of assessment in the classroom is evident — it empowers students to take responsibility for their learning, engage with their course material, and take active steps to self-assess, improve, and make the most of their academic journey.

As assessment is tightly linked to instruction and curricula, it forms a framework in which faculty and students can work together toward achieving learning outcomes. Assessment informs instructions and guides students in taking their next steps. In a classroom setting, an appropriate assessment framework also gives faculty members the tools they need to engage individual students and work with them to achieve the course objectives.

The Importance of Assessment for Institutional Goals

While it is clear that assessment can power an institution’s approach to improving student learning, it has broader-reaching implications. Institutional goals encompass more than educating students, covering areas such as identifying at-risk students and getting them back on track, engaging them and meeting them where they are, and supporting student enrollment and retention.

Assessment data provides institutions with actionable insights on how well students are achieving an institution’s educational goals. Institutions can use this data to foster a culture of accountability, promote diversity, and assure curriculum quality. In addition, they can inform future strategies and use artificial intelligence (AI) to predict trends and remain agile in the ever-changing landscape of higher education.

How Higher Education Institutions Can Leverage Assessment Data to Achieve Their Objectives

Practical assessment yields massive amounts of data, which is only helpful if you can leverage it to drive improvement and enhance the student experience. While this process can be complex, innovative and user-friendly technology makes data more manageable. However, to get the most valuable insights from assessment data, you must revisit the fundamentals of assessment and create a detailed roadmap of your measurement and reporting processes.

Clarify Your Outcomes

Every institution has an overarching goal , and assessment data can help you measure your progress toward these goals by tracking specific outcomes. For example, academic outcomes help track student development as they work their way through a course. Effective outcomes should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound (SMART).

Every specific academic unit should have clear outcomes, which create the foundation for broader institutional goals. Tracking results based on assessment data is a powerful way to demonstrate your impact and measure progress. To measure the most critical elements of your framework, consider clarifying the following outcomes:

• Academic outcomes: The skills and knowledge students will demonstrate after completing a course or program.
• Non-academic outcomes: Skills and accomplishments separate from student learning. Operational outcomes: Objectives related to the ongoing administrative activities facilitating and supporting education.
• Program outcomes: How a program, such as student satisfaction and retention rates, improves your institution.

Map Your Curriculum

Curriculum mapping gives you insights into how your program meets specific outcomes. It shows the connections between the broader effects of a program and the courses where that learning is happening. A detailed curriculum map forms the foundation for your assessment process.

Curriculum mapping is a detailed process, but it helps your institution prioritize student development by planning a coherent sequence for courses and identifying teaching gaps. It improves your overall learning experience and provides evidence of how each course fits into the institution’s bigger picture. The following tips can streamline curriculum mapping efforts:

• Start small: Stick with simplicity initially, and identify each course’s outcomes. With this information, you can take a more detailed approach to each course and build from there.
• Find the proper measurements: Identify assessment opportunities within your current framework, and start with reviewing the data from these sources.
• Address the obvious: If a particular outcome stands out to you as presenting a roadblock for students, address that first. As you examine your curriculum, present your faculty with these obvious gaps as an opportunity to improve.
• Use the best tools: Data is actionable if it’s easy to create, track, and report on connections and results. Innovative and assessment-specific software can show the relationship between courses and outcomes and plan curriculum maps.

Use Direct and Indirect Measurements

For every defined outcome, you must have a concept of measurement. Using direct and indirect measurements can help you get a more holistic view of your progress toward outcomes. Direct measurements include proof of student learning, like exams, essays, and capstone projects. Indirect measurements involve other signs of success, like student satisfaction surveys, attendance, and final grades.

Determine which type of measurement best suits each outcome and set a target on which to base your progress. Keep your goals in mind and make strategic changes when needed to support these goals.

Apply Your Insights

For assessment in higher education to take on true meaning, you must do more than collect data and issue standardized reports. The data is there for you to drive continuous improvement throughout your institution. Take a close look at your data to take the appropriate steps. Keep the following tips in mind to make the most of your data-driven insights:

• Prioritize honesty: Meaningful assessment requires complete honesty about student performance. An unbiased approach is necessary to identify and act on opportunities for improvement.
• Look from all angles: Assessment data provides insights into trends and gaps in the learning experience. Ensure you consider both to celebrate your successes and focus on areas to enhance.
• Conduct regular reviews: Hold a review meeting at least once a year, but go beyond the minimum requirement and revisit your assessment data often. Encourage faculty and other stakeholders to engage with the data regularly.

Communicate and Evaluate

Assessment data should not exist in a file somewhere. Communicate your findings openly throughout your institution, and present your results in a way that encourages action at all levels. The assessment process is continuous and agile. Just as you evaluate assessment data, you must reevaluate the assessment process. Consider whether your outcomes are still appropriate and look for opportunities to collect data from different — and possibly more relevant — sources.

As your outcomes change, evaluate whether you’re collecting data at the right time, through the right mediums, and ensure it matches your intent. Determining what is working and what isn’t can be challenging. Still, it begins with creating a data-informed assessment culture, using the right digital assessment solution, and communicating often in a way that resonates with your stakeholders.

Elevate Your Assessment Strategy With Watermark

Higher education institutions exist to enrich the learning experience and prepare students for meaningful careers in their chosen fields. Student assessment data is a critical part of institutional improvement. Still, the insights inspire success and create a culture of continuous improvement. Having the right tools to access the insights you need to evolve is just as important as the assessment data itself. With Watermark’s digital solutions, you have the tools to drive assessment-based improvements .

Watermark Planning & Self-Study can streamline your assessment and accreditation reporting, allowing your institution to balance technology with students at the center. Combining innovative software solutions with your institutional outcomes and robust reporting capabilities can take assessment in higher education from theoretical to actionable. Request a demo today to learn more.

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What are IT leaders saying about tech transformation in higher ed?

Empowering faculty collaboration and engagement: Tools and techniques for success

How program review committees can use labor market data to improve student outcomes

Looking to Become Faculty? What Doctoral Students & Postdocs Should Know

End-of-course survey 101

Program effectiveness survey questions

What Is a Course Evaluation?

What is Equity in Education?

Promoting a Growth Mindset for Student Success

The new faculty member’s guide to accreditation

What is planning and self-study software used for in higher education?

What makes direct and indirect assessment so difficult?

The Intrinsic Purpose of Student Surveys

The Importance of Co-Curricular Programs in Student Success

The Outcomes of Success Coaching

How to put your institution’s data to work to make planning easier

What’s Your “Why?” Understanding the Value of Outcomes Reporting

The positive impact of success coaching on community college students.

Identifying and Implementing Graduate Student Retention Strategies

How can higher education reignite a passion for learning?

Quality Assurance, Self-Study, and Assessment Technology at Community Colleges: A NILOA-Led Conversation

“A radical rethink”: How CV imports transform faculty activity reporting

The Secret to SACSCOC Accreditation Success

Why data is the catalyst for personalizing education

The Top 6 Challenges College Students Face

Higher Education Act Reauthorization: What Colleges and Universities Need To Know

An Overview of Regional vs. National Accreditation

Overcoming the Unique Challenge of Assessment at Community College

The Why Behind Curriculum Mapping

Responsible AI adoption for higher education instructors

Is Retention More Profitable Than Enrollment?

Rubric-based assessments: usage and benefits.

The Growing Importance of College Course Reviews

Engage Conference Throughout the Years

Why Faculty Diversity Matters

Sacscoc accreditation: 8 things peer reviewers want you to know, three building blocks of essential course content, engaging in service as a faculty member or administrator.

Setting goals for faculty annual reviews

How to improve the assessment process by simplifying process management

Why Is Student Success So Important for Higher Education?

Three Integration Essentials to Improve Your Course Evaluation Process

How to enhance your curriculum to meet current labor market needs, tips for professors: strategies to foster equity in the classroom.

Why It’s a Great Time for New Tech in Higher Ed

Why Mentoring Matters

Why Predictive Analytics Is Crucial for Maximizing College Retention Efforts

How to ensure student support from prospect to enrollee, harnessing data analytics to enhance faculty performance and development.

The Role of a Student Success Administrator in Higher Education

Course Evaluations: Are We Asking Questions about Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging?

The evolution of higher education, exploring the “why” behind change resistance in higher education, factors that influence student engagement in higher education.

Using Watermark to help faculty close the loop on assessment

Building bridges: Strengthening the faculty-student connection for academic success

Faculty tips for surviving the end of the semester

Finding solutions: closing the gender enrollment and retention gap in higher education.

For efficient accreditation reporting, a culture shift is necessary

From professor to product architect: Brian Robinson

How To Prepare for End-of-Course Evaluations

Getting faculty on board with assessment

Get the important answers with an all-in-one course evaluation solution.

Going Above & Beyond: Measuring Faculty Activity During a Crisis

Preparing for the Growing Role of Student Affairs 

Guided Academic Pathways: Student Success Starts With a Plan

High-impact practices in higher education.

Removing data silos in higher ed with technology

How to create a culture of continuous improvement at your college.

Data management strategies for higher education

How higher education can be more environmentally sustainable

Cost containment guide: How higher ed tech can help

How Student Success Technology Can Help Institutions With Declining Enrollment

Accreditation challenges – and how top institutions are solving them.

A map for your accreditation journey

The accreditation process for two-year schools.

How to Assess Career Readiness in College Students

Long-term adjuncts: what you should know, advancing assessment practices with watermark planning & self-study.

9 assessment trends to watch for in 2024

Assessing the Reliability of Student Feedback in Higher Education

Assessment trends: how to evolve your assessment strategy, watermark releases initial results of study aimed at closing the higher education equity gap for minority males.

How to Become a Higher Education Administrator

Benefits of eportfolios for technical colleges.

How to Build a Culture of Assessment in Higher Education

Leveraging watermark – blackboard integration: powerful insights throughout your assessment cycle.

Tips for success coaching young men

9 tips to improve student satisfaction in higher education, three things you need for a (productive) data-informed discussion.

Tips for Faculty When Writing a Letter of Recommendation

Tips for mastering the CAEP accreditation process

Why You Should Care About the Performance of Other Educational Institutions

How to Improve Faculty Engagement for Student Success

How to Choose a Higher Education Assessment Software

Tips for Engaging Underperforming Students

Why You Should Consolidate Your Tech Stack

8 strategies when starting a new academic position.

Inspiring students to perform their best

Improving institutional effectiveness with Watermark Planning & Self-Study

How to connect programs to occupations with curriculum mapping

How to keep students engaged over summer break

Women in STEM: Stacy Becker Helps Keep Watermark Products Accessible

Covid conversations: 5 dos and don’ts for adjusting your course evaluation strategy.

How to improve parent engagement with data

Covid-related resources for higher education.

5 Tips for Faculty When Writing a Letter of Recommendation

Dr. Linda Ludwig mentors Watermark clients; she’s walked in their shoes

Top 5 Challenges for Student Retention

Student success: 12 higher ed trends for 2024

How to improve student academic planning

You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato: Are Student Performance and Student Learning Outcomes the Same Thing?

Student Success Best Practices: The Perfect Combination

Your Strategy for Assessment During COVID: Keep Calm & Collect On

Characteristics of a Student Prepared for College

10 ways to go beyond orientation for student success

Improving student retention at technical schools.

How to conquer 5 common assessment challenges

Student success: fostering a growth mindset.

Success Coaching for a Personalized Student Advising Experience

Improve Student Retention With Predictive Analytics

The Importance of Success Coaching in Higher Ed

How higher ed institutions can invest in supporting spanish-speaking students & families.

Improving Community College Relevance

Top 5 Reasons to Use Digital Tools for Key Campus Processes

Supporting first-generation students: the 22 rules of success.

The use of labor market data to respond to declining enrollment

The evolution of faculty workload management: Trends and technologies

7 labor market insights IE and IR teams can use to evaluate program effectiveness

10 ways to support students struggling with classes

Using ePortfolios in end-of-semester assessments

How College Leaders Can Use Labor Market Data

Taking Advantage of Course Feedback in Higher Ed

Higher ed technology management guide

Using eportfolios in higher education, taking course evaluation reporting to the next level.

Using Data to Personalize Students’ Coursework

How to Create the Best Course Evaluations

The importance of technology due diligence for higher education software.

How technology can amplify your educational impact

The 5 Stages of Student Success

The benefits of course evaluation in higher education.

The Brilliant Underachiever: Coaching Bright Students Who Struggle

Using campus data to support student success and steer the institution

The four crucial steps to ensure a successful technology implementation

The future of data convergence on campuses.

How Assessment Foundations Can Help Community Colleges

How to ensure adult learning success

The impact of cognitive bias on student surveys.

The Importance of Accessible Technology in Higher Education

Integrating Artificial & Human Intelligence for Student Success

Developing Rapport With Students: Why It’s Important & How to Do It

Is aging technology holding back your university?

4 Issues Impacting College Administrators

How to cultivate a positive faculty culture at your higher ed institution

How To Define Student Success

How To Do a Course Evaluation

Dropout prevention and alternatives for at-risk college students, best practices in faculty recruitment.

Tips for professors: best practices for online teaching

How to Engage Faculty in Assessment

Boosting alumni engagement opportunities

Closing the loop — applying data-informed insights.

How colleges and universities adapt to changing job markets

How To Find the Best Professors

Why flexibility is important for student success.

We are the champions: Building a case for new tech

Unlocking your potential: Could you benefit from a certification?

How to Find Success Coaches for Your College

How to improve student success with community-based learning

How to Develop Key Performance Indicators for Community Colleges

Why community colleges are our best hope for closing the equity gap

Making a Difference in Student Wellness

How to keep faculty data reliable and up-to-date

Making technology implementation a success

Ways community colleges can define, measure, and improve student success.

How to identify and manage valuable course improvements with Planning & Self-Study software

How to know when it’s time for new higher ed technology

Maximizing the Impact of Course Evaluations During COVID

Microcredentials and How ePortfolios Can Highlight Them

How to use SIS data at your school

Minority Male Success Initiative (MMSI): A Catalyst for Change

What Year Is Most Critical for College Student Success?

How to use LMS data to support curriculum development

MSCHE Accreditation: 7 Things Peer Reviewers Wish You Knew

Use ePortfolios to give students a leg up in job searches

The Power of Non-Academic Outcomes

Where are they now an update on our 2020 watermark scholars.

The “who” and “what” of university administration

Understanding the Support Needs of Community College Students

Faculty Search Committees: What Are They and What Do They Do?

How to make assessment simpler

Turning Process Into Progress: Using Technology to Drive Institutional Improvement

Keeping up with 2024 higher ed trends?

How to Prepare for a Virtual Assessment Site Visit

Transforming the Student Co-Curricular Experience of Community Colleges

Tracking Progress With Student Learning & Licensure

Online Course Feedback 101: From the Physical to the Digital Classroom

How to prepare for an accreditation peer review visit

Overcoming financial obstacles with help from higher education institutions

Preparing for Life on Sabbatical

Partnering With NCCCS to Help Students Succeed

How to reduce faculty workload using technology

Positive Change During Challenging Times: How Six Leaders Transformed Higher Education During the Pandemic

How to Support Grad Students

Best Practices to Reengage Community College Dropouts

How to support students struggling with time management

How to switch accreditors as a higher ed institution.

How Your College Can Support Veterans

Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics’ Role in Fighting College Attrition

How to Prepare for a Successful CAEP Accreditation

Top Course Evaluation Questions

Top Things to Consider When Hiring a Student Success Coach

Continuing education evaluation guide, identifying at-risk students through the course registration process, creating equity solutions.

5 Creative ways to use end-of-semester assessment data

11 community college trends for 2023

The importance of data transparency for higher ed success

Higher education institutional outcomes – defining a proficiency scale

How to democratize data at your institution to improve student outcomes

Demonstrating faculty influence on student success with Radford University

Developing proactive advising techniques.

The differences between direct and indirect measurement

Discover the secrets of faculty “buy-in”

Does the classroom environment matter.

Collecting Feedback With Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys

Barriers to using assessment results and how to overcome them

Engaging faculty in the new school year

How to use institutional data to spot students likely to transfer

Top reasons why students transfer and what your institution can do

Supporting working-class students: 7 ways to show support

How to support incoming transfer student success