Adult Education

My question is, what specific programs seem to be most effected. Are the programs related to Adult education or literacy programs? Does the university see the problematic area with curruculum or employment readiness? Are the students transitioning into careers as a result of the completed programs or does the univeristy find itself providing education for continued learning unrelated to career advancement?

Sheila Y. Milan, Coordinator/Instructor, at 11:00 am EDT on August 31, 2007

Interdisciplinary works for adult learners

Interdisciplinary curriculum draws in many disciplines, observing issues from various angles. I also found the courses to provide an intimate class setting with a cohort of adults, as well as good mentoring, and advising. Courses were structured to provide open discussion on topics.

Clearly, success builds upon success, and many adults move on beyond a Bachelor degree. This program works, and has had incresed enrollment while operating on a low budget. Further, Many adult students thrive in an Interdisciplinary teaching environment, and find that I.S. promotes creative thinking, as one is considering many angles to a topic. I thought we wanted creative thinkers in society? Cutting I.S. degrees is going to have a large impact on Wayne’s law school, and other area law schools. Many quality candidates are those with interdisciplinary degrees.

I am a top student at Wayne, Bachelor-Summa Cum Laude 2005, in Technical and Interdisciplinary Studies, and 3.9 as a graduate student in I.S. I also hold an Associate in Applied Arts & Sciences — Advertising Design 1986 from St. Clair Community, Port Huron, Michigan. I was beginning to line myself up for a Ph.D. in anthropology at Wayne, and had taken three additional courses at Wayne meeting requirments. I was strongly encouraged by I.S. professors to pursue higher education.I had even interviewed with anthropology professors at Wayne, and taking prepatory courses out of loyalty to Wayne, such as; a Chinese language course, introduction to anthropology course. I also completed two study abroad courses through Wayne. Again, the major root to my success was the foundation of the Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies Degree.

If Wayne State cannot support its urban mission, supporting the community of adult workers, I cannot support an institution that does not support its neighbor. Wayne is crimping opportunity for adult learners who return to college after the stops in life. I will go shopping for my Ph.D. at U of M, or State, or perhaps elswhere online if Wayne cannot go back to the table and save the Interdisciplinary degrees. Additionally, I am the mother of an eight-year-old, and aunt to several that I will encourage to attend another university. It’s not good public policy to remove a successful, community rooted program that works.

Karen Crorey, Graduate Student at Wayne State, at 1:25 pm EDT on September 1, 2007

Measuring Outcomes and the Politcs of Disciplinarity

PS is correct that in 2007 higher education like other institutions should be assessed by results. The Interdisciplinary Studies Department at WSU has demonstrated its own success in two self-studies conducted since 2000. These measure the success of programs on multiple dimensions and involve independent external reviewers from other universities. Indeed, the most recent of those reviewers was headed up by a former colleague of WSU’s Provost Nancy Barrett from the University of Alabama. The Department of Interdisciplinary studies came through with flying colors as an innovative program educating and graduating predominantly African American students (70% of who are African American) consistent with WSUs urban mission in a city with some 86% African Americans. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Wayne State University. Results-based measures, such as those provided by the Educational Trust, show that WSU has the second lowest graduation rate at 33.1% among 15 comparable universities, but its African American graduation rate is 11% and its African American male graduation rate is 4.9%. This is the lowest rate among 31 similar institutions. It means that 95.1% of African American males registering for degrees at WSU will not graduate from the institution. Now in a city with 86% African Americans this is as Bill Lynch says, atrocious. What business would be allowed to continue to function with a 95% failure rate, especially when comparable schools in inner cities are much more effective graduating 30-45% of their African American students. Instead of cutting the one program that supports African American students to graduation, WSU ought to be adding 10 more, and replicating the quality education provided for African Americans by a dedicated faculty who know how to make urban higher education work.

So why is WSU under Provost Nancy Barrett cutting this highly successful program, This is not, as PS implies, because of cultural differences between the 1960s attitudes towards creative higher education and the present. Rather it is because of a multi-layered set of political and ideological reasons. First it has to do with a shift in urban research universities away from serving the working commuter student on whose tuition-dollar backs these universities rose, to increasingly serving residential students who bring more money over a shorter time span and spend not only tuition dollars but housing, food, and entertainment dollars. It is not insignificant that they also bring their out of city GPAs that raise the academic profile of the school. As former WSU President David Adamany noted in discussing Temple University’s plan to make similar changes: Temple is abandoning its urban working class students in a search for “better students” and a Renaissance in Research. This involves Temple, under President Adamany’s direction, building halls of residence to house its out-of-city students. In short as Temple’s Director of Admissions said in 2005: access is the kiss of death for these kind of universities.

Second, there is an attach on undergraduate interdisciplinary programs nationwide which is partly rooted in the disciplinary hegemony of the disciplinary based departmental structure of universities, partly based in the hierarchies of knowledge that rank subject areas based on their disciplinary purity, partly based on the perceived danger that integrating knowledge presents to linear, single paradigm thinkers, and partly ironically due to the success of interdisciplinary studies, which has grown from a mere 7,000 students graduating a year in 1970s to 27,000 a year presently (a pattern established in the mid-1990s) according to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics. Not only is interdisciplinary ascendancy challenging disciplinary hegemony in undergraduate education, but major grant funding agencies are pressuring grant writers to escape the tethers of their disciplinary cages and think interdisciplinarily or risk no getting funded. In the face of such challenges, disciplinary based departments, or the faculties that defend their boundaries, and Deans who decide on their relative resources have moved to take back their territory from the experimentally innovative faculty that traverse their borders. Tight times are dangers for these “others” of education, especially were dollars, and politics are involved.

Finally, there is local politics and local personalities; at WSU there have been faculty who have dedicated their academic energies to defeating the ghost of former president David Adamany who made innovative changes at WSU, including: weakening the traditional power of disciplines by dividing the College of Arts and Sciences into two Colleges; creating the Humanities Programs; creating the College of Urban, Labor,and Metropolitan Affairs that drew highly qualified faculty nationwide to work on urban and labor problems in urban Detroit, and yes, creating the College of Lifelong Learning that for 30 years served working Detroiters with cutting-edge innovative degree programs in interdisciplinary studies. All of these have now gone, and Arts and Sciences is now one College. Interdisciplinary Studies and Humanities represent the last programs from the Adamany era restructuring that the local politics has left to destroy. When it does so in next Thursday September 6, WSU Board of Governors vote on the state imposed budget cuts, the people of Detroit will have lost a major asset, the local politicians and the present administration will have won a hollow victory, the hegemony of disciplinary knowledge will have disciplined interdisciplinarity and higher education in America will be diminished.

Stuart Henry, former chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, WSU.

Stuart Henry, Director, School of Public Affairs at Wayne State University, at 2:15 pm EDT on September 3, 2007