Remaking College

Michael W. Kirst is Professor Emeritus of Education and Business Administration at Stanford University and the current President of the California State Board of Education. Mitchell L. Stevens is Associate Professor of Education at Stanford University and (by courtesy) Business and Sociology at Stanford University.

"By adopting an ecological viewpoint, the authors' analyses go beyond higher-education institutions themselves to illustrate how evolving economic, political, demographic and technological changes in the society that surrounds those institutions have forced changes in the meaning of college education . . . I found the authors' arguments persuasively supported with reasoning and evidence. I believe the book can serve as an important stimulant of thought for people who are concerned with the development of post-secondary education in any modern-day nation."—Murray Thomas, International Review of Education "Remaking College is an impressive edited volume that should adorn the selves of every serious sociologist of education. Editors Michael Kirst and Mitchell Stevens have compiled a series of insightful chapters, authored by leading sociologists of education and organizations that will provide a state-of-the-art understanding of how the ecology of American higher education has evolved in recent decades."—Roger Pizarro Milian, Canadian Journal of Sociology "This volume encourages researchers to challenge conventional approaches to classifying and understanding our nation's higher education institutions and the students who attend them, so as to better understand the role and contributions of higher education into the future."—Laura W. Perna, Educational Researcher "This collection of essays is the result of the 2013 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, designed to reconceptualize higher education within a context that is changing drastically . . . The essays are well written and offer alternative visions of what college can be. The arguments offered are worth considering, and this book should be read by anyone who aspires to lead colleges and universities . . . Recommended."—D. E. Williams, Walden University, CHOICE "[A]nyone interested in U.S. higher education can learn much from this book . . . For the prospective student coming from outside the United States, Remaking College gives a richer, fuller, and more complex sense of the landscape of American higher education . . . It also provides a fuller understanding of the space college occupies in adult lives, as one factor in a web of interdependencies."—Carol Christ, University World News "As the CEO of a 'broad access' institution, I am heartened that this volume and its authors recognize both the challenges and policy questions brought by the new exciting array of higher education options, as well as the critical importance of these colleges and universities to a diverse set of students."—Linda M. Thor, Chancellor, Foothill–De Anza Community College District "Kirst and Stevens provide a critical focus on broad-access higher education, whose performance is absolutely crucial if the U.S. is to meet its educational goals in the coming decades."—Michael Bastedo, Associate Professor and Director, Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, University of Michigan

• Contents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstract1Higher Education in America: Multiple Field Perspectives chapter abstractHigher education is a complex organization field in which many actors besides colleges and universities support and constrain each other. The field perspective provides historical, structural, and cultural context to recent developments in higher education such as the rise of digital learning, increasing costs, and concerns over learning and completion. The chapter focuses on three distinct field models of higher education as (1) an institutional field; (2) an arena of strategic action; (3) a demand-generated outcome.2DIY U: Higher Education Goes Hybrid chapter abstractThe chapter specifies five ways in which digitally mediated instruction helps fulfill the traditional mission of broad-access schools and the needs of a wide variety of learners. Online learning (1) enables students to learn when and where it is most convenient for them; (2) lowers costs; (3) creates new pathways through college; (4) enables greater personalization and customization of learning; (5) facilitates new connections among students, instructors, and employers.3Boom. Regulate. Cleanse. Repeat: For-Profit Colleges' Slow But Inevitable Drive toward Acceptability chapter abstractThe chapter chronicles the expansion of the for-profit college sector in recent decades and the cycles of federal regulation and sector expansion that have characterized this growth. The authors suggest a cycle in which rising enrollments are followed by regulatory action spurred by concerns over perceived exploitation of students and government funds. Regulatory crackdown results in a reduced enrollment until entrepreneurial providers find new ways to grow, creating the cycle.4The Classification of Organizational Forms: Theory and Application to the Field of Higher Education chapter abstractThis chapter critiques current classification schemes in higher education, which tend to privilege four-year colleges and universities with liberal-arts curricula. The authors demonstrate a new strategy for delineating organizational categories in higher education using probabilistic topic models and readily available data on students and schools in the United States. This strategy better reveals the wide diversity of forms in this organizational field.5The New Landscape of Early Adulthood: Implications for Broad-Access Higher Education chapter abstractThis chapter describes fundamental changes in early adulthood in recent decades and discusses their implications for higher education. Contemporary young adulthood is defined by the need to manage uncertainty, and the need for interdependence with (rather than independence from) others. Under such conditions, strengthening the transition to adulthood requires strengthening pathways into and through higher education, especially broad-access schools.6The "Traditional" College Student: A Smaller and Smaller Minority and Its Implications for Diversity and Access Institutions chapter abstractThis chapter illustrates how the majority of students attending college in the US do not match conventional images of "ideal" or "traditional" college students. Most US college students are older, more often employed, and less likely to live on campus than popular conceptions imply. Clinging to inaccurate notions college students creates a marginalized majority and has important implications for how we think key policy issues such as college persistence. This chapter calls for a broader conception of diversity in college so that it recognizes the wide variation in life circumstances that characterizes the college-going population.7Measuring College Performance chapter abstractThis chapter specifies the normative and technical aspects of assessment in higher education. Deciding what to measure is a political decision informed by prevailing cultural values and particular understandings of the purposes of higher education. The authors also consider the technical strengths and limitations of various accountability metrics available to policymakers today. The analysis has important implications broad-access colleges because the choice of certain outcomes and measurement strategies privileges some types of schools while disadvantaging others.8Explaining Policy Change in K-12 and Higher Education chapter abstractThis chapter describes the characteristics of US education politics that have variably driven the development of policy for K-12 and higher education, paying particular attention to how the politics of each sector have been shaped by public opinion. The authors offer accounts from multiple theoretical perspectives on how policy is developed in each sector, and leverage the comparison to describe what changes in public opinion might need to occur if higher education is to undergo substantial reorganization.9Understanding Human Resources in Broad-Access Higher Education chapter abstractThis chapter uses extant research and descriptive data to identify important research agendas for understanding human capital in broad-access schools. The authors consider the recruitment, assignment, development and retention of instructors; the role of managers in these processes; and how the roles of managers differ between K-12 and higher education.10Improving Collegiate Outcomes at Broad-Access Institutions: Lessons for Research and Practice chapter abstractThis chapter outlines how colleges can utilize data to identify and evaluate promising practices to improve college completion. The authors focus on using readily available institutional data as the basis for tractable research that might routinely inform better organizational decision-making. The chapter theme is illustrated through an example using data from the California State University system.11A Research Framework for US Higher Education chapter abstractThe chapter offers a matrix for organizing existing research and deriving questions for future scholarship.