As a biologist, I know that populations of organisms, faced with a changing environment, adapt or go extinct. That's a useful lesson for social organizations as well, and higher education is no exception.
Colleges and universities have historically focused on individuals who arrive educationally well-prepared – that is, individuals from relatively affluent families living in good K-12 school districts.
In response to our new knowledge-based economy, the Obama administration established a goal of having 60 percent of American adults with significant post-secondary education to respond to the changing job market. But today about one-third of American adults have at least a bachelor's degree, a figure that has changed little over the past two decades.
How do we reach the president's goal – how do colleges expand output – when our raw materials (well-prepared high school graduates) are becoming scarcer in our region?
Higher education must adapt, moving from exclusion to inclusion; from thinking of college only in terms of granting bachelor's and master's degrees to offering certificates that can stand alone or be stacked together; from having residential programs for recent high school graduates to creating just-in-time learning for working adults; from seat-time requirements to competency-based education.
RWU is doing all the above at its Providence campus. We are "building the university the world needs now," and in the process we are bolstering the economic capacity of Rhode Islanders, individually and collectively. In response to a changing environment, we are adapting.
Sometimes, it helps to think like a biologist: evolve or die. •