Public and Institutional Calls for More Experiential Learning 51

The publication of recent works such as Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, Andrew Delbanco’s College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, Richard P. Keeling and Richard H. Hersch’s We’re Losing Our Minds:

Rethinking American Higher Education, and Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus’s Higher Education: How Colleges are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It call for more assessment, accountability, and oversight of university programs. Richard Keeling and Richard Hersch contend, “American college graduates aren’t adequately prepared for work” (2). Statements of this sort are commonplace in public conversations, but they are general and subjective, giving little credence to the efforts of innovative and engaged professors and their hardworking students. Yet at the same time, these critiques offer interesting questions for administrators and professors about what students need from their course work and college experiences that will better prepare graduates for their professional lives. In addition, these conversations prompt questions about what kinds of learning experiences best serve today’s students as well as how to demonstrate to students, parents, legislators, employers, and the public at large the excellent learning opportunities currently available and offered to college students.

Employers’ opinions regarding the lack of preparedness of college students for the workforce are outlined very clearly in the two reports prepared by Hart Research Associates for AACU, which were introduced earlier in this project. The 2010 report specifically asserts:

Only one in four employers thinks that two-year and four-year colleges are doing a good job in preparing students for the challenges of the global economy. A majority of

improvements to prepare students for the global economy, including one in five who thinks that significant changes are needed. (1)

In other words, the employers represented in the 2010 Hart report contend that current college curricula does not adequately serve the needs of students or their future employers. The Hart reports reveal narratives that explicitly call for more experiential learning experiences, including internships and work-based learning initiatives at the college level. With eighty-one percent (81%) of employers surveyed seeing internships and community-based projects as effective ways to connect classroom learning to workplace application, there are opportunities for more

experiential learning initiatives (Hart, Raising the Bar 8). The issue is not just to find the places for students to engage but the need for program directors to identify more places in the

communities where colleges and universities reside. The bigger concern in my mind is how program directors will rethink the important and effective traditions of classroom learning while moving students beyond college campuses. The opportunities created by internship programs for scholars are exciting as they allow for the development of new pedagogies, research models, and assessment practices that show the value of these initiatives.

The public call for more internships resulted in strong institutional support across the field of higher education. The editor of Peer Review, Shelley Johnson Carey, reports that sixty- two (62%) percent of AACU member institutions increased internship program emphasis in the years 2004 to 2009. She also specifically states that a recent AACU commissioned report reveals that “faculty-evaluated internships ranked highest among a list of assessment practices in which business leaders recommend that colleges and universities invest scarce resources” (Carey).

Duane Roen, Assistant Vice Provost for University Academic Success Programs and Professor of English at Arizona State University, believes “Every student should do an internship

while in college” (Roen). In 2011, he oversaw four degree programs that all encouraged

participation in internships. While Professor Roen and others teaching in rhetoric & composition, creative writing, and literary studies programs may be able to draw direct lines from their

academic areas to careers that utilize the skills and education gained through these degree programs, it is generally understood that English and the humanities are not “professional” degree programs that necessarily provide training leading to specific professions.

These discussions have also shaped a national, presidential agenda. President Obama’s “The American Graduation Initiative: Stronger American Skills Through Community Colleges,” seeks to increase access to higher education, largely through increased access to community colleges. His program’s primary goal is to “reform our community colleges so that they provide Americans of all ages a chance to learn the skills and knowledge necessary to compete for the jobs of the future” (The White House). While it should, and hopefully will, provide more access to needed education for American citizens, an important narrative accompanying the program is the promise for employment with higher wages. This could be problematic if students are not meeting employers’ demands for job readiness—possession of the kinds of skills and

experiences outlined in the Hart Research Associates reports. Underpinning this narrative is a second message that questions the effectiveness of college teaching practices. “College

Scorecard,” through the US Department of Education’s College Affordability and Transparency Center, responds to this concern by working to assess the effectiveness and value of individual colleges and universities based upon criteria such as costs, graduation rate, loan default rate, median borrowing, and employment. While the assessment of college quality based upon employment rates and salaries upon graduation is upsetting to many in higher education, clearly there is a call for more of a direct connection between college degrees and careers (Collins,

Jenkins, Strzelicka 3). Internships may provide bridges for many students, especially English majors, to find satisfying careers that allow them to apply the skills learned in their academic programs.