UF author: universities should transform themselves for 21st century

August 1, 2005

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — American universities should reinvent themselves to better meet the demands of the 21st century, says a University of Florida researcher.

“The biggest problem is we’re shortchanging our undergraduate students,” said John Scanzoni, a UF sociology professor. ‘We take their money and we couldn’t operate the universities without them, but we really don’t give them their money’s worth.”

In a new book titled “Universities as if Students Mattered: Social Science on the Creative Edge,” published this month by Rowman and Littlefield, Scanzoni urges a major overhaul in higher education, advocating a “Learn Grant Act” for the 21st century in the tradition of the 19th century Land Grant Act, which helped make the college experience accessible for the first time to millions of middle-class Americans.

The undergraduate teaching method of professors lecturing and students being tested on their ability to recall what they were told does not educate students on how to think well and solve problems, a complaint often voiced by employers, he said.

Instead, Scanzoni calls for replacing the idea of the “sage-on-the-stage” guru who transmits information to passive students in the “ingestion and regurgitation” style of teaching with an approach that helps students become active, self-directed learners.

“Telling students about facts, figures, persons, dates and ideas no longer ought to be the definitive objective of an undergraduate education, because just knowing a lot of stuff is woefully inadequate for the complexities of the 21st century,” he said. “In this new ‘information age,’ students require the ability to create knowledge instead of simply absorbing it.”

Because anyone with a computer can use “Google” or some other search engine to instantly access information on a wide variety of subjects, “this makes the skills of analysis, evaluation and synthesis the foundation for a good education, which would allow students to think rigorously, reason in a compelling fashion and solve problems,” Scanzoni said.

To accomplish this, Scanzoni recommends the undergraduate experience be devoted to designing and sometimes implementing “action research” aimed at helping to solve pressing social issues. One function of the social sciences in the early 20th century universities was to try to alleviate horrific conditions confronting European immigrants and rural Americans migrating to big cities. Over the years, though, the social sciences gradually abdicated its role in improving human lives as the gulf between basic and applied research widened, he said.

Today, unlike the life sciences, for example, the social sciences in higher education have become barely visible to society at large, and perhaps even irrelevant, Scanzoni said. An example of this shift is how President Lyndon Johnson actively sought the advice of social scientists in formulating his 1960s Great Society programs, while such experts were virtually ignored when federal welfare policies were changed in 1996, he said.

“During the late 1960s, social scientists held a seat at the table of public policy, and debated with reformers, analysts and officials how to blend research with human betterment,” he said. “By contrast, today’s social scientists have, for all practical purposes, been relegated to the outer lobbies of Congress alongside the tourists.”

An example of a social problem undergraduates could address might be suggesting ways to help move poverty-stricken mothers from economic dependency to self-sufficiency, he said. In his undergraduate classes, Scanzoni identifies a social issue, such as the gap in men’s and women’s earnings, and requires students to write papers explaining why it exists and to devise ways public policies could be changed to minimize it.

Undergraduate students today are less likely to have an opportunity for hands-on learning because more and more professors lack time to give anything but standardized lectures with multiple choice tests, Scanzoni said. Drastic cuts in legislative funding for education throughout recent decades have forced professors to “hustle” various public and private agencies for research money, making them more like independent contractors or entrepreneurs than state employees, he said.

“In the past, if students felt their state’s flagship research university placed too much emphasis on research, they could attend one of its comprehensive universities or its four-year public colleges, but reductions in state funding have now also forced these institutions to jump into the race for external research dollars,” he said.

But Scanzoni believes universities must find ways to make changes in the way they teach students. “We educate the great bulk of all undergraduates in this country,” he said.

Deborah DeZure, director of faculty and organizational development at Michigan State University, said Scanzoni’s “provocative vision for social science is sure to jump-start conversation among social scientists as they grapple with their role in the 21st century.”