QualityHigherEducationforthe21stCentury-CSU,Chico.pdfVIP

CFA WHITE PAPER “Quality Higher Education for the 21st Century Draft Statement of Principles Perhaps the most widely accepted belief about higher education today is that our nation will need more college-educated people in the future than we have now or than we are on track to produce. This belief, given greater urgency by the most recent economic recession, has increasingly led to calls for transforming higher education and for embracing a wide variety of “innovations.” Without question, improving higher education should be a goal of everyone — the public, elected leaders, businesses, and those who work to provide that education. But as conversations about specifics develop, it is crucial for discussion about change to be guided by principles that will lead us toward real improvement in American higher education. Wholesale embrace of change without careful thought and deliberation can take us in the wrong direction — not toward reforming higher education but, in fact, toward deforming precisely those aspects of American higher education that have made it the envy of the world. There are surely no simple answers, no one model, and no “magic bullets” for meeting America’s needs for broadly accessible quality higher education; but we, the undersigned, believe that the following principles can provide a helpful rubric for both developing and assessing proposals for innovation or restructuring in the future. 1. Higher education in the 21st century must be inclusive; it should be available to all who can benefit from it and who want the experience. Demographic projections make it clear that the United States will not return to world leadership in higher education attainment without increasing higher education opportunities and success for all sectors of our increasingly