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American higher education in the last decade of the twentieth century faces escalating costs, uneven demographics, faltering revenues, and a serious erosion of public confidence -- not of its fundamental importance, but of its institutional integrity and stewardship. The failure to surmount these challenges could well lead to losses that are serious and irrevocable: losses in the quality of faculty and campus infrastructure; losses in access and in the social and economic mobility that we have come to expect from American higher education; and losses to our economic vitality from a higher education system no longer serving our needs either for a trained work force or a competitive technology.

The first of two assumptions underlying the thesis of this paper is that American higher education must become more productive. That is, our universities and colleges -- public and private, selective and open access, research universities and community colleges -- must produce demonstrably more education, research, and training for the resources requested from students, parents, and taxpayers. Increasing productivity is, at least arguably, an imperative of every important sector of our economy. For higher education -- whose unit costs have consistently increased at rates exceeding even its own wage and salary increases, whose costs to the student and parent now exceed the reach of all but the most affluent families, and for which a major increase in state or federal tax support remains remote -- the need for higher productivity is compelling and urgent.

The second assumption is that this productivity advance cannot be achieved wholly or even primarily through the traditional approach of reducing or cheapening the inputs -- mainly faculty and staff -- while defining enrollment as the "output" and holding it constant or forcing it to increase. Such an approach attempts to solve the problem of insufficient resources by reducing the number of faculty and staff and then increasing their workloads -- i.e., the number of courses they teach or the number of students per course, or the number of advisees or independent study students or postdoctoral students each remaining faculty must cover. Such an approach, for most of America's 3,500 colleges and universities, has more than run its course, and continuing to add to faculty and staff workload, while always possible, will increasingly bring commensurate or more than commensurate losses in higher education's real outputs of learning, research, and public service.

From these two assumptions follows the central thesis of this paper: that significant and sustainable productivity advances in higher education must be achieved through greater attention to the learner. Learning productivity relates the input of faculty and staff not to enrollments or to courses taught or to credit or classroom hours assigned, but to learning -- i.e., to the demonstrated mastery of a defined body of knowledge or skills. When the object of critical inquiry is learning and learners, rather than merely teaching and teachers, an enormous potential opens for increasing learning through reducing the student's time spent on activities other than learning, lessening the aimless drift of students through prolonged undergraduate years, and challenging each student up to his or her learning potential.

This is not to blame the student for the financial and reputational crises of American higher education or to deny the possibility of some additional productivity through the traditional means of further trimming administrative costs or limiting the number of very small classes or requiring a full measure of effort from every member of the faculty and staff. But it suggests that the principal productivity problem of higher education in America may lie neither in some presumed insufficiency of effort on the part of faculty, nor in some also presumed "bloat" of nonteaching staff, but rather in sub-optimal learning and less than fully engaged learners.

Learning is more productive when it masters a given body of knowledge or skills in less time and/or with less costly inputs. And learning that takes less time can cut not only the traditional costs carried by the institution, but the opportunity costs -- i.e., the foregone earnings -- borne by the student, who can enter the productive labor force faster with the degree in hand and begin making a truly substantive contribution to the nation's national product.
 
 

The perspective of learning productivity addresses four major problems of American higher education:

Financial Strains on Colleges and Universities. The fundamental financial problem of colleges and universities is less their per-student costs, which are admittedly high, but more the upward trajectory of these costs: that is, higher education's built-in inflationary engine. A major part of this cost pressure is attributable to the absence of sustainable productivity increases from the substitution of capital for labor, as is characteristic of most of the goods-producing sector of the economy. As higher education's principal cost is for labor, its unit costs, as in the service sector generally, tend to track wages and salaries -- which, in turn, tend to reflect the real growth of the economy and thus, in non-recession years, to exceed the rate of inflation.

A second contributor to higher education's cost trajectory is the powerful and ever present pressure for growth: for more programs, more courses in a given program, more opportunities for more students, more or better physical plant and equipment, and so forth. These pressures are legitimate. They reflect the needs of the economy and the imperative of social justice and expanded opportunities, as well as higher education's fierce meritocracy: always to do better and to grow in the esteem of colleagues, potential clients, and the general public.

At the same time, the revenue to meet these increased cost pressures comes over-whelmingly from only three sources: taxpayers, parents, and students. Each is seriously limited. All of the evidence of the 1980s, and thus far of the 1990s, is that tax funds will continue to be in short supply due to economic stagnation and tax resistance; and to the extent that there are increases in tax revenues, the queue of public claims upon them is long and compelling, including, e.g.: health care, environmental restoration, social services, housing and public infrastructure, not to mention federal deficit reduction. Thus, the likelihood of tax revenues, either federal or state, not merely keeping up with higher education's not inconsiderable inflation, but substantially increasing to cover the backlog of deferred maintenance and program restoration, to meet the higher levels of education and training required by a technologically complex society, and to meet the enrollment pressures of expanding higher educational opportunities, is slim. Similarly, parental revenues seem to have peaked, with "tuition resistance" setting in -- not to mention the decreasing relevance of parental revenues anyway to the growing numbers of older students or students from families with virtually no discretionary income. Finally, increased revenue from students, with debt loads and workloads already of national concern, will be difficult.

Except for a relatively small number of heavily-endowed and highly-selective private universities, the nation's public and private universities and colleges, absent some fundamental change in their way of doing business, would appear to be in for another decade of budget deficits, staff and program cuts, and deteriorating physical plants. The public policy concern is less the uncertain fates of these institutions, per se, than it is their diminishing capability to meet their state, regional, and local needs for increased enrollments, new academic programs, new contributions to technology and economic vitality, better work force preparation, and new public services. In this context, increased productivity of learning -- i.e., meeting our increasing need for student learning objectives with no more faculty and staff -- can be a key both to the continued financial viability of our colleges and universities and to their ability to meet society's increasing learning needs without commensurate real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) increases in resources.

Financial Strains on Parents and Students. The cost to parents and students of an undergraduate academic year in residence at a SUNY campus in 1992-93 is more than $9,000. The cost of a year in a SUNY medical school for a New York State resident is about $15,000-$17,000. Costs at private colleges, of course, are higher: $12,000-$20,000 is an average range, but annual undergraduate costs at the most expensive colleges and universities are as high as $25,000, and a year at an expensive private medical school can be $40,000.

The consequences of these costs are varied and partly anecdotal, but are worrisome:

The causes of these problems are many and complex, and some are rooted deep within our national pathologies of poverty, racism, family disintegration, and our seemingly diminished collective social conscience. But some of the inadequacies in secondary school preparation are reinforced by policies and actions stemming from higher education: specifically, unclearexpectations, inadequate standards, and insufficientrewards.

First, we must make our expectations upon students and high schools unmistakably clear. If math at least through high school algebra and through what is often termed "pre-calculus" is essential for success at the elementary levels of most college curricula, and can be learned by virtually all high school students who are well-motivated and well-taught, then colleges should say so, in unmistakable language, to high schools, school boards, parents, and students -- the latter when they are in the seventh or eighth grades and annually thereafter. Likewise with second languages. Likewise with the ability to write clear and correct English and with an experience in a laboratory science.

Second, we must reinforce the clarity of our expectations with meaningfully rigorous standards, both for entry to, and success in, collegiate work. These must appropriately vary by the individual college. But there must be standards, well-known, toward which young people in middle and high school can aspire and that are presumably not able to be attained (at least not by most) without serious study. Standards for college entry that can be met by high school students who leave school daily by 1 p.m. with no homework are no standards at all.

It is no longer acceptable to resist standards and expectations as "elitist" or "discriminatory." In fact, nothing is so deleterious to learning as low standards or unclear expectations, and one of the most pernicious forms of discrimination is the assumption, sometimes unconscious, that certain children cannot learn as much or as fast and should therefore be spared rigorous expectations. Of course, there must be massive additional public spending to redress the damage done by deteriorated schools and years of public neglect. Of course, we must spend, and otherwise do whatever it takes, to get good teachers and good equipment into our decaying inner-city and rural schools. Of course, there must be second and third chances and special programs for those who have been left behind. But none of these actions can succeed without clear expectations and meaningful standards that reflect the worth, dignity, and very considerable potential of all children.

Finally, there must be rewards for good learning. This need not be the kind of competitive prize reachable only by the talented and lucky few, but a payoff attainable to all who learn at or near their capacities. One such reward for rigorous learning at the secondary level (and including through the entire twelfth grade) would be the possibility of earning college credit. A major reward to such learning, aside from the satisfaction that should always accompany learning and aside from the cachet of being in an Advanced Placement class or being able to attend a college rather than a high school, is the ability to finish an associate degree or a baccalaureate degree that much sooner, and thus to begin a career or to get into (and out of) a graduate or advanced professional program that much sooner and with that much less debt -- or at that much less financial burden to one's parents.

Inadequate Learning in College. A final problem to which the concept of learning productivity brings some perspective and possible remedy is inadequate learning in college. The evidence is anecdotal and arguable, but widely believed. Too many students, it is alleged, are emerging after a degree, or less than a degree, actually knowing rather little and prepared for little in the way of productive employment. College may have been fun, and lots of maturation and out-of-classroom learning may (or may not) have taken place. But many employers, parents, and even graduates themselves question the amount of focused, purposeful learning that took place, at considerable expense to someone, during those supposedly "prime learning years."

Clearly and quite appropriately, learning will vary: by inherent intellectual ability, by preparedness, by motivation, by the skill and devotion of the professor, by the "fit" of learning style and teaching style, and by any number of other factors. The inadequacy in learning to which the concept of learning productivity brings a special perspective, though, is the inadequacy contributed to by insufficient time on task, or lack of concentration, whether at the hand (i.e., "fault") of the student, the professor, or the "system."

There is inadequate learning when a student finds his or her history or language course virtually duplicative of high school -- and who takes it anyway (and is allowed to do so) because it is an "easy ride." There is inadequate learning when a well-prepared and well-motivated student essentially completes the learning expected in the course by mid-semester and then coasts until the end.

Given a student's available time and willingness to learn, there is arguably a serious and pervasive inadequacy of learning when the academic year begins in early September, usually slowly, misses a few holidays, most of Thanksgiving week, a long Christmas-New Year break, a spring vacation, a couple of additional breaks and days off (including, for many students, most Fridays and all weekends), and then ends in early May for a three and one-half month summer break.

There is inadequate learning when students are reduced to filling their course rosters according to what is available or convenient rather than what is needed or even wanted. Learning is likewise inadequate when a student drops out to earn some money; or changes majors for the fourth time due to poor advising; or otherwise "drifts" in and out and through college with insufficiently clear and rigorous expectations or standards for progress toward his or her degree.

An important and hitherto insufficiently recognized part of the solution to the four problems listed above lies in a greater attention to the productivity of student learning. The learning productivity model is driven by ten assumptions, or propositions:

Self-paced mastery learning is clearly more appropriate, or is at least more easily conceptualized, for certain kinds of learning: basic language and mathematics, for example, or any learning that requires either rote memorization or the performance of an easily described and performed skill. Higher level learning -- complex syntheses of concepts or complex problem-solving in authentic human situations -- are far more difficult to stipulate, assess, and package for self-pacing. If the goal is more productive learning overall, rather than mastery or self-pacing for their own sake, it would be best to focus the self-pacing only on the kinds of learning objectives for which this pedagogy makes the most sense and not attempt to force those courses or learning goals that are too elusive or resistant.

It is only in the most recent years, with the most recent technologies of interactive personal computers, sophisticated software, and storable video, that educational technology has given us the capacity to replicate the individually-paced mastery learning of the personal tutor in a form that is potentially more efficient and more productive. Fisher claims that learning technology aggressively implemented could reduce by one-third the time it takes to master today's curriculum.⁵ Technology does not guarantee productivity; but coupled with changes in pedagogy, economies of scale, and a paradigm shift to individualized, self-paced mastery learning, technology can make greater learning productivity possible.⁶ (In-house corporate training programs, where mastery of content truly counts -- as does control of costs, including the opportunity cost of time away from the job -- provide an ideal context in which to test the theory of learning productivity without the constraints of educational ideology, tradition, and the other time-consuming tasks we expect of faculty in academic settings. Corporate "accelerated learning" demonstrates conclusively the potential of enhanced learning productivity.⁷) 

There will be some who will react with dismay and even anger at the notion that teaching and learning ought to be more productive, or "speeded up," or that the endless curricular experimentation and change of majors characteristic of the American undergraduate experience are anything other than intellectually idyllic. It is true that some learning needs to be slow, methodical, and even languorous. And it is a virtue of American higher education that students do have freedom to explore, to try some new fields, and to change their minds. But the perspective of learning productivity begins with the assumption that higher education must become more productive, somehow. And the cost of the extraordinary (and apparently increasing) degree of curricular "drift" and experimentation in American higher education is being borne either by future young people who will not have a place at all in American higher education because our colleges and universities will be full to overflowing, or by students who will incur even greater college debt at the same time that their slow pace of degree completion keeps them out of better-paying jobs. At the very least, we need a better balance between the goals of expeditious completion and greater productivity, and the intellectual virtues of intellectual exploration and the endlessly-open academic door.

Learning productivity is more a perspective than a program. Yet there are concrete, practical steps that can be taken by a college or university or system wanting to increase the productivity of its student learning. Like most reforms in higher education, the likelihood of success will be expanded as:

Obvious challenges of quality control and integration of learning objectives must also be met. But the goal should be a substantially strengthened secondary school curriculum, a greater incentive to rigorous learning, especially during the high school senior year, more productive use of the student's time, and some relief to the currently overloaded introductory classes in the collegiate freshman year.

A virtue to this element is that it should be done anyway, for obvious reasons of good pedagogy, and is a task on which many colleges and individual faculty members are well advanced. If the attempt at enhanced learning productivity gives impetus to this goal, and yet otherwise fails to reduce significantly the costs per student or per graduate, there will nevertheless have been an almost certain increase in the quality of teaching and learning.

If the teaching portion of the semester's workload cannot be expressed merely as, e.g., three courses, eighteen advisees, and the preparation of a new course for the following semester, how should it be expressed? If the academic year is to be virtually year-round, how are faculty to be compensated for the summers they will no longer have for their research or travel or extra teaching -- which may be a regular and expected supplement to their salaries? How can the faculty member be rewarded for increasing, on average, the pace of students' learning -- while continuing to be held accountable, as always, for the quality of learning and the integrity of the degree? William Prokasy writes that the new pedagogy ". . . will reshape operating policies and procedures, resource allocation, distribution of faculty time, and the role of a curriculum . . . . [Among other things,] governing boards and institutions will have to abandon the classroom hour definition of instructional responsibility if we are to take advantage of our new technology."¹¹

These are issues and details that can only be worked out with strong leadership and perhaps some risk-taking from academic administrators and faculty and, where they exist, from faculty unions. There would seem to be no question, however, but that a new pattern of teaching and learning is possible, with year-round instruction, a combination of self-paced individualized instruction and traditional courses, incentives for the student to accelerate as much learning as is possible, an abundant use of educational technology and new pedagogy, and new ways of assigning and accounting for faculty time. The challenge will be to hold onto the public and private resources being invested now in higher education, while building faculty allegiance to these considerable changes and a consumer (parent and student) demand for the new and more efficient learning styles. Failure to do so may further erode both the public (i.e., taxpayers) and private (i.e., tuition payers) sources of revenue before the new learning productivity can take hold and demonstrate its benefits.

In order for student and family financial incentives to work for rather than against accelerated learning:

Proposals for time-shortened degrees and related forms of more productive learning have been around for at least 30 years. They enjoyed a great flurry of attention in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a movement both reflected, and contributed to, by the influential Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. In its 1971 report, Less Time, More Options, the Commission recommended "that the time to get a degree be shortened by one year to the B.A. and by one or two more years to the Ph.D. and to M.D. practice."¹² In its 1972 report, The More Effective Use of Resources, the Commission translated its recommendation to an estimate of potential savings:

For a variety of reasons, nearly all of these (and many other) programs failed to take hold and were either abandoned altogether (sometimes when the facilitating foundation grant ran out), or were relegated to small and generally isolated programs with a few creative faculty and a handful of highly-motivated students, often retaining the original aura of innovation and individualization, but no longer connected in any significant way to the goal of greater productivity or even, necessarily, to the time-shortened degree. Neither students nor parents, it turned out, were all that interested in graduating early -- at least not sufficiently interested to accept year-round study.¹⁵ Many institutions found that costs increased; public institutions discovered state funding formulas or other rules and regulations that were too resistent to change and to flexibility.¹⁶ Most faculty, understandably, were unenthusiastic to begin any "experiment" the purpose of which was to enable either the institution or the nation to get by with fewer of their professional colleagues. In the final analysis, experiments aimed at shortening the time to the degree suffered either from a lack of sustained consumer demand, a lack of internal agreement on the goals of the experiment (and thus on any way to judge "success" or "failure"), or simply from the absence of any convincing demonstration that some generally agreed upon goals were being met.

Much more recently, the "three-year baccalaureate" has re-emerged as a fancy in the eyes of journalists and editorial writers, stimulated by the provocative musings of Oberlin's President Frederick Starr¹⁷ and Stanford's President Gerhard Casper.¹⁸ The most substantive and comprehensive recommendations were released in November 1992 by the Virginia Council of Higher Education. The Virginia Council's study and recommendations stemmed from related state legislative mandates to study: (1) the potential for increasing college-level and college-credit work in high school, (2) the barriers to timely college graduation, and (3) the feasibility of a three-year baccalaureate. The study and recommendations, reflecting much the same concerns and thinking that has been animating the staff of the Central Administration of the State University of New York, urged attention to required course availability, expansion of summer offerings, better advising, more rigorous entry standards at the baccalaureate degree campuses, more efficient articulation between community colleges and senior colleges, and the expanded use of technology.¹⁹ With regard to the expansion of college-level courses in high school, for example, the Virginia Council concluded ". . . that it is now possible for a student to complete virtually any 120-credit college degree program in three years by taking advantage of the programs . . . that grant both high school and college credits for courses taken in high school."²⁰

It would seem, then, that attention may in the 1990s once again be turning to some of these familiar themes of year-round calendars, three-year baccalaureates, and other elements of what this paper has described as learning productivity. But no major traditional college or university has yet made the all-out commitment that would be necessary to yield measurable and sustainable advances in learning productivity -- defined as more learning for the same costs, or equal learning for less cost.

As the State University of New York contemplates a future in which the demand for places is certain to grow and the state and tuition-generated resources likely to be stable, at least in inflation-adjusted dollars, the case grows strong for a fresh look at enhanced learning productivity, through fundamental and collaborative changes in the way we teach and our students learn.
 
 

1. Data from State University of New York Office of Financial Aid Services.

2. "Endowing Penn Med Tuition." Almanac, University of Pennsylvania, January 19, 1993.

3. State University of New York Office of Planning and Policy Analysis.

4. United States Department of Education data as reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac, August 26, 1992, p. 28.

5. Francis Dummer Fisher, "Higher Education Circa 2005: More Higher Learning, But Less College." Change, January/February 1987, p. 43.

6. See Carol A. Twig, "Improving Productivity in Higher Education: The Need for a Paradigm Shift." Saratoga Springs, New York: Empire State College, 1992.

7. See Jack E. Bowsher, Educating America: Lessons Learned in the Nation's Corporations. New York: John Wiley, 1989.

8. See David C. Montgomery, "The Encouragement of Summer Enrollment." College and University, Summer 1982, pp. 353-364; and Clarence A. Schoenfeld with Donald Zillman, "Summer Term Problems and Prospects." Journal of Higher Education, October 1967, pp. 401-403.

9. The College Board, AP Year Book 1992-93. New York: The College Board, 1992, p. 23.

10. For an excellent and very recent discussion of college-level learning during the high school years see the Virginia Council on Higher Education, The Continuum of Education. Richmond: Commonwealth of Virginia Council of Higher Education, November 10, 1992.

11. William F. Prokasy, "The New Pedagogy: An Essay on Policy and Procedural Implications." Innovative Higher Education, Spring/Summer 1991, pp. 109 and 111. See also Bruce M. Bradbury, "Administering Innovative Academic Credit." College and University, Summer 1982, pp. 371-406.

12. The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, Less Time, More Options: Education Beyond the High School. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1971, p. 15.

13. The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, The More Effective Use of Resources. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1972, p. 53.

14. Ibid., pp. 50-52.

15. See Montgomery, op.cit.; and Schoenfeld, op.cit.

16. See Bradbury, op.cit.

17. S. Frederick Starr, "Tuition Relief for the Middle Class: Three-Year College Programs for Undergraduates." New York Times, October 6, 1992, Op Ed Page. See also Starr, "The Three-Year B.A. Degree at Oberlin." Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College, February 22, 1993.

18. Gerhard Casper, "Puzzles of Higher Education." Remarks delivered at 1993 Outlook Conference of The Bay Area Council, Stanford University, 1993.

19. Virginia Council on Higher Education, op.cit.

20. Ibid., p. 2.
 
 

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_____, The More Effective Use of Resources. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1972.

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