On Friday, I spent much of the day at a retreat on improving General Education at Penn State. The day was a great opportunity to share thoughts about this important part of teaching and learning. I came away from the day with four thoughts. The first one was on themes.

This one is on the idea to implement General Education through a college.  I draw on Abraham Maslow’s comment from 1996: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

Administration: There was much discussion on Friday about the need to create an administrative structure, a college, and/or a faculty to deliver General Education.  This may be part of a solution, but I think we should proceed cautiously.

I believe the issue is not structure, but process. No one has been assigned the responsibility for caring for General Education or accountability for its quality. I see deep connections between my field of health policy and our General Education discussions. Throughout much of the 20th century we assumed that there was no need to assign responsibility or accountability in health care, because doctors, as autonomous health professionals, guided patients to quality care.

Similarly, we assumed that faculty, as autonomous education professionals, would guide students to quality learning in General Education. As our health care research showed in the epic Institute of Medicine reports on the quality of health care, however, the assumption that independent physicians could create systematic quality, if ever true, was no longer the case.  One solution, of course, is to create new bureaucratic structures that are given responsibility for the task and assign them accountability for the work.

Rather than assume that the only tool, however, is creating a new administrative structure, I hope that we’ll be creative and innovative in our approach. Creation of a new college seems to me to be a very 19th century solution in this 21st century world.  It’s not that a college might not be one way of building a new General Education. It’s simply that we know one thing the college hammer will do–drain resources away from students and teaching and learning.

We know this because one of the most important problems plaguing education today is an excess of administration. Administrative bloat–partly because of increasing regulatory approaches, but also because universities tend to approach every problem by creating new bureaucratic structures–has drained resources from the teaching and learning of students. Over the last 15 years at Penn State, administrative costs per student have risen almost 71%, while instructional dollars per student have risen under 6%. Draining additional resources from teaching and learning by creating new and costly administrative structures may not be the best way to improve General Education or a Penn State education.  Whatever General Education approach we take, I hope it focuses on driving resources back down into the classroom and away from administration.

I also hope we’ll be daring and innovative.  So, I’ll throw a few pieces of spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. Take all the resources you are thinking about throwing into all the administration associated with a General Education College, and make it available as a GenEd X-Prize. Faculty compete for pilot study funding and grant funding. Let’s compete for GenEd funding.

Let’s say we do choose to the path of themes.  Allow an open competition within some broad guidelines (e.g., a theme must involve 2 or more departments from 2 or more colleges, must involve at least two knowledge domains, must include at least two elements of engaged scholarship, and so on). Solicit proposals from any interested groups of faculty who wish to propose a GenEd theme. Have the selection of the final themes (20?) made not only by Penn State faculty, but also by external faculty, alumni and industry peer reviewers. Allow the funds awarded to be used in multiple ways–for engaged scholarship opportunities for students, for collaborative research by students and GenEd faculty teams, for visiting faculty, alumni, political, and business leaders to come to speak to GenEd classes, as summer funding for faculty and student collaborative work on GenEd courses and curriculum or funding for graduate GA positions in departments to support GenEd courses or professional development for faculty teaching GenEd courses or more.  In short, let the people on the ground make the decisions about spending. Give them the responsibility.

But, hold them accountable. As students complete their General Education and start to graduate, test, evaluate, or assess a random sample or all of them using a common instrument or rubric developed in collaboration with the Schreyer Institute on Teaching Excellence based on the goals and objectives of General Education. If you want, as part of the grant award have each General Education Theme Team also work with SITE to develop an assessment tailored to their theme, and use a weighted score that includes both the theme assessment and overall General Education assessment. Get even fancier.  Add in a component that depends on the total number of students who selected that theme and/or a student assessment of the theme’s success–let students vote with their feet and choices and have a say.

Have a say in what? Time for the three Rs–relegation, reward, and renewal. At the end of a defined time period (6 years?), it’s relegation time. The 5 themes that score lowest on our accepted metrics are phased out over the next few years. Students can complete the theme or are given greater freedom to move to a more successful theme.

It’s reward time. The top 5 themes on our metrics get an infusion of new resources to improve their theme. You can even build in rewards for all themes in a new budget model that rewards GenEd credit hours at a higher rate for colleges and departments.

It’s renewal time. A new competition selects 5 new, vibrant, exciting themes to add to the GenEd mix, providing a constant and ongoing renewal of both Gened and its themes.  A supplemental competition allows the 10 continuing themes in the middle to apply for revision funds to refresh their theme. After the initial phase-in, the three Rs can happen as often as you want, even annually.

Maybe a college is the hammer we need. Colleges have two major downsides, however. A new bureaucracy associated with a college tends to ossify and tends to drain resources away from teaching and learning and students. To succeed we need to reverse administrative bloat, reward creativity and innovation, and drive resources, responsibility and accountability down to faculty and students.

Just maybe, we need a far more nimble and creative way to address the issues of responsibility and accountability more fitting with the students we teach and the world we inhabit.