The 6 Major Barriers Standing in the Way of Educational Change
As college and university administrators shift their priorities away from the mission of education, the role of faculty-as-teacher is diminishing, and the consequences for the profession — and for students — look to be getting rapidly more severe.
In 2009, just half of faculty members in higher education were part-timers. But now, owing in part to resources moving away from classroom instruction and toward student services, research and other areas, adjuncts make up 76.4 percent of the total across all institution types in the United States.
That's an issue identified by researchers in a new report as one of the "wicked challenges" facing higher education right now.
The report — the NMC Horizon Report, from the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative — identifies significant barriers facing education, as well as major developments in education technology and technological trends that will help shape teaching and learning in the near future.
Expert panelists for this year's report — the NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition — identified six barriers facing education, half of which carried over from the previous year's report. The challenges fell into three categories: those that are solvable, those that are difficult to solve but within our capabilities to understand and those that are so complex they're difficult even to grasp ... and nigh impossible to fix.
The 2 'Wicked' Challenges
The issue of instruction as a deteriorating priority in higher education was a significant one for this year's Horizon Report panel. Last year's report placed this issue in the category of "solvable" problems. The solution, however, seems further away now than ever.
According to the report: "Teaching is often rated lower than research in academia. In the global education marketplace, a university's status is largely determined on the quantity and quality of its research.... There is an overarching sense in the academic world that research credentials are a more valuable asset than talent and skill as an instructor. Because of this way of thinking, efforts to implement effective pedagogies are lacking. Adjunct professors and students feel the brunt of this challenge, as teaching-only contracts are underrated and underpaid, and learners are subject to the outdated teaching styles of the university's primary researchers. Overemphasis on research has caused a number of negative ramifications, including an excessive dependence on part-time faculty, which has diminished mobility within higher education, complicating the dilemma even further."
Among other problems, the report authors noted, this has led to many part-time faculty living below the poverty line. It's also led to overpriced, "mediocre" experiences for students at regional public institutions.
NMC Horizon Project Director Samantha Adams Becker, who was also lead author and researcher for the report, told us that this year's panel was "concerned that great pedagogy is not formally recognized enough at higher ed institutions — especially research universities. There is a shared view that not only does effective teaching need to be rewarded with promotions and other benefits the same way getting grants and being published, but also that universities need to get better at encouraging and creating opportunities for outstanding teachers to share their practices with other faculty."