Sexy bedside reading for the Canadian higher ed professional

When I was an over-confident youngster destined for greatness, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine my bedside reading would include a title like SEM in Canada: Promoting student and institutional success in Canadian colleges and universities.  And yet, here I am, transfixed by chapters on “Evidence-based Decision Making” and “Branding: The Promise, The Process and The Pay Off”. I know many of you think I’m joking – and my image would be best preserved if I let you continue thinking I’m more interesting than I really am – but the truth is I’m being quite honest. This 350-page book on the nuts and bolts of getting students in the door and successfully out the other end – otherwise known as Strategic Enrolment Management – is actually pretty engaging. It might not be the next Girl With the Dragon Tatoo but it’s accessible, cogent and instructive. If your job – or your next job – has anything to do with helping students get to the right program, in the right school for them, with the right supports to help them be successful, and understanding how all of the pieces fit together, you will learn something in these pages.

SEM in Canada was edited by Susan Gottheil of the University of Manitoba and Clayton Smith of the University of Windsor, two people with extensive experience in helping institutions align their processes to meet their enrolment goals. Almost 30 different Canadian higher education professionals have contributed their time and expertise giving the book both breadth and credibility. Smith and Gottheil lead the way with an overview of the SEM model which, put simply, means lining up your institution’s resources, infrastructure, staffing and data to support its academic goals. Sounds easy but it’s not. True SEM requires cohesion between multiple departments in a large institution — marketing, recruitment, admissions, financial aid, student affairs, teaching and learning, institutional research and registration. It requires constant monitoring with accurate and timely data, and vigilance in constantly tweaking and prodding to get the system to work. Behind each component is a complex array of choices and strategies: how can merit-based financial aid shape enrolment? How can we identify and retain students at risk of failure? The book is peppered with case studies that illustrate precisely how some institutions have used these levers to meet their goals — whether that be internationalizing their campus, or transforming from college to university.

Strategic Enrolment Management is not without its critics. The approach emerged from the US so is automatically treated with suspicion. But like most American higher education innovations, they translate quite well with a few adaptations to the Canadian context. Critics also charge that SEM proponents overly commodify higher education and manipulate the admissions process to create conditions of exclusivity. But SEM can also be employed to diversify, to recruit and retain students from underrepresented groups, to enhance access and retention, and to ensure students’ expectations are met. And this book focuses on the more socially responsible, egalitarian (dare I say “Canadian”) approach to SEM while recognizing that there is a competitive element to higher education in Canada and there are resource implications to every student gained and lost.

Having done one thorough read, I now keep SEM in Canada nearby for reference. It seems to come in handy on a pretty regular basis. A warning: SEM in Canada is not cheap or easy to find. It is published by AACRAO (the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers) and can be ordered online for $77 for non-members.

Re-emphasizing undergraduate education: New book sets out solutions

Out here in Ontario, there’s a fair amount of buzz generating over the release of Academic Reform: Policy Options for Improving the Quality and Cost-effectiveness of Undergraduate Education in Ontario, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. The book is a follow up to Academic Transformation (reviewed on CACUSS Reads last February), which provided a detailed account of why the research university as the singular model for the delivery of undergraduate education, is unsustainable. Academic Reform is written by three heavyweights in higher education: former Carleton President Richard Van Loon,  Professor at U of T’s School of Public Policy Ian Clark and consultant and former Assistant Deputy Minister for post-secondary education in Ontario David Trick. Before the book has even been published, it’s clear their ideas are being listened to: Ontario’s recently re-elected Liberal government has promised to open three new undergraduate campuses, a model proposed by the authors of this book.

I haven’t yet read the book but just wanted to note its existence as it appears to be influencing policy. If anyone would like to provide a review to CACUSS Reads, let me know.

Enter the “BA Lite”: a review of Lowering Higher Education

Lowering Higher Education: The rise of corporate universities and the fall of liberal education

By James E. Coté and Anton Allahar

Among the books reviewed at this year’s Open Book Session as part of the annual conference of the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services were several that painted a rather grim picture of North American higher education. Academically Adrift – making waves in both the U.S. and Canada – has been described as a “damning indictment.”  DIY U argues that the crisis in American higher ed will lead young people to use the ample resources of the web to fill in the gaps left by institutions that simply can’t deliver the experience students expect.

Lowering Higher Education provides the Canadian variation on this ubiquitous theme of declining quality. Authors Coté and Allahar, professors at the University of Western Ontario, gained some notoriety a few years back with their critique of the university system: Ivory Tower Blues. (See CACUSS Reads review.)  Though they had a strong thesis based on both data and teaching experience with their original work, it stank of cynicism.  In Lowering Higher Education, they have not only strengthened their arguments, but they come across as far more concerned than caustic, constructive than cranky.

Here’s the essential argument: historically, people with university degrees earn higher incomes. Other people noticed. They wanted in. And we let them in. The system grew to accommodate increasing numbers of young people, offering the promise of a lucrative career. And instead of delivering education – intellectual enlightenment with the lofty purpose of creating an educated citizenry – universities started delivering something more like training. Because that’s what corporations, parents, governments and even students want.

And then the vicious circle began. More students = declining quality = lack of engagement. Here’s where we get what Coté and Allahar call the “disengagement compact” – that tacit, mutual understanding between professor and student that neither really is really sure why they’re there, neither are adequately prepared for their roles and neither really wants to work as hard as they should to succeed.  Nowhere is this more acute than in the liberal arts, where the return on investment for students is most elusive.

Student affairs pracitioners will be most interested in the fifth chapter – dedicated to the question of whether student disengagement is inevitable.  Here the authors systematically examine every argument ever put forth to refute the fact that vast swaths of the undergraduate population are tuned out.  The excuse “students have busy lives” (commonly used in our field) is thrown back in our faces. Handing out credentials to students from disadvantaged backgrounds without expecting a deep level of engagement in the process does them a disservice, they argue. Good point.

Coté and Allahar perform some very interesting analysis using data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to determine whether disengagement is by necessity or by choice. While I think there are some basic flaws in their argument (engagement is solely defined as the amount of time spent studying and preparing for class – a limited view IMHO), they do a great job of debunking some very common myths about what is absorbing students’ time. And they come back to the central thesis: time isn’t the problem. Institutional culture is.

Their final two chapters are dedicated to solutions, the first providing an extremely well-balanced answer to the question of whether technology will save the day (answer: not to the degree that ed-tech evangelists purport) and the final to a laundry list of recommendations that seem overwhelming and, frankly, unfeasible in today’s political climate.

I am probably one of few nerds who read Lower Higher Education cover to cover.  It is not nearly as entertaining as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But all serious student affairs practitioners need to concern themselves with the issues raised here. The tension between access and quality is like a rubber band stretched too far. It will break: either students will get wise and begin to walk away (check out the Uncollege movement in the U.S.) or governments will make a dramatic turnabout in policy.

– Deanne Fisher

on Twitter: @deannefisher

The Big Reveal: my reading list for Open Book IIX

For the eighth year, my colleagues and I will present the Open Book: Recent Literature in Student Affairs panel at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS) in June. So, in hopes of getting some CACUSS members to read along and contribute to the discussion, I’m sharing my reading list here.

Why leadership in higher education is like driving a nail through blancmange

A review of:
Turnaround Leadership for Higher Education
by Michael Fullan & Geoff Scott, Jossey-Bass, 2009

I have spent the better part of the last decade trying to understand, from the inside, what makes institutions of higher education change. We all purport to be in the midst of it – change, that is – with strategic visions and plans that call for us to “build on our strengths”  or “define our dreams.”  Let me guess, your institution’s plan says something about…increasing enrolment/graduate enrolment/international enrolment, improving your profile/reputation regionally/nationally/internationally, probably talks about some “pillars” and sets a lofty goal around “improving the overall student experience”, the part that gets us student affairs types all giddy.

And yet, despite all the effort – townhall meetings and consultation sessions, green papers and white papers, beautifully designed strategic plan websites and glossy brochures ­– the returns on investment are often ambiguous, marginal or incremental, and rarely transformative.

Bring on the growing pains

The book, as the representation of a significant body of thought, of research or of practice, still holds a place of honour in our society and in the field of student services. And so it was with great glee that many of us heralded the arrival of what is arguably the first ever book on the practice of student services in Canada. Achieving Student Success: Effective student services in Canadian higher education, edited by Donna Hardy-Cox and Carney Strange, was years in the making and an easy choice for my selection for the 2010 Open Book session at CACUSS 2010.

Gearing up for the “best of” Open Book session at CACUSS 2010

For colleagues attending the 2010 CACUSS Conference in Edmonton June 19-23, please consider attending the Open Book session (Tuesday, June 22, 9 am) where you’re sure to be engaged by our stellar panel of reviewers talking about the books that have most influenced their careers.

Join David Newman (president of SASA), Bruce Belbin (president-elect of CACUSS), Dave Hannah (a past president of CACUSS), Tim Rahilly (CACUSS board member) and me for our “best of” edition of Open Book. While books are the focus, the value is really in the discussion of ideas that have shaped our field, that inform our everyday practice (whether we know it or not) and will present challenges for us in the future.

See you there!

– Deanne Fisher.

Nerds unite: how the forces of anti-intellectualism are ruining the university

More Money than Brains: Why schools suck, college is crap & idiots think they’re right
By Laura Penny

Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’re a nerd. Or at least have nerd-like tendencies. You work in higher education and you like reading books. Or at least reading other people’s pithy summaries of books so you can sound well-read.

And chances are you’ve experienced moments of doubt – subtle self-deprecating voices that ask you whether what you do really has any value? If you advise, teach or coach students in a university setting, you work in the service of intellectual advancement, which, these days, is pitted against the powerful force of pragmatism, and losing.

Post-secondary in peril: why higher ed in Ontario is stuck in the past

Academic Transformation: The forces reshaping higher education in Ontario

Ian D. Clark, Greg Moran, Michael L. Skolnik, David Trick

For the past six years, my beloved institution has been working toward enhancing the undergraduate student experience as its primary objective under the academic planning framework. A couple of weeks ago, I asked a room of about 40 relatively engaged students (residence dons) what they thought the top priority for the University has been. “Increasing graduate enrolment?” Nope. Though that is a newly established objective. “International student recruitment?” A priority, yes. But not the top one. “Research excellence?”  It took about ten tries.

This just in: new Canadian(!) book on student services

I have just learned that the long-awaited book on student services in Canada, by Donna Hardy Cox and Carney Strange, is due out February 15, 2010 from McGill-Queen’s University Press.  Achieving Student Success: Effective Student Services in Canadian Higher Education is book-ended by chapters from Hardy Cox and Strange but also includes chapters on everything from enrolment management, to residence life, judicial affairs and student service management, written by CACUSS colleagues from across the country.

You can pre-order it now online at McGill-Queen’s University Press (paper or cloth). Hoping many of you will do so and read in time for CACUSS 2010 in Edmonton.

– D.F.

Write new blog post. Check!

I am reading Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by management consultant David Allen. I have only read one-third of the book. I want to finish the book. I want to finish the book because I want to write a review on my blog about it. Applying Allen’s method, here’s how I proceed:

1. Collect things that command my attention. Writing a blog post is one of many things — including getting new glasses, developing a student survey and preparing the 2010-11 budget for my department –commanding my attention right now. I collect them all in a little application called NoteBook. But you could use any “bucket” to collect all your stuff — as long as it’s all in one place.

Working horizontally in a vertical culture

Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration:
A guide for campus leaders
Adrianna L. Kezar & Jaime Lester
Published by Jossey-Bass: A Wiley Imprint. 2009.

If you are interested in improving student learning and engagement on your campus, then you have probably deduced that collaboration is, at least to some degree, the key to success. It inspires innovation, leads to better service, motivates staff, and can even decrease costs. So if collaboration is such a compelling solution to our woes, why, then, is it so difficult to achieve? Adrianna Kezar and Jaime Lester provide some of the answers by studying, in great depth, the organizational culture of institutions that demonstrate a high level of collaboration.

Welcome (again) to CACUSS Reads

The sixth installment of Open Book – a annual panel discussion on recent literature in student affairs – has just come to a close. Thanks to Tim Rahilly, Margot Bell and Bruce Belbin for sharing their thoughts on such a wide range of topics. If you didn’t get a copy of it at the session (or you didn’t attend the session!) you can download our 2009booklist.

For those of you new to the blog, please contribute. Any visitor can comment on one of the reviews. Just hit the “Leave a comment” link at the bottom of any article.

If you’d like to contribute a full review, you have two options: 1. send it to me and I’ll post it for you or 2. send me an email requesting a “contributor” account and I’ll set you up so you can post. (If you are new to WordPress, you will find it quite easy to use – fun really.)

I’ll keep posting reviews throughout the year – and look forward to seeing you all in Edmonton for Open Book VII!

- Deanne.

Sneak peak at Open Book VI

The annual CACUSS conference is only a week away and my fellow panelists and I are frantically reading away in preparation for sixth annual installment of the Open Book session. Our complete list of recommended (or not!) recent student affairs titles will be available at the session (Wednesday, June 17, 11 am) but in case you need a bit more enticing to come see us — or you want to read ahead and contribute your own thoughts — here are a few of the books we’re reading:

Apparently, the kids are more than alright

A few months ago, I posted a short review of Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation, a provocatively titled tirade about his profound disappointment with the so-called digital natives – those born with the advantage of information at their fingertips – and their seemingly narcissistic, celebrity-obsessed, self-indulgent ways.

Now comes the antidote: Grown Up Digital: How the net generation is changing your world by Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics, and adjunct professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Where Bauerlein sees unhealthy addiction to gaming, Tapscott sees new forms of global collaboration. While Bauerlein laments the loss of literature as a popular pastime, Tapscott revels in the development of new reading skills – non-linear reading that requires sorting and synthesis. In other words, where one sees the end of civilization as we know it, the other sees salvation.

Learning to “dance through complexity”

Admittedly, I’m finding it a bit of a stretch to include The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking (2007, Harvard Business School Press) in a blog dedicated to recent literature in student affairs. But author Roger Martin is one of the keynote speakers at this year’s CACUSS Conference so I thought it fitting that I give his book a read in anticipation of the wisdom he might share with us in Waterloo in June.

Is technology fostering a “generational cocoon”?

Last March, I was involved in the planning of a musical event on our campus to mark the UN Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. We had lined up some students to do the introductions to the day’s performances. A few minutes before showtime, I handed one of the volunteers the text on the background for the day he was to incorporate into his intro. He quickly reviewed it aloud and stopped at the word “apartheid”, stared at it for a moment, and asked, “How do I pronounce this word?” I told him and he dutifully practiced it a couple of times, as if it were his first encounter with the term.

I had a “How can this be?” moment but quickly wrote it off to a range of possible reasonable explanations: a learning disability, nerves, familiarity with the concept but just not the word in written form. He executed his duties smoothly and I applauded his commitment to the issues.

What the student affairs professional learned about marketing

Perhaps I have succumbed to the dark side. At a recent trip to the local bookstore, I found myself lured toward the business section, that mysterious zone beyond the computer manuals. I ventured there thinking I might find something practical about using new media – aka Web 2.0, aka Social Media, aka the LiveWeb – to engage students in the life of the University. (Yes, I am aware of the irony of going to a bookstore to learn about the internet.) What I found was Denise Shiffman’s The Age of Engage: Reinventing Marketing for Today’s Connected, Collaborative, and Hyperinteractive Culture, a book that I have found immensely useful in rethinking how we communicate with students.

Towards a shared understanding of “assessment”

Assessment Reconsidered: Institutional Effectiveness for Student Success
By Richard P. Keeling, Andrew F. wall, Ric Underhile, Gwendolyn J. Dungy
Published by the International Center for Student Success and Institutional Accountability

Reviewed by Deanne Fisher, University of Toronto

This pithy little publication follows up where the influential Learning Reconsidered and Learning Reconsidered II left off — that is, now that we understand learning, how do we assess how and where it happens? The authors are careful to establish that Assessment Reconsidered is not a how-to manual. So, for those of you who are sold on the importance of assessment and looking for the step-by-step guide to implementing your plan, this book will not meet your needs. However, if you are looking for a thorough, yet succinct, explanation of the fundamentals of assessment in higher education that you can share with colleagues, faculty, and upper levels of your administration, Assessment Reconsidered is ideal.

Two engaging critiques of the state of higher education

These two books were reviewed last year (CACUSS 2007) but, I think, warrant re-posting here.

Ivory Tower Blues
A university system in crisis
By James E. Côté and Anton L. Allahar
University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo, London: 2007

Our Underachieving Colleges
A candid look at how much students learn and why they should be learning more
By Derek Bok
Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ: 2006

– reviewed by Deanne Fisher, University of Toronto

These books — one Canadian, one American — offer student affairs practitioners a big picture view of what’s happening in undergraduate education broadly.

James Côté and Anton Allahar, two faculty members in the Department of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario, have been garnering a fair amount of attention for their scathing critique of Canada’s university system. Ivory Tower Blues is based largely on the authors’ 25-plus years (each) of teaching experience during which they say they have witnessed “hopes shattered with increasing frequency, in the daily grind of the university system and in the harsh reality of the job market afterwards.”