Lessons from the edge: what we can learn from colleges that have broken the rules. (Perspectives).

Removed from the mainstream of American higher education, out on the edge, stand a handful of undergraduate colleges commonly referred to as distinctive, innovative, or experimental. Some are private, others public. Some are small stand-alone colleges. Others are colleges within larger universities. Most are acknowledged to be unusually powerful places for learning. But what defines these institutions, and makes them so interesting-and potentially important-is that they have broken some of the most fundamental and widely accepted rules for how to structure quality undergraduate programs.

At the majority of colleges and universities in the U.S., the rules for structuring undergraduate degree programs are well institutionalized. Following the rules means such things as using the Carnegie credit and the grade point average to denote the quantity and quality of learning, structuring the curriculum to include a major, general education, and free electives, using norm-referenced evaluation or grading on the curve to evaluate the academic work of students, and focusing on discipline-based instruction. Only a small number of institutions have organized their undergraduate programs around alternative sets of rules. Over the last fifteen years I have served in senior leadership roles at three of them- Antioch College, Olivet College, and New College of Florida. While in many important ways these institutions are different from one another, each has distinguished itself by adopting educational practices that depart from the mainstream.

Antioch College has gone beyond an exclusive focus on discipline-based learning by including an emphasis on social justice and responsible social action throughout its educational program. Student learning is evaluated through narrative evaluations instead of grades. In addition, Antioch students alternate periods of study on campus with periods of employment in a variety of off-campus settings. At Olivet College, a comprehensive institutional change process produced a curriculum focused not only on disciplinary based learning but on helping students develop ethical and civic virtues. This curriculum is integrated through a portfolio assessment process. A requirement for graduation that students begin in their first year of study, portfolios provide the means for faculty to advise and evaluate students across the full range of learning outcomes that the college has identified as important. At New College of Florida, the emphasis is on the independent pursuit of discipline-based scholarship. An academic contra ct, developed each term in consultation with a faculty advisor, defines a unique curriculum for each student. In order to graduate, a student must complete seven such contracts, plus three independent study projects, and a senior thesis. As at Antioch, narrative evaluations take the place of grades.

What can we learn from these unique institutions? My experience suggests some simple lessons for those at mainstream institutions who are seeking to create and to sustain powerful designs for learning at the undergraduate level.

Lessons learned

1. Create a self-fulfilling prophecy. In mainstream institutions, faculty and students take for granted the traditional rules for organizing an undergraduate program. No one explains to new students or new faculty why student achievement is measured through grades or why courses carry credits. And no one raises questions about why these practices are in place. At innovative institutions, however, alternative rules and their associated practices are a prominent part of how these institutions define and explain themselves, both internally and externally. Indeed, innovative colleges are driven by strongly held beliefs that the alternative educational practices they have adopted are superior to those at traditional institutions. They passionately believe in what they are doing and how they are doing it.

Believing in an educational practice can create the conditions that make the practice effective. Indeed, the strong beliefs characteristic of innovative colleges encourage people to act in ways that reinforce the beliefs themselves. For example, believing in the power of experiential learning leads Antioch students to look for connections between what they learn through study and what they learn through work. Actively looking for connections makes it likely that students will discover some. Believing that colleges can effectively teach students to develop an ethic of responsibility, students at Olivet College are more attentive to opportunities to demonstrate this character trait, thereby cultivating its development. At New College, students believe that conducting research in collaboration with faculty is the ultimate learning experience. This belief encourages them to seek out opportunities to interact with faculty so as to impress them with their capacities for serious research.

2. Cultivate the whole, not just the parts. What and how undergraduates learn is a product of the full range of their experiences in college. The more those experiences reinforce one another the more powerful the learning. Antioch, Olivet, and New College have learned this lesson well. Virtually all of the structures, processes, and programs at these schools are consistent with and supportive of one another. In each case, the whole has become more than the sum of its parts. No matter where one looks or listens on these campuses, from the structure of the curriculum, to the nature of discussions in class, to the focus of co-curricular activities, one finds students receiving a consistent and coherent set of messages about what is valued. At Antioch, the messages are about the importance of promoting social justice and the value of learning from experience. At Olivet, the messages underscore the importance of exercising an ethic of responsibility. At New College, the messages focus on the value of scholarship a nd research.

For example, the predominant types of speakers invited to present lectures at these three colleges provide a marked contrast. Antioch invites progressive thinkers and political dissidents. Olivet invites moralists and servant-leaders. New College invites scholars to talk about their latest research. In the same vein, both Antioch and Olivet have gone out of their way to recruit faculty and students of color because learning to celebrate racial diversity is a core value at these two institutions. New College can count very few faculty and students of color on its campus. Not that diversity is not valued there; rather, the issue is that everything at New College--even the value of diversity--is subordinated to traditional conceptions of academic excellence, in keeping with the college's dominant belief system.

3. Build a culture of engagement. In developing an educationally effective institution, perhaps the most powerful ingredient is a culture of engagement, that is, a culture in which faculty and students are expected to participate actively and purposefully with one another in the teaching and learning process. Evidence of such a culture, so prominently on display at Antioch, Olivet, and New College, and, I suspect, at the vast majority of innovative institutions, can be seen most readily in the day-today interactions between and among faculty and students. At these institutions the patterns of interaction are more numerous, more collaborative, and more directed toward shared academic goals than at most mainstream institutions where teaching and learning are defined largely as individualistic activities.

Within these kinds of interactions, enriched opportunities for learning occur. One dramatic illustration of a culture of engagement is found at New College. Here, each term, almost half of the students petition individual faculty to guide them in an exploration of a topic of interest by designing and supervising a tutorial. Each term, virtually every faculty member agrees to conduct one or more. Some faculty will conduct six or eight tutorials each term. Not a requirement for students or faculty, participation in a tutorial is, rather, an unspoken expectation built into a well-established culture of engagement.

4. Honor experiential learning. In the majority of mainstream institutions, the officially recognized learning is that associated with formally organized courses. While some colleges allow adult students to earn credit for learning from work, non-formal education, and other life experiences, and many professionally oriented programs require an internship, most undergraduates earn a degree by passing sets of classroom-based courses.

Recognizing the power of learning from experience, many innovative colleges make a conscious effort not only to recognize but also to encourage--and sometimes to require-such learning. Antioch students must complete five semester-long work experiences prior to graduation. At Olivet, students must complete a competency-based portfolio for which they are specifically encouraged to draw on their experiences beyond the classroom. At New College, the academic contracts that students develop each semester more often than not include experiential learning activities unrelated to any coursework. These include research projects, apprenticeships, volunteer work and service learning activities, and extended travel. At all three, the learning that can come from direct experience is further enriched because students are encouraged to reflect on their experience, typically under the direction of faculty. By legitimizing the learning that can come from experience, these colleges are preparing students to take full advantage of the wealth of such learning opportunities that they will encounter following graduation.

5. Sell hard. In many ways, colleges out of the mainstream are a hard sell. On most measures of educational effectiveness, Antioch, Olivet, and New College earn high marks and are applauded by knowledgeable educators. Antioch and New College score exceedingly well on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSEE), the best measure to date of the educational effectiveness of a college or university. Olivet has yet to participate in this survey, but I suspect it would earn high marks as well.

Nonetheless, public perceptions of the quality of innovative colleges, like those of mainstream institutions, are tied more closely to their selectivity and to perceptions skewed by the U.S. News and World Report rankings than to any assessment of their educational effectiveness. Thus, because it competes with the elite institutions for the most talented and motivated students, New College has an unchallenged reputation for quality. Antioch's reputation as a top quality institution began to slide in the 1970s as the college, determined to act on its commitment to educational access and equity, relaxed its admission standards and became only moderately selective. Oliver, the least selective and the least well known, has a longer road to travel to establish a widespread reputation for quality.

Despite these differences, however, all three institutions find it difficult to recruit as many students as they would like. The major problem is that, with insufficient resources to market themselves adequately, these colleges are not well known. Among those prospective students who are familiar with these colleges, however, some look elsewhere because they are seeking a larger school with a broader range of academic resources. Others either have no interest in the distinctive educational program of the institution or are uncomfortable with a student culture that appears to be homogeneous and exclusive. Unfortunately, it is also true that some applicants who would be a perfect fit with one or another of these schools choose to enroll elsewhere. Too often this decision occurs our of fear that others will see the degree as having less value than one from an institution that is mote well known. It is clear that schools that break the rules must do a far better job of documenting and publicizing their value.

6. Find a subsidy or innovate again. The educational programs at Antioch, Oliver, and New College are expensive to deliver. Because of their difficulties recruiting students, each of these institutions enrolls fewer than a thousand students, and two enroll little more than six hundred. With small enrollments, they lack economies of scale. Because they depend on close contact between faculty and students, they carry high personnel costs. These costs are highest at Antioch and New College where faculty are expected to spend a significant proportion of their time engaged in research.

No matter how educationally effective they might be, these three colleges, as well as others with similar characteristics, are likely to be severely challenged by the growing financial pressures facing all of higher education. Even during the economic prosperity of the last decade, pressures from state legislatures and from tuition-paying parents for colleges and universities to become more cost efficient increased substantially. Those pressures will only intensify in the coming decade. The financial status of these colleges would improve if each could find the will and the means to double or triple its enrollment. Whatever educational advantage they might lose by giving up some of their intimacy would be more than made up by having more resources to invest in their academic programs and facilities.

But increased enrollments will not solve the problem. Unless they alter their costly educational practices, or unless they receive a substantial subsidy through affiliation with a larger, well-funded institution, through a sizeable endowment, or by generating an independent revenue stream, these schools will continue to remain on the edge financially. Each has hovered on the brink of financial crisis for years. Had Antioch and Oliver not transformed themselves in the last decade, one by changing its administrative practices and the other by changing its educational program, I believe both institutions would already have encountered that crisis. Thirty years ago, New College averted bankruptcy when it engineered a successful transition from a private to a public institution. Since then, New College's pleas for increased state support and its attempts at fundraising have failed to generate sufficient resources to adequately support its educational model.

The need for new models

We are now entering a period in which colleges and universities will be searching anew for innovative approaches to undergraduate education. Several forces with the capacity to stimulate a new wave of innovation seem to be converging. New technologies are stimulating new ideas about how undergraduate education might be organized and delivered. At the same time, the growing body of knowledge about how learning takes place has pushed educators to rethink traditional pedagogies and to experiment with new ones. Just as importantly, external stakeholders are putting increased pressure on colleges and universities to become more accountable for results. Critics point to dismal retention and graduation statistics and to deficiencies in the skill levels of graduates. Accreditation bodies have begun to insist that the assessment of learning outcomes become a primary focus for institutional planning and evaluation.

Defenders of the status quo argue that the only thing wrong with our colleges and universities, particularly the ones where they work, is that they are not adequately funded. There is no reason to suspect, however, that more resources are on the way. On the contrary, the best estimates suggest that the cost of maintaining the status quo will soon surpass the capability and/or the willingness of society to provide the necessary resources. The calls for reform in higher education, now more frequent than ever, increasingly point to the need to develop innovative educational practices specifically designed to promote student learning and to reduce costs. In sum, with mounting pressure for increased effectiveness and efficiency, it is more than likely that, over the next decade, colleges and universities will have to find creative ways to do more with less.

Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned from my experience with innovative colleges is that we need new educational models that contain the educational power of the innovative institutions but that are much less expensive to deliver. These new models won t require the development of a new set of rules. Indeed, it should be clear from this brief review of innovative colleges that educational effectiveness need not be tied to a set of normative standards. I suspect that the same is true when it comes to cost effectiveness. Antioch, Olivet, and New College are as different from one another as they are from mainstream institutions. While colleges and universities are under increasing pressure from governing bodies and accreditation groups to conform to a set of normative standards, the diverse yet effective educational practices of innovative colleges suggest that standardization may be part of the problem, nor part of the solution. In fact, one important way to develop new models is to provide more enco uragement and support for innovation, not less.

New models are not likely to come from elite institutions. Their large endowments and high prestige give them little incentive to change. Also, I'm sad to admit that the new models are not likely to come from the innovative colleges that are the subject of this paper. Perhaps be-cause they have had to guard so strenuously the innovations they pioneered, most have become as resistant to change as traditional institutions.

Perhaps the mounting pressures for increased effectiveness and efficiency will stimulate a new wave of innovation among institutions whose circumstances encourage them to be open to change. I don't believe that those circumstances require an institution to have reached an educational or fiscal crisis. Moreover, the innovation doesn't have to be immediate, dramatic, and institution-wide. There are small pockets of successful innovation underway at a great many mainstream institutions. Without entailing much investment or risk, these could be expanded into full-blown experiments, the most promising of which could be expanded still further. My experience suggests that the most promising experiments will be ones that maximize cost effectiveness as well as educational effectiveness.

No matter where the spark might originate, however, I believe that lessons from colleges currently out on the edge could well inform the next round of innovations that our system of higher education so desperately needs.

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MICHAEL S. BASSIS is president of Westminster College in Salt Lake City.