researching the aims, goals, and purposes for the bachelors degree
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What is the purpose of higher education?: Comparing student and
institutional perspectives for completing a bachelor’s degree
Roy Y. Chan, Gavin T. L. Brown, and Larry H. Ludlow
Abstract: Society expects that degree-granting institutions will ensure that college
students develop discipline-specific competences (e.g., knowledge, attribute, responsibility)
as well as generic skills (e.g., communication, written, oral) and dispositions (e.g., attitudes,
beliefs, curiosity) at the completion of a bachelor’s degree. Current research suggests that
undergraduate education is not just about discipline specific knowledge or applied skills;
instead, dispositions and generic skills that enable graduates to be effective citizens are also
valued outcomes for students completing a college degree in the 21st century. Utilizing
Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS), this paper reviews and synthesizes the purposes and
aims of undergraduate education from the perspective of (a) higher education institutions and
(b) undergraduate students. More specifically, this article aims to address two research
questions: (a) What are the differences between students’ and institutional aims, expectations,
goals, outcomes, and purposes with regards to generic skills and dispositional outcomes of a
college degree and (b) Is there a consensus as to what the goals of a college degree are in
terms of core competencies. To answer such questions, a comprehensive search of the
literature identified approximately 30 peer-reviewed articles, twelve books, five
magazines/newspaper articles, and three policy briefs published between 2000 and 2014. Nine
domains of the purposes and goals were found and while there was some agreement between
institutions and students on the “non-economic” benefits of higher education, especially
concerning intellectual cognitive attainment, the review was characterized by a significant
misalignment. Our findings suggest that student expectations for completing an undergraduate
education tend to be very instrumental and personal, while higher education institutional goals
and purposes of undergraduate education tend towards highly ideal life- and society-changing
consequences. This paper calls for significant “Tuning” in higher education to define what a
college student should know and be able to do at the completion of higher education.
Keywords: purposes and goals of higher education; learning outcomes; generic
competences; graduate attributes; transferable skills; dispositions; global skills; value of a
college degree; institutional research
I. Introduction
Over the last half-century, new pressures have challenged the traditional
purpose of higher education.1 On one hand, the purpose of higher education
1 Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), A crucial moment:
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tends to reproduce what the larger society is expecting of them. On the other
hand, one would also argue that they should be aiming for more ideal
contributions to the commonwealth society. That conundrum has posed
persistent dilemmas about the goals and aims of higher education.2
Notably, private, nonprofit colleges and universities across the worldface unprecedented challenges on a wide number of issues including support
for student aid, scrutiny over student access and completion, and the value of
a college degree.3 Generally, higher education exist to create, advance,
absorb, and disseminate knowledge through teaching and learning; help
rapid industrialization of the economy; contribute to the development and
improvement of education; and develop higher order cognitive and
communicative skills in young people, such as, the ability to think logically,the capacity to challenge the status quo, and the desire to develop
sophisticated values.4 However, today’s society has also viewed higher
education as a training ground for advanced vocational and professional
skills. This agenda has often created tensions between higher education as a
public good and higher education as a private benefit5, where the growth in
market forces have become increasingly diverse and political within which
they are located.6 This has all resulted in the rise of corporatization and
College learning and democracy’s future, edited by National Task Force on Civic
Learning and Democratic Engagement (Washington, D.C.: Global Perspective
Institute, Inc. (GPI), 2012).2 Joseph L. DeVitis, Contemporary colleges and universities (New York: Peter
Lang Publishing, Inc., 2013).3 Sandy Baum, Jennifer Ma, and Kathleen Payea, Education pays 2013: The benefits
of higher education for individuals and society, (New York: The CollegeBoard,2013), 5-47.4 John Brennan, Niccolo Durazzi, and Tanguy Sene, Things we know and don’t
know `about the Wider Benefits of Higher Education: A review of the recent
literature, (London, UK: London School of Economics and Political Science, 2013).5 Jandhyala B. G. Tilak, “Higher education: A public good or a commodity for
trade?,” Prospects, 38, (2008): 449-466. 6 Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, Higher education? How colleges are
wasting our money and failing our kids and what we can do about it. (New York: St.Martin’s Griffin, 2011).
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managerialization of higher education processes7, as well as the increasing
political polarization and plutocracy of public policies8, which is often seen
as a contradiction to the traditional academic, scholarly goals of
contemplating important ideas.9
In other words, institutions of higher
education are not only under pressure to develop students’ soft and hardskills but to also enhance their discipline core competencies and dispositions
such as knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs for entry into the global
knowledge-based economy.10
Today’s knowledge economy requires highly skilled personnel at all
levels to deal with rapid technological changes.11
To meet current societal
needs, higher education institutions worldwide are striving to reconstruct
curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment policies to ensure that all studentshave the desired attributes and competencies at the completion of a college
degree.12
Statistically speaking, young college graduates entering in the U.S.
labor force today have substantially declined since the 1990s, and are now at
an all time low since 1972.13
While many jobs posted online requires at least
a bachelor’s degree - approximately 80 and 90 percent14
- limited research
7 Jennifer Washburn, University Inc.: The corporate corruption of American higher
education (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2005). 8 Suzanne Mettler, Degrees of inequality: How the politics of higher education
sabotaged the American dream. (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 1-19.9 Kim Watty “Addressing the basics: academics' view of the purpose of
higher education,” Australian Educational Researcher, 33:1, (2006): 23-39. 10 Martin Haigh and Valerie A. Clifford, “Integral vision: A multi-perspective
approach to the recognition of graduate attributes,” Higher Education Research and
Development, 30:5, (2011): 573-584. 11 Simon Marginson, Markets in education, (Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1997). 12 Robert Wagenaar, “Competences and learning outcomes: A panacea for
understanding the (new) role of higher education?,” Tuning Journal for Higher
Education, 1:2, (2014): 279-302. 13 Anthony P. Carnevale, Andrew R. Hanson, and Arlem Gulish, Failure to launch:
Structural shift and the new lost generation (Washington, D.C.: Center on Education
and the Workforce, Georgetown University, 2013).14
Anthony P. Carnevale, A., Tamara Jayasundera, and Dmitri Repnikov, The onlinecollege labor market: Where the jobs are (Washington, D.C.: Center on Education
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has explored the primary goals and purposes of undergraduate education and
to what extent college students develop skills-specific and higher-level
learning outcomes, such as, critical thinking, communication, and problem
solving at the completion of higher education.15
This knowledge gap stands in stark contrast to the large number of recentstudies, which have examined the significant “economic benefits” arising
from completing a bachelor’s degree.161718
For instance, Benson, Esteva, and
Levy19
suggest that a bachelor’s degree program from California’s higher
education system still remains a good investment for individuals and society.
Similarly, Delbanco20
stated that a bachelor’s degree is both “good for the
economic health of the nation and that going to college is good for the
economic competitiveness of society”. Comparatively, Hout21
concluded thatindividuals who complete higher education are twice as more likely to earn
more money, live healthier lives, and contribute more to the socio-economic
and well-being of society. In other words, given the well-established
financial and career benefits of a bachelor’s degree,22
it is plausible to
and the Workforce, Georgetown University, 2014), 1-12.
15 Richard P. Keeling, Richard H. Hersh, We’re losing our minds: Rethinking
American higher education (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).16 Jan McArthur, “Reconsidering the social and economic purposes of higher
education,” Higher Education Research & Development, 30:6, (2011): 737-749. 17 Anthony H. Psacharapoulos and George Patrinos, “Returns to investment in
education: A further update,” Education Economics, 12:2, (2004): 111 – 134.18 Christopher Avery and Sarah Turner, “Student loans: Do college students borrow
too much - or not enough,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 26:1, (2012): 165 –
192.19 Alan Benson, Raimundo Esteva, and Frank S. Levy, The economics of B.A.
ambivalence: The case of California higher education (September 13, 2013). doi:
10.2139/ssrn.2325657 20 Andrew Delbanco, College: What it was, is, and should be (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2012), 25.21 Michael Hout, “Social and economic returns to college education in the United
States,” Annual Review of Sociology, 38:1, (2012): 379-400.22
Katie Zaback, Andy Carlson, and Matt Crellin, The economic benefit ofpostsecondary degrees: A state and national level analysis (Boulder, CO: State
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suggest that a significant motivator for entry into and completion of
undergraduate education for parents and students is access to such economic
and social benefits. While not an inappropriate motivation, research that
focuses solely on the economic instrumentality of higher education may not
produce the best learning outcomes and competencies.For instance, Arum and Roksa’s
2324 book claims that four years of
undergraduate education make little difference in students’ ability to
synthesize new knowledge and put complex ideas in writing. They argued
that 45 percent of students made no gains in their writing, complex
reasoning, or critical-thinking skills during their first two years of college
and 36 percent failed to show any improvement over the four years of
college.25
The authors of the book concluded that “drifting through collegewithout a clear sense of purpose is readily a pparent for undergraduates”.
Similarly, past research into the learning effects of motivation has suggested
that students with strongly instrumental motives (e.g., I’m doing this so I can
make a lot of money) or who use ‘minimax’ strategies (i.e., getting the
greatest return for the least effort) tend not to achieve as well as those with
‘deep’ (e.g., learning for its own sake) learning intentions.2627
Despite the
fact that many colleges and universities are beginning to re-assess a broader
range of instruments and approaches to document students learning progress,
Higher Education Executive Officers, 2012), 1-23. 23 Richard Arum and Jospina Roksa, Academically adrift: Limited learning on
college campuses. (Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press, 2011).24 Richard Arum and Jospina Roksa, Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions
of College Graduates. (Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press, 2014). 25 Lydia O. Liu, Brent Bridgeman, and Rachel M. Adler, “Measuring learning
outcomes in higher education: Motivation matters,” Educational Researcher, 41:9,
(2012): 352-362.26 Noel J. Entwistle and Elizabeth R. Peterson,, “Conceptions of learning and
knowledge in higher education: Relationships with study behaviour and influences
of learning environments,” International Journal of Educational Research, 41,
(2004): 407-428.27 Barry J. Zimmerman, Sabastian Bonner, and Robert Kovach, Developing self-
regulated learners: Beyond achievement to self-efficacy (Washington, DC:American Psychological Association, 1996).
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limited information about how the data is being used significantly lags
behind in the worldwide landscape of higher education today.28
Nevertheless,
examining and comparing both institutional and student purposes for
completing a bachelor’s degree may be relevant to higher education
policymakers and institutional researchers seeking to enhance studentlearning outcomes in higher education.
Just as Watty’s29
study helped us appreciate the tension between how
academics and government policies view higher education, an analysis that
compares and contrasts the goals and purposes of higher education may help
us better understand the current disconnection between higher education
institutions and employers or college graduates.30 If research institutions and
students do not have highly aligned goals and aims for completing a bachelor’s degree in the 21
st century, then there is likely to be
disappointment on both sides. On the one hand, academics and staff may be
disappointed if students do not go beyond the minimum requirements in
their engagement with learning tasks. On the other hand, students may balk
at learning things that have little apparent connection with vocations.
Consequently, formal research that makes a thorough comparison between
institutional and student perspectives on the goals and purposes of
completing higher education may “add-value” for institutions seeking to
position themselves for success in the 21st century.
It is important to note that the focus of this paper is on the “non-
economic” benefits of higher education, such as, core competences, skills,
capabilities, and dispositions and is specifically restricted to the North
American context. However, given the global nature of the higher education
28 George D. Kuh, Natasha Jankowski, Stanley O. Ikenberry, and Jillian Kinzie,
Knowing what students know and can do: The current state of student learning
outcomes assessment in US colleges and universities (Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes
Assessment, 2014), 1-50.29 Kim Watty, “Addressing the basics: academics' view of the purpose of higher
education,” Australian Educational Researcher, 33:1, (2006): 23-39. 30
World Bank, Putting higher education to work: Skills and research for growth inEast Asia (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 2012).
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industry, it is expected that this literature review analysis will have
applicability and pertinence beyond the United States and to all types of
universities (e.g., public, private, research, liberal, Catholic, non-Catholic).
The ultimate goal of this paper is to answer three sets of research questions:
1) what do current literature suggests to be the goals and purposes of highereducation, 2) how do students and institutions make sense of undergraduate
education in the 21st century, and 3) in what ways does a bachelor’s degree
fulfill higher education ambitions for advanced skills, general competencies,
and high-ideals by the time students graduate from university? In the end,
we offer several recommendations (i.e., notably the “Tuning” initiative) as to
how those differences in aims and goals could be further evaluated in the
hope of resolving potential misalignments surrounding the purpose of highereducation in the 21
st century.
II. Methods
To examine the aims or goals for pursuing higher education, a
comprehensive search of the literature was conducted between September
2012 and June 2014 to identify relevant publications that explored suchthemes. Specifically, this study incorporated Critical Interpretive Synthesis
(CIS) to compare institutional and student perspectives on the goals and
purposes of completing a college degree. CIS, a method derived by Dixon-
Woods et al. 31
, aims to establish theories and concepts from diverse bodies
of existing literatures through systematic review and meta-ethnography
methodologies. Additionally, CIS seeks to question the ways in which the
problems, assumptions, and solutions are constructed in the literature. Inother words, the primary purpose of CIS is to generate theory in discrete
stages of the literature review.
31 Mary Dixon-Woods, Debbie Cavers, Shona Agarwal, Ellen Annandale, Antony
Arthur, and Janet Harvey, “Conducting a critical interpretive synthesis of the
literature on access to healthcare by vulnerable groups,” BMC Medical ResearchMethodology, 6:35, (2006): 6-35.
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Through the use of CIS, seven databases were utilized to search for
relevant literature on the goals and purposes of higher education: 1)
Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), 2) Education Research
Complete (EBSCO), 3) Academic Search Premier, 4) ProQuest, 5) Scopus,
6) Google Scholar, and 7) Amazon.com. A hand search of newspaper andmagazine articles from the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher
Ed published between 2000 and 2014 was also conducted. The two main
foci were ‘purposes of higher education’, ‘bachelor’s degree,’ and ‘college
degree.’ Preference was given to peer -reviewed journal articles and books.
Synonyms and alternative terms like ‘expectations’, ‘aims’, ‘goals’,
‘aspirations’, and ‘motivations’ were also highlighted to help narrow down
the scope of the research. Journal articles that examined the economic oremployment advantage of completing a college degree were not considered
relevant for this study because they typically do not address the discipline-
specific competence and disposition outcomes gained by undergraduate
students. Additionally, working papers and policy-brief reports published
outside the peer-reviewed context were omitted.
The ERIC, EBSCO, Academic Search Premier, ProQuest, and Scopus
database search utilized the following key terms and combinations:
all("purpose") AND all(higher education);
all("expectations") AND all(students) AND all(degree);
all("purpose") AND all(students) AND all(higher education);
all("goals") AND all(students) AND all(degree);
all("aims") AND all(students) AND all(higher education);
all("aspirations") AND all(students) AND all(degree);
all("expectations") AND all(university) AND all(degree);
all("expectations") AND all(students) AND all(degree).Each of the above bulleted searches provided over 1,000 results. To
narrow the search, ‘Education Level’ (e.g., ‘Higher Education’) and
‘Publication Date’ (e.g., ‘2000-2014’) filters were selected. This restriction
produced approximately 40 relevant articles of which were reduced to 18
peer-reviewed articles concerning the aspirations and outcomes of a
bachelor’s degree relative to generic skills and dispositional outcomes. The
Amazon.com search engine was used to select published books on the
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purposes and goals of higher education in the 21st century. The search terms
consisted of:
‘purpose higher education’;
‘goals university education’;
‘student motivation college’; ‘student expectation education’.
To narrow the search process, the ‘Customers who bought this item also
bought’ option was selected to explore books of similar topics or themes. A
total of 15-20 books were found that appeared relevant to this study;
however, only twelve books were deemed appropriate for this particular
study based on the chapter themes discussed by the author(s).
An additional search was performed on Google Scholar to identify other
published peer-reviewed articles or scholarly books that may not have been
found via ERIC or Amazon.com. Those search terms, included:
‘purpose of higher education’;
‘aims of higher education’
‘goals of higher education’;
‘university expectations of university degree’;
‘student expectations of higher education’.
This search resulted in a further 16 published articles and 11magazine/newspaper articles, of which only eight peer-reviewed articles and
three magazine/newspaper articles were considered to be closely relevant to
the goals and purposes of a college degree.
In total, approximately 30 peer-reviewed articles, eleven books, three
magazine or newspaper articles, and five policy briefs were considered
relevant to the study. Before examining the various goals and purposes of a
bachelor’s degree, this paper provides a comprehensive literature review
between institutional and student perspectives on the purposes and goals for
completing higher education relative to discipline-specific competence and
disposition outcomes. To enhance the quality of the literature review search
process, quantitative descriptive data on student purposes and goals of
completing higher education was further analyzed through the UCLA
Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) annual “Freshman
Survey” published between 1967 and 2013. Such analysis assisted the
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authors to understand the five historical decades of freshmen student
behaviors for pursing a bachelor’s degree in American society.
III.1. Defining the “non-economic” benefits of higher education
Our critical interpretive synthesis revealed nine major themes that
mutually examined the “non-economic” benefits of completing a college
degree. Notably, we identified the “synthetic constructs” of both internal
purposes and external purposes, and the complex interplay between them.
We explore each contributing synthetic constructs by synthesizing and
comparing institutional purposes and goals of the bachelor’s degree,
followed by student aims of completing higher education in the 21
st
century.We conclude with an analytic comparison of the two syntheses in the
discussion section. Table 1 was developed to summarize the main themes
from the literatura review.
III.1.1. Institutional purposes and goals of a college degree
It has long been advocated that higher education providers should teach
undergraduate students with a wide range of competency and general skills
of which includes but are not limited to communication skills, problem-
solving skills, self-directed learning skills, the ability to integrate ideas and
concepts, and the capacity to work in teams and group environments. These
goals do not seem greatly different to the original purpose of higher
education when the Puritans founded Harvard College in 1636 to produce “a
learned clergy and a lettered people.”32 Bill Readings 33 once stated that
colleges had served “as producer, protector, and inculcator of an idea ofnational culture.” Today, however, most higher education institutions often
do not have a single, unifying purpose or mission statement in higher
32 Frederick Rudolph, The American college and university (Atlanta, GA: The
University of Georgia Press, 1962), 6.33 Bill Readings, The university in ruins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1997), 3.
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education. The bachelor’s degree – often the symbol of success and the
ticket to the middle class – is now viewed as the new high school diploma to
produce highly skilled workers or ‘citizens of the world’ in the 21st century.
For example, the Time/Carnegie Corporation of New York 34
recent survey
reported that 40 percent of undergraduate students believe that the purposeof higher education is to gain new knowledge and skills for a career while 36
percent of college leaders believe that a bachelor’s degree should teach
undergraduates how to think critically. The Association of American
Universities (AAU) 35
identified three goals college students should develop
at the completion of higher education: (1) to be informed by knowledge
about the natural and social worlds, (2) to be empowered through the
mastery of intellectual and practical skills, and (3) to be responsible for theirpersonal actions and for civic values. While the demand for higher education
continues to increase in both the United States and across the world,
institutional leaders and upper-level administrators are beginning to question
the enterprise of modern higher education organizations in the 21st century.
36
For instance, Lagemann and Lewis37
have suggested that the public
purpose for attending higher education has less to do with the pursuit of
economic or employment benefits and much more about preparing young
adults with general skills and civic education such as, civic values, ideals,
and virtues. They argued that undergraduates must “develop generic skills
and dispositions to listen intently and empathetically to other people; …
analyze rationally what is said, read, and observed; … present thoughts
clearly; … confront unsupported assertions; and … identify reasonable
34 Time/Carnegie Corporation of New York, “Higher education poll,”
(New York: Times Magazine, October 18, 2012),35 Association of American Universities (AAU), AAU survey on undergraduate
student objectives and assessment (Washington, DC: Author, 2013).36 Derek C. Bok, Higher education in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2013). 37 Ellen C. Lagemann and Harry Lewis, “Renewing the civic mission of American
higher education,” What is college for? The public purpose of higher education,(New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2012), 9-45.
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strategies to take necessary action” (p. 12). In other words, the authors
believe that a bachelor’s degree should provide undergraduates with new
knowledge, competencies, and applied skills, such as, problem solving,
communication, critical thinking, and creativity that are necessary for
success in the 21st century. Like Lagemann and Lewis, Kiziltepe38 claimedthat students should develop five dispositional outcomes at the completion of
higher education: (1) interpersonal competence, (2) multi-cultural
understanding, (3) skills in problem identification and problem solving, (4) a
sense of purpose, and (5) the confidence to act in ways that make a
difference. Similarly, Nussbaum39
recommended that higher education
should provide students with several general skills and dispositions, such as,
“the ability to think critically; the ability to transcend local loyalties and toapproach world problems as a ‘citizen of the world’; and, finally, the ability
to imagine sympathetically the predicament of another person”. Nonetheless,
many scholars claim that the goals and purposes of higher education are to
develop individuals and the society by inculcating general capabilities and
dispositional outcomes.
Historically, there is ample empirical evidence from Pascarella and
Terenzini to claim that colleges and universities prepare individuals for
longer, fuller, and more productive lives. For instance, Astin et al. 40
summarized five areas on the effects of higher education: (1) learning and
cognitive changes, (2) psychosocial changes, (3) attitudes and values, (4)
moral reasoning, and (5) career and economic impacts. Similarly, Palmer et
al. 41 stressed that undergraduate education “address issues that are central to
38 Zeynep Kiziltepe, “Purposes and identities of higher education institutions, and
relatedly the role of the faculty,” Egitim Arastirmalari - Eurasian Journal of
Educational Research, 40, (2010):114-132. 39 Marth C. Nussbaum, Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012), 7-8.40 Alexander W. Astin, Four critical years (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
Publishers, 1977). 41 Parker J. Palmer, Arthur Zajonc, Megan Scribner, and Mark Nepo, The heart of
higher education: A call to renewal (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publications,2010), 15-16.
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the life of young adults concerning purpose, core values, and direction in
life”. Equally, Polanyi42
stressed that higher education’s purpose is to help
students “learn who they are, to search for a larger purpose for their lives,
and to leave college as better human beings”. In a s imilar a fashion,
Chickering’s 43 seven vectors of identity development indicate that thepurpose of higher education is to prepare undergraduates to develop
personally and interpersonally during their four critical years in college.
These seven vectors are: (1) develop intellectual, physical, manual, and
interpersonal competence; (2) manage emotions (e.g., self-control, self-
expression, self-awareness); (3) develop emotional and instrumental
autonomy along with interdependence; (4) develop mature interpersonal
relations (e.g., tolerance, appreciation, intimacy); (5) establish identity (e.g.,body, appearance, gender, sexual orientation, self-acceptance); (6) develop
purpose (e.g., vocational plans, personal interests, family commitments); and
(7) develop integrity (e.g., humanizing, personalizing values, and
congruence). In other words, the goals and purposes of higher education is to
not only create and disseminate new knowledge for the common good but to
also develop students well being and their own emotional, interpersonal,
ethical, and intellectual development.44
To enumerate, Pascarella and Terenzini45
concluded that roughly two-
thirds consider it “essential” or “very important” that their college enhance
their cognitive, social, and affective development (i.e., critical thinking skills
d=.50, self-understanding d=.69, responsible citizenship d=.67, personal
values d=.67, emotional development d=.63, reflective judgment thinking
d=.90, and epistemological sophistication or maturity d=2.00). While the
42 Michael Polanyi, Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974).43 Athur W. Chickering and Linda Reisser, Education and identity (San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993).44 Nicholas Maxwell, “From knowledge to wisdom ,” London Review of Education,
5, (2007): 97-115. 45
Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick T. Terenzini, How college affects students: Threedecades of research (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2005), .
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limited college learning reported by Arum and Roksa is quite likely an
underestimation of students’ true college learning, their study warns that
higher education institutions may not be the place for developing students’
generic competencies in favor of meaning, purpose, authenticity, and
spirituality. Typically, ‘generic skills’ are described as the set of skills thatcan be broadly applied across different contexts beyond disciplinary content
knowledge.46
A good example is the “Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP)”
by the Lumina Foundation which attempts to define what a college student
should learn, understand, and know at the completion of a U.S. bachelor’s
degree. The DQP identifies five general domains of knowledge and general
skills that higher education institutions should focus within undergraduate
education: (1) civic learning, (2) applied learning, (3) intellectual skills, (4)integrative knowledge, and (5) specialized knowledge.
47 In other words, one
can argue that the most widely valued general or discipline-specific
competencies are critical thinking; problem solving; interpersonal skills;
logical and independent thought; communication and information
management skills; intellectual curiosity; creativity; ethical awareness;
integrity; and tolerance.48
To extend the argument, Brennan, Durazii, and Sene 49 highlight six
benefits of higher education: (1) citizenship, (2) civic engagement, (3) crime,
(4) health, (5) well-being, and (6) the effects of the student experience. In a
46 Richie Moalosi, M. Tunde Oladiran, and Jacek Uziak, “Students’ perspective on
the attainment of graduate attributes through a design Project,” Global Journal of
Engineering Education, 14:1, (2012): 40-46. 47 Lumina Foundation USA, The degree qualifications profile (Indianapolis, IN:
Lumina Foundation for Education, Inc., 2011). 48 Debra Bath, Calvin Smith, Sarah Stein, and Richard Swann, “Beyond mapping
and embedding graduate attributes: bringing together quality assurance and action
learning to create a validated and living curriculum,” Higher Education Research
and Development, 23:3, (2004): 313-328.49 John Brennan, Niccolo Durazzi, and Tanguy Sene, Things we know and don’t
know about the Wider Benefits of Higher Education: A review of the recentliterature. (London, UK: London School of Economics and Political Science, 2013).
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similar fashion, Haigh and Clifford50
suggested that the purposes and goals
of higher education are to develop students’ moral values and core
competencies. Specifically, they emphasized that higher education
institutions should produce a ‘new generation of citizens’ who will care
about the world through personal, social, and environmental responsibility.Comparatively, Hansen51 argued that the purpose of higher education is to
teach students’ general skills in civic courage, moral judgment, critical
thinking, and scientific and global awareness in order to prepare them for a
democratic, civilized, and global society. Furthermore, Sullivan52
asserted
that the ultimate goal of higher education is to give student’s complex
knowledge, capacity in skillful practices, and a commitment to the purposes
espoused by their community. In other words, higher education should prepare students “for lives of significance and responsibility”.
53
Thereby, it can be concluded that the purpose of higher education are: (a)
to serve a democratic-centered civic engagement based on addressing
pressing real-world problems and (b) the development of a fully rounded
intellectually sophisticated and caring person.54
While personal and social
development is advocated, a more balanced view of the purpose of higher
education can be seen in other arguments within the bachelor’s degree.55 For
50 Martin Haigh and Valerie Clifford, “Integral vision: A multi-perspective
approach to the recognition of graduate attributes,” Higher Education Research and
Development, 30:5, (2011): 573-584.51 Elaine T. Hansen, “Liberated consumers and the liberal arts college,” In Ellen C.
Lagemann & Harry Lewis, What is college for? The public purpose of higher
education (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2011), 63-85.
52 William M. Sullivan, Matthew S. Rossin, and Lee S. Shulman, A new agenda for
higher education (New York: Jossey-Bass, 2008) xvi.53 William M. Sullivan, “Professional education: Aligning knowledge, expertise,
and public purpose,” In Ellen C. Lagemann and Harry Lewis, What is college for?
The public purpose of higher education (New York, NY: Teachers College Press,
2011), 104-131.54 John Saltmarsh and Matthew Harley, “To serve a larger purpose”: Engagement
for democracy and the transformation of higher education (Philadelphia, PA:
Temple University Press, 2012).55 Jeffrey J. Selingo, College unbound: The future of higher education, and what it
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III.1.1.1. Student’s purposes and goals of completing a college degree
Today’s traditional-age college students enter higher education under the
weight of tremendous social and economic pressures. Nowadays,
undergraduates have often seen higher education as a place to developeconomic and social benefits, such as, enhanced careers and greater earning
potential, as well as knowledge and expertise in a disciplinary or
professional area. For instance, the Lumina Foundation and the Gallop Poll62
concluded that 95 percent of Americans expected the purpose of higher
education is to “get a good job.” Similarly, Astin et al. 63
claimed that first-
year students expect their institutions to play an instrumental role in
preparing them for employment (94%) and graduate or advanced education(81%). Though this ambition has been increasingly focused on jobs and
money, this altruistic and possibly romantic view of student motivation is
not the complete picture. Notably, many scholars have often reported that
undergraduate students expect universities to give them the necessary tools
they need to find a job, to better understand themselves as people, and to
gain multiple opportunities to make the world a better place in our society.64
Historically, the Yale Report of 182865
emphasized that the predominant
reasons a student should attend higher education is to develop “the discipline
and furniture of the mind”. Today, however, there is substantial evidence to
claim that student expectations or goals have changed, and that
undergraduate students are being more motivated by personal or social
development concerns as well as by instrumental, materialistic ambitions.
62 Lumina Foundation and Gallup, “What America needs to know about
higher education redesign,” (Washington, D.C.: Lumina Foundation, 2014). 63 Alexander W. Astin, Helen S. Astin, and Jennifer A. Lindholm, Cultivating the
spirit: How college can enhance students’ inner lives (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-
Bass, 2011).64 Donna Henderson-King and Michelle N. Smith, “Meanings of education for
university students: academic motivation and personal values as predictors,” Social
Psychology of Education, 9, (2006): 195-221.65 Yale Report, Yale Report of 1828 (New Haven, CT: Yale College, 1828), 7.
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For example, Barber, Donnelly, and Rizvi66
noted that student’s primary
decision to pursue a bachelor’s degree is to have the “college experience”
(i.e., meeting students, being inspired by new ideas and/or leading academics,
opportunity to socialize or to lead an organization, and make friends).
Similarly, Levine and Dean67 claimed that students purpose for attendinghigher education are: (a) to make them feel secure, (b) to be autonomous
grown-ups, (c) to seek intimacy, and (d) to live in an Internet world.
Likewise, Bui68
highlighted 11 reasons undergraduate students pursue a
bachelor’s degree: (1) their friends were going to college, (2) their parents
expected them to go to college, (3) their high school teachers/counselor
persuaded them to go, (4) they wanted a college degree to achieve their
career goals, (5) they wanted a better income with a college degree, (6) theyliked to learn, (7) they wanted to provide a better life for their own children,
(8) they wanted to gain their independence, (9) they wanted to acquire skills
to function effectively in society, (10) they wanted to get out of their parents'
neighborhood, and (11) they did not want to work immediately after high
school. Nevertheless, some college students view higher education as a place
to acquire a job and to be well off financially, while others view it as an
opportunity to obtain new knowledge and expertise in a disciplinary or
professional area.
To enumerate, the UCLA CIRP annual “Freshman Survey” has
significantly shown that money is the primary motivation incoming students
pursue a bachelor’s degree in the 21st century. To illustrate, between 1967
and 2013, there was a 40 percent increase in undergraduates expecting
66 Michael Barber, Katelyn Donnelly, and Saad Rizvi, An avalanche is coming:
Higher education and the revolution ahead (London, UK: Institute for Public Policy
Research, 2013): 1-16. 67 Athur Levine and Diane R. Dean, Generation on a tightrope: A portrait of
today’s college student (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publications, 2012).68 Khanh Van T. Bui, “First-generation college students at a four-year university:
background characteristics, reasons for pursuing higher education, and first-yearexperiences,” College Student Journal, 36:1, (2002): 3-11.
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higher education institutions to help them become “very well off financially”
as shown in Table I.
Table I: Percentage of Freshman Students “Being Very Well off
Financially” is essential (Public vs. Private Universities)
* Data generated by Roy Y. Chan on SPSS using UCLA CIRP Freshman Survey reports.
Specifically, in 1967, only 42 percent of U.S. public universities and 44
percent of U.S. private universities believe that money was essential.However, in 2013, that percentage increased to 82 percent and 80 percent
respectively. While some students pursue higher education based on
extrinsic factors (e.g., to attend graduate school, to secure and/or to prepare
for a future career), others are often motivated by intrinsic or personal
reasons (e.g., to experience self-growth, to meet new friends). This in other
words suggest that despite students intrinsic reasoning for attending higher
education, an increasingly number of freshman students expect that a
bachelor’s degree will help them to acquire a better job and to earn a higher
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salary after college. This result is not surprising when McArthur69
found that
undergraduate students view higher education as a means to increase their
annual salary and job opportunities, to accelerate their career paths, and to
enhance their marketability in the globally competitive knowledge-based
economy. Similarly, Kennett, Reed, and Lam 70 concluded that students’goals of pursuing undergraduate education included mostly external reasons,
such as, self-improvement, achieving life goals, and societal contributions
along with career, money, and family. Indeed, while numerous past studies
have shown that the primary purpose of higher education is the economic
and social benefits of the individual, current research suggests that higher
education also serves as a means to an end, the end being high paying jobs.
Stephens71
once argued that there are “three main reasons students go touniversity: (1) for the social experience, (2) to get a job, and (3) to learn for
learning’s sake”. Thus, student goals for higher education have been
increasingly motivated by personal and economic benefits, rather than the
intellectual or social good of society.
In summary, college students in the 21st century have multiple aims and
purposes for higher education, including both extrinsic goals (e.g., to secure
and/or to prepare for a future career) and intrinsic or personal reasons (e.g.,
to experience self-growth). Though students have often become motivated
by the instrumental, materialistic ambitions of higher education,
undergraduate education has also been highly driven by the intellectual,
personal, and economic ambitions of a bachelor’s degree. Therefore, student
goals for attending higher education will continue to be motivated by various
financial reasons in order for individuals to contribute to the economic and
social welfare of society.
69 Jan McArthur, “Reconsidering the social and economic purposes of higher
education,” Higher Education Research & Development, 30:6, (2011): 737-749. 70 Deborah J. Kennett, Maureen J. Reed, and Dianne Lam, “The importance of
directly asking students their reasons for attending higher education,” Issues in
Educational Research, 21:1, (2011): 65-74.71 Dale J. Stephens, Hacking your education: Ditch the lectures, save tens of
thousands, and learn more than your peers ever will (New York, NY: Perigee Trade,2013), 1-2.
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IV.1. Core themes
Comparing student and institutional goals and purposes for a bachelor’s
degree
Publications in the area of “non-economic” benefits of higher education
are widely dispersed across academic journals and policy briefs rather than
being clustered in a specialist outlet. This is partly because “non-economic”
benefits do not represent a mature sub-field of enquiry in the same way as
the “economic” benefits or the value of a college degree. Hence, as outlined
above, there is a wide range of literature that compares student and
institutional goals for completing a bachelor’s degree in the 21st century.
Articles from 42 different journals were accessed as part of the literature
review, ranging from sources closely associated with higher education
research (e.g., Review of Higher Education, The Journal of Higher
Education), discipline-specific educational outlets (e.g., Sociology of
Education), and journals representing various fields, such as, business,
philosophy, psychology, sociology, and information science. From the
review, nine themes were identified reflecting the various aims or goals of
completing a bachelor’s degree in the 21st century. These were:
1. Social democratic values and action; civic engagement. This theme
relates to the intention that upon graduation students will take an
active role in society, service, and co-curricular activities, with
active concern for involvement in civic concerns.
2. Advanced intellectual skills. This theme relates to high-level
cognitive and intellectual skills such as problem solving, analyticand critical thinking, and creativity.
3. Advanced communication skills. This theme relates to sophisticated
abilities to communicate orally, in writing, and through ICT-
supported media so as to effectively transmit information, persuade,
argue, and so on.
4. Interpersonal skills. This theme focuses on students gaining
competence around relationships with others. This includes leading
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in conditions of complex social diversity, exercising tolerance,
curiosity, ingenuity, and imagination.
5. Vocational & employment preparedness. This theme has to do with
using a bachelor’s degree education as a means of gaining a highly
remunerative job and/or career or having the skills that permit entryinto a desirable future career.
6. Personal life quality enhancement. This theme has to do with
developing a personal sense of purpose, perspective, and identity
such that the quality of one’s own life is improved.
7. Personal integrity. This theme relates to becoming aware of
dissonance and resonance and having the competence to make
decisions in accordance with personal morality and values.8. Graduate school education preparedness. This theme focuses on
the skills, knowledge, and competencies required when entering
graduate programs in a specific discipline.
9. Family expectations/reasons. This theme relates to fulfilling
obligations to, expectations of, and aspirations of one’s family as the
prime motivation for completing a university degree.
To make further comparison between institutions and undergraduate students,
Table II was developed to categorize the literature by the most commonly
occurring themes.
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While Table II simply reflects the number of sources found in the review
and gives no weighting to the size or generalizability of the study, much of
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the literature tends to focus on the value of a college degree. Despite the fact
that almost all categories are reflected in studies carried out with students
and institutions, the impression one is left with is that institutions of higher
education have often placed heavy emphasis on much larger and grander
objectives with reforming society, and the classic individual cognitive andcommunicative agendas. In contrast, undergraduate students appear to focus
much more on personal economic, family, and personal development goals.
In other words, our research suggests that the internal and external
challenges on the goals and purposes of higher education had interacted to
produce a misalignment between students and institutions.
V.1. Findings and discussion
After conducting a CIS of the relevant literature, our findings have
presented both changes and continuities between institutional and student
goals for completing higher education in the 21st century. Notably, our
research findings suggest that there is a partial misalignment between
institutional and student expectations for completing a bachelor’s degree.
From Table II, current and past literature claims that student expectations
and aims for completing undergraduate education tend to be very
instrumental and personal, while higher education institution goals and
purposes of undergraduate education tend towards highly ideal life- and
society-changing consequences.
To clarify, the ambition of higher education often tends to be global,
long-term, and high-minded, while student ambitions, on the other hand,
tend to be much more personal, short-termed, and economically rational.
Specifically, student motivations and aims seem to be quite mixed in whichsome of the life goals and societal contributions, for example, do not seem
incompatible with the more ethereal objectivities identified by scholars and
institutions. Nowadays, the outlook of a university, given current ranking
and comparison systems (e.g., U.S. News & World Report, QS World
University Rankings, Academic Rankings of World Universities, Times
Higher Education, Top American Research Universities, Forbes America's
Best Colleges), is both global and long-term. These rankings are especiallyseductive since they appear to offer clear-cut evidence of an institution’s
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quality and purpose both global and long-term. It may well be that in the
life-course of an adult a similar perspective might be developed in
individuals once they reach middle age, rather than being present during late
adolescence or early adulthood. Perhaps college graduates would then see
the purpose of higher education more like institutions if they were asked 20-30 years after completing their degrees. Nonetheless, we imagine that
colleges and universities might be pleased to see that student motivation
included the intellectual and societal contribution goals, and are not solely
defined in economic or personal gain terms. There is some overlap, however,
between institutional and student goals around the classic ‘ivory tower’ aims
and goals of higher education. To some extent, students do share an interest
in institutional ambitions to deliver academic and scholarly debates, todevelop knowledge and to share new ideas. However, in other contexts,
there seems to be a misalignment of goals and purposes in higher education
that may have some positive and negative consequences for society.
To enumerate, pursuing several purposes and goals in higher education
has proved especially advantageous because the different aims often meet
one another to produce a whole greater than the sum of its parts. For instance,
Baker, Baldwin, and Makker72 has suggested that this misalignment on the
purposes and goals of higher education have contributed to the curricular
change being seen in several liberal arts colleges in the United States, where
institutions are diversifying their curriculum by adding vocational and
professional degree programs. Similarly, Rybak 73
advocates for greater
differentiation of universities with respect to the purpose of higher education
so that students can pursue a college degree that best matches with their
career needs and interests. In other words, the rise of liberal arts colleges can
help keep vocational programs from becoming excessively practical that
many employers consider important for success in their personal, career, and
72 Vicki L. Baker, Roger G. Baldwin, and Sumedha Makker, “Where are they now?
Revisiting Breneman’s study of liberal arts colleges,” Liberal Education, 98:3,
(2012): 48-53.73
Jeff Rybak, What’s wrong with university? And how to make it work for youanyway (Toronto, Ontario, Canada: ECW Press, 2007).
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community lives.74
However, the desire to pursue several goals and purposes
may create conflict with one another where institutions become less
intellectually driven and culturally oriented and instead model themselves on
businesses and commercial ventures, which perhaps may be detrimental to
the original aims and purposes of higher education. For instance, the demandfor students to receive practical training at research universities may in fact
marginalize the humanities and undermine liberal education. As a result,
pursuing multiple goals and purposes would become necessary university
leaders. However, the relative misalignment between institutions and
students of completing a college degree may ultimately suggest that higher
education institutions have a significant challenge in front of them.
For example, the UNESCO’s International Institute for EducationalPlanning
75 volume in The Diversification of Post-secondary Education
concludes that students from non-university technical programs in South
Korea, Malaysia, and India are more likely to acquire employment than
students from traditional university degree programs. Indeed, if modern
universities in the United States are serious about encouraging students to
embrace the lofty ambitions of undergraduate studies, then they will need to
take seriously the differences in student goals. While not discounting the
importance of the economic and “non-economic” benefits arising from a
bachelor’s degree, much career and vocational training does not require or
take place in traditional higher education. Rather, it takes place in
polytechnic or for-profit institutions (i.e., University of Phoenix, Kaplan
University), gap-year programs, as well as on-the-job apprenticeship
industry training or non-traditional higher education programs (i.e.,
UnCollege, Minerva Schools at KGI).76 As long as students and families
74 Debra Humphreys and Patrick Kelly, How the liberal arts and sciences majors
fair in employment: A report on earnings and long-term career paths (Washington,
D.C.: AACU and NCHEMS, 2014).75 UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning, The diversification
of post-secondary education (Paris, France: International Institute for Educational
Planning (IIEP), 2014).76 Joseph O’Shea, Gap year: How delaying college changes people in ways the
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perceive undergraduate education as being primarily about access to
economic and social rewards, then the grand ambitions of higher education
will continue to be undermined by instrumental motivations. Thus, many
colleges and universities in the 21st century may continue to experience
challenges in making non-instrumental aspects of undergraduate educationas powerfully evident to today’s students. Notwithstanding the apparent
consensus across institutions concerning the purposes and goals of higher
education, it may be that colleges and universities do little, if anything, to
foreground their objectives and, thus, view college students as customers or
products for their degree programs. However, if undergraduates were to
actively encounter these ambitions in every course and see the connection
between their current study and the institution’s lofty ideals, then perhapsmisalignment between institutions and students would diminish overtime.
VI.1. Recommendations
There are several recommendations that we propose to address the
misalignment gap between institutions and students for completing a
bachelor’s degree in the 21st century. Notably, one recommendation we offer
is for colleges and universities to create institutional degree profiles to define
exactly what a college student should know and be able to do in a chosen
discipline at the completion of a bachelor’s degree. Often referred to as the
“Tuning” initiative, higher education institutions can create institutional
degree-specific profiles to ensure that the knowledge and coursework
completed aligns with civic, societal and workforce needs.77
The Tuning
project, first developed in 2000 as the “Tuning Educational Structures in
Europe Project,” serves two primary aims: 1) to contribute to thedevelopment of easily readable and comparable degrees and 2) to develop a
bottom-up approach for modernizing existing and new degree programs.78
world needs (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2013).77 Julia Gonzalez and Maria Yarosh, “Building degree profiles: The tuning
approach,” Tuning Journal for Higher Education, 1, (2013): 37-69.78 Tuning USA, Tuning American Higher Education: The Process (Encinitas, CA:
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has often been criticized for its use of terminology, the Tuning methodology
has helped faculty members to develop meaningful teaching practices
oriented to enhancing sudents’ competencies besides the subject specific
ones. This in turn has helped institutions of higher education to increase the
relevance, recognition, and quality of their degree programs; to emphasizelifelong learning and undervalued skills (soft skills); to and develop
transparency among different countries and within countries.81
As noted fron our literature review, producing college graduates with
relevant skills (e.g., communication, written, oral, tolerance, compassion)
and dispositions (e.g., attitudes, beliefs, curiosity) to meet the demands of
industries and the professions has become essential for entry into the global
knowledge-based economy. To address the misalignment gap betweeninstitutions and students, faculty members could create a ‘Degree
Specification Template’ as illustrated below to define exactly what a student
should know and be able to do at the completion of a college degree.
81
Paul D. Ryan, “Editorial,” Tuning Journal for Higher Education, 1:2, (2014):273-275.
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Figure I. Degree Specification Template82
In Figure I, colleges and universities could collaborate with their
institutional research office to outline the purpose, characteristics, career
pathways, education style, and program outcomes of a particular major.
Because the Tuning methodology is a bottom-up approach, the“Tuning”
initiative can help colleges and universities highlight the distinctiveness of
their degree program; align the goals and purposes of a college degree;
differentiate between foreign and local academic degrees; facilitate student
mobility and student success; emphasize lifelong learning and undervalued
82 Tuning, USA, Tuning American Higher Education: The Process (Encinitas, CA:
Institute for Evidence-Based Change, 2014).
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skills (soft skills); and simplify the process for students transferring credits
between institutions.83
Ultimately, the Tuning methodology can assist
academics, institutes and governments to formulate institutional degree
programs in terms of competence-based learning and assessment of learning
outcomes to curriculum. Additionally, such approach can help facultymembers to identify how a student would gain the employability skills,
attributes, and/or dispositions at the completion of a college degree. An
example of a Tuning structure is shown below in Figure II:
Figure II. The Structure of “Tuning” Higher Education84
83 Frans van Vught and Jeroen Huisman, “Institutional profiles: Some strategic
topics,” Tuning Journal for Higher Education, 1:1, (2013): 21-36. 84 Tuning USA, Tuning American Higher Education: The Process (Encinitas, CA:
Institute for Evidence-Based Change, 2014).
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From Figure II, the structure of “Tuning” is divided into five categories: 1)
define discipline core, 2) map career pathways, 3) consult stakeholders, 4)
home discipline core, and 5) implement locally. From the five base models,
faculty members can work with colleagues and their students to identify a
roadmap of competences and learning outcomes to define precisely what thedegree tries to connect and develop in a “learning society.” Such a strategy
would help undergraduate students to recognize the purposes and goals of
higher education, and to address any potential misalignment between
institutions and students as well as employers and college graduates on the
structures, programs, and actual teaching of an institutional degree program.
Aside from “Tuning” methodology, a further recommendation we
suggest is for higher education institutions to assess the student body fortheir learning outcomes as part of institutional self-review — similar to the
processes of institutional review carried out at James Madison University.85
Specifically, higher education providers could obtain institutional
evaluations of the attributes noted by employers or graduate schools when
students are selected for employment or entry to a position. Furthermore,
higher education institutions could integrate the European Qualifications
Framework for Lifelong Learning (EQF) to help make qualifications more
reasable and understandable across different countries.86
Such analyses
might reveal that graduate attributes are not being achieved over the students’
four critical years in college and thus, higher education institutions would be
forced to revise their curricular offerings in order to make their goals and
purposes more explicit and attainable. In addition to institutions,
undergraduate students could also undergo a comprehensive self-assessment
85 Anna Zilberberg, Allison R. Brown, J. Christine Harmes, and Robin D. Anderson,
“How can we increase student motivation during low-stakes testing? Understanding
the student perspective,” In Daniel M. McInerney, Gavin T. L. Brown, and Gregory
Arief D. Liem (Eds.), Student perspectives on assessment: What students can tell us
about assessment for learning (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2009),
255-278.86 Bastiaan L. Aardema and Cristina Churruca Muguruza, “The humanititarian
action qualifications framework: A quality assurance tool for the HumanitarianSector,” Tuning Journal for Higher Education, 1:2, (2014): 429-462.
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and operational plan, but also demonstrate that highly-valued outcomes and
benefits are in fact achieved by students in their degree programs within the
school or department. In other words, students would have an added value
for completing a college degree and that the ideas higher education
institutions have proposed have some substantive value for contemporarysociety. The long-term benefits of this action would help liberal arts colleges
resist the pressure to vocationalize curriculum, so that providers can
continue to play an important role in developing a socially responsible and
global-minded citizen in the 21st century.
VII.1. Conclusion
In summary, there is now pressing need for greater understanding on the
goals and purposes of higher education in the 21st century. Notably, leaders
of higher education must connect undergraduate students with discipline-
specific competences and dispositions for the labor market, and assist faculty
members to work with students in designing and mapping out institutional
degree profiles that could help colleges and universtieis benchmark their
higher education degree programs. Implementing such agenda into
professional practice is both empirically and methodologically challenging.
However, such investment could help institutions to predict social, economic,
cultural and political changes in higher education of which is essential to
address the growing misalignment gap between institutional and
undergraduate students as well as employers and college graduates.
As McArthur once concluded, “higher education therefore has a social,
an economic, and an educative role that extends well beyond its walls and its
own students”.90 We have documented that higher education institutions doshare some goals and purposes with undergraduate students. Yet, we have
also demonstrated that there are contrasting emphases between institutions
and undergraduate students. Thus, this article is an attempt to revitalize the
interest and research into the goals and purposes of completing a bachelor’s
90
Jan McArthur, “Reconsidering the social and economic purposes of highereducation,” Higher Education Research & Development, 30:6, (2011): 746.
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degree, and the importance of “Tuning” higher education in the 21st century.
Though some elements of higher education purposes and goals do align well
with student aims and expectations, we argue that there is a significant
mismatch between the lofty and, possibly unattainable, ideals advocated by
institutions and the somewhat pragmatic, instrumental goals ofundergraduate students.
Therefore, this study has pointed to an important, yet unfulfilled,
research agenda in higher education. If students today are graduating from
college having learned very little, then what is the purpose of higher
education? Do bachelor degrees fulfill the institutional ambitions of
advanced skills, general competencies, and high-ideals by the time students’
graduate from college? Providing an answer would require operationalizingthe institutional purposes, collecting data about the value-added impact on
student skills and dispositions, and using such data to consider modifications
to pedagogy, curriculum, and faculty development. Indeed, approaching this
evolving issue may appear to be one of the most important and crucial self-
evaluation tasks a university must undergo if colleges and universities seek
to avoid “an avalanche”91
that is coming in the revolution ahead.
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Biographical Note:
ROY Y. CHAN ([email protected]) is a PhD candidate in the Department
of Educational Leadership and Higher Education at the Lynch School of
Education of Boston College. His research focuses on the economic andnon-economic benefits of a bachelor’s degree, the globalization and
internationalization of higher education, and the role of philanthropy in
U.S. public higher education. He holds a MEd in Higher Education from the
University of Hong Kong and a BA from the University of California, Irvine.
GAVIN T. L. BROWN ([email protected]) is Associate Professor in
the Faculty of Education and Director of the Faculty Quantitative DataAnalysis and Research Unit at the University of Auckland. Prior to
Auckland, he was Associate Head of the Department of Psychological
Studies at the Hong Kong Institute of Education and Senior Project Manager
of the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning standardised test system
developed in New Zealand schools by the Ministry of Education. His
research focuses on cross-cultural differences in teacher and student
responses to and understandings of educational assessment. He holds a PhD
in Education from the University of Auckland.
LARRY H. LUDLOW ([email protected]) is Chair and Professor in the
Department of Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation at the
Lynch School of Education of Boston College. He is a past recipient of the
“2013 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Fellow” in
recognition of his exceptional scientific or scholarly contributions to
education research. His research interests include teacher testing, facultyevaluations, applied psychometrics, and the history of statistics. He holds a
PhD in Measurement, Evaluation and Statistical Analysis from the
University of Chicago.