Have you ever wondered why 120 credits is the magic number for college/university graduation? What is it about this number that declares a student a graduate versus a number like 110 or even 90? What is so special about 120 credits? Certainly, it breaks down into accounting units that become easily billable; it provides a mechanism to determine faculty loads; it enables institutions to do predictive budgeting; it helps the federal government dispense loans, grants; it has become the bartering measure between institutions, etc. But do 120 credits produce a smarter and more career ready graduate than say 90 credits? We often rail against universities being referred to as businesses but the credit is the currency in this world.
Whence the credit hour? “A philanthropist, one of America’s wealthiest men, was worried about faculty pensions. The solution he successfully pushed, with the largesse of his foundation, led to the creation of the credit hour, which has become higher education’s de facto standard unit of measuring academic work.” (Inside Higher Ed, September 5, 2012). While concern was raised in 1906 regarding the efficacy of the credit, for over hundred years it has reigned supreme.
Precisely because it was a reliable accounting mechanism, the credit hour also became the unit of learning and accomplishment. Courses were defined by number of credits, and the credit itself was defined as approximately fifteen hours of seat time in a classroom (affectionately known as “butts in seats”). The emergence of the adult learner market, accelerated formats, and on-line learning have made the seat time definition obsolete. A three credit course no longer means what it used to. It simply means that, in the judgments of the appropriate institutions (accreditation agencies and the universities themselves), the student has completed the course. In other words, what began as a convenient accounting tool that had nothing to do with learning, has evolved into an inconvenient tool, largely irrelevant to the mission of higher education and is now trying to find something to count.
But couldn't you make the case that the real pedagogical merit of credit hours lies in their accumulation into a coherent structure? No matter how pedestrian the origin of the idea is, once these units are organized into a management tool, the question of how the practice started fades away. The typical 120 credit graduation requirement translates into approximately 40--three credit courses. If you peruse the many catalogs available on-line, you will notice that the 120 requirement is usually divided among general education, core, electives, and major requirements. Why? May I suggest that in the close-knit world of higher education, faculty members are charged with protecting their disciplines. I have often suggested that faculty do not work for an institution but for the discipline. Curriculum discussion has become protecting the discipline’s role in the overall curriculum. General education courses tend to be an opportunity for undeclared (and even declared) majors to sit at the smorgasbord of disciplinary major possibilities.
I am not indicting faculty. They do what they do because that is how they have been trained. While few of us have ever taken pedagogically themed courses, we received our training in graduate school sitting in the presence of revered scholars. They infused in us a love of the discipline and a mandate to go forth to educate others in the discipline. In fact, our graduate school faculty (not to ignore our undergraduate faculty) taught us how to “go to work.” Generations of faculty have received similar training and the same mandate. This is why higher education across the world is so similar.
We should not be surprised that the graduate model has reigned supreme. Graduate schools employ international scholars whose salaries need to be paid. The only way to provide the resources to maintain such a “high” quality faculty is by attracting a continuous stream of graduate students. These students come, sit at the feet of the famous, and go into the world of higher education and attempt to duplicate in their classrooms the graduate school model from whence they came.
In speaking to new faculty, I used two analogies—home owners vs. house sitter and the “Moses” type authority figure. In the homeowner vs. the house sitter, I asked new faculty to consider the difference between the owner vs. the sitter. The sitter can only try and keep the house in the shape she received it. The owner can do whatever she wants to the home, including tearing it down and starting over. Faculty need to see themselves as home owners. They “own” the curriculum and can change it in any way they think appropriate. Unfortunately, we have spent too many years as “sitters” of the curriculum and not owners. To the naysayers—changing a requirement here and there, adding a Power Point presentation, moving to on –line does not a renovated curriculum make.
In my Moses analogy, I suggested to new faculty that they received their teaching instructions and job mandate from wizened senior faculty—Moses type figures who were given the keys to the kingdom. Faculty were given the charge to work as faculty as they had been taught and not to change a thing until “Moses’ returned and gave permission. This is a “Waiting for Godot” type situation with an interesting twist. The Moses figure has returned time and time again, but we have not noticed. Senior faculty need only look into the mirror and realize that they are now the Moses figure with full authority and duty to instruct the younger faculty to transform the curriculum.
While the credit hour has become the highway on which higher education has run and faculty training has resulted in disciplinary protectionism becoming the order of the day within the 120-hour curriculum, we have reached the point where these will no longer suffice. External forces will require that higher education reviews and renews itself or cease to be relevant. Competition among higher learning institutions will become more pronounced and deadly, With the exception of the name brand privates and state supported institutions, many institutions will cease to exist.
Private liberal arts institutions will be on the chopping block unless they do something redefining and institution-changing. For example, how are the private liberal arts institutions in New York to survive under a free tuition policy for the state institutions? One answer—they could totally differentiate their approach to higher education. Move away from the credit hour highway and disciplinary protectionism and create a platform for the future that truly serves the student in less time and at less cost. By so doing, they can become student magnets of tomorrow—today.
“Disruptive technology” is called for in which higher education’s entire template and platform are extinguished and replaced by a new learning model that reflects advances in technology and our evolving understanding of learning. Upcoming—“Disruptive Technology in the Service of Higher Education”