Campaign for the Future of Higher Education

By John Hess, English

SPRING 13

The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education, which held its second national meeting at UMass Boston in November 2011, will be holding its fifth national meeting in Columbus, Ohio, May 15-17.   The CFHE has been very active since the 2011 meeting here and continues to grow. 

The mission of this campaign is to ensure that affordable quality education is accessible to all sectors of our society in the coming decades during this time of great change in higher education.  The CFHE seeks to reframe the current debate to focus on quality higher education as an essential right for our democracy and ensure that faculty, students, and communities have a voice to ensure that changes —in emphasis, curriculum, pricing, and structure—are good for our students and the quality of education they receive.

The CFHE established a “think tank,” the Centre for the Future of Higher Education, and the Center has published several research reports on crucially important issues in higher education. Reports including: “Closing Door, Increasing Gap: Who’s not going to (community) college?” and “Who is Professor ‘Staff’ and how can this person teach so many classes?” are available on the website.

A representative of the FSU will likely be attending the May national meeting in Columbus and will report on it in the next issue of the newsletter.  In the meantime, please visit: http://futureofhighered.org/. 

Campaign for the Future of Higher Education Principles

1. Higher education in the 21st century must be inclusive; it should be available to and affordable for all who can benefit from and want a college education.

2.The curriculum for a quality 21st century higher education must be broad and diverse.

3. Quality higher education in the 21st century will require a sufficient investment in excellent faculty who have the academic freedom, terms of employment and institutional support needed to do state-of-the-art work.

4. Quality higher education in the 21st century should incorporate technology in ways that expand opportunity and maintain quality.

5. Quality education in the 21st century will require the pursuit of real efficiencies and the avoidance of false economies.

6. Quality higher education in the 21st century will require substantially more public investment over current levels.

7. Quality higher education in the 21st century cannot be measured by a standardized, simplistic set of metrics.