Course Overview
This course presents topics related to the role of higher education in a democracy such as public accountability, financing, outcomes assessment, access to higher education, alternative forms of higher education, and governance so as to arrive at a deeper understanding of the issues facing higher education. The course also helps students to assess the long-term impact of these issues on learning, teaching, and the business of higher education.
The course project, Integrated Issue Analysis Report: Examining Issues in Higher Learning, focuses the student on a particular problem in a higher learning setting, allowing the student to analyze the problem within the context of issues facing higher learning, and eventually proposing a solution to that problem.
Course Learning Objectives
- Describe the rise of public accountability and its impact on higher education and further learning.
- Critically analyze the ways in which outcomes assessment have become part of the structure of teaching and learning in higher education.
- Analyze changes in online and distance learning and the impact they have had on access to higher education.
- Describe the issues surrounding access and affirmative action in higher education.
- Analyze the relationship of proprietary institutions to the system of higher education and democracy.
- Identify the role of workplace learning to the future of lifelong learning.
- Describe the role of finance and financial issues to the future of higher education and further learning.
- Analyze issues of governance.
- Describe the relationship of higher education, further learning and the marketplace and that relationship's impact on higher education as a democratic endeavor.
