Our Roles and the Need for Change in US Higher Education

When looking back on CSL 490 this summer, many topics and insights into the role of student affairs professionals surface. The Student Personnel Points of View, Learning Reconsidered 1 and 2, Pinterest board and We’re Losing Our Minds all show connections to each other, the current state of student affairs, and necessary changes to our system.

The Student Personnel Points of View offered the first glimpse at the roles and responsibilities of student affairs professionals. It is not only our job to help students develop as whole people, but to help them take their education into their own hands. Learning Reconsidered 1 and 2 built on these ideas and challenged that transformational learning was the best way for students to become well-rounded, civically minded, critically thinking individuals. Student affairs professionals were charged with the task of supporting students through their transformation in college from students to people prepared to contribute to society.

            Although the oldest of these documents was written over 70 years ago, we can see from the class Pinterest board that little has really changed in the role of student affairs professionals. If anything, the ideas shared in SPPV and Learning Reconsidered 1 and 2 have been expanded as students have become more diverse. Books pinned to our board, such as One Size Does Not Fit All, Helping College Students Find Purpose, and Getting to Graduation, show that the number one priority of student affairs professionals is still to be a support to students in their development throughout college. This is something that will never change despite the changes we may see for academics in higher education in the future.

            One thing that was made clear in We’re Losing Our Minds is that despite the lack of change in the role of student affairs, the American system of higher education is failing its students. As we have seen on the class Pinterest board, a lot of the focus in higher education has shifted to whether students are really receiving the best education for their money. People want affordable, quality education that prepares students to really succeed after college. According to an infographic on the future of higher education, over half of adults said that the US higher education system does not provide students with good value for their money.

As professionals we still hold similar roles in providing learning opportunities outside of the traditional classroom setting, yet universities no longer challenge students to be critical thinkers. They focus more on passing students through the system with their degrees, and sending them on to jobs for which they are not really prepared. This means that we must work to find new opportunities to engage students in higher learning; we must also challenge ourselves to work with faculty and other administrators to set better standards and expectations for students.

This class more than anything has made me consider my own undergraduate education and how cheated I feel about my experience. I was not challenged to think critically in classes or to relate my learning outside of the classroom; I left college having fulfilled the requirements but not retaining much of what I supposedly learned. As student affairs professionals we have the opportunity to engage with students in a way that helps them develop beyond the classroom. We are also in a position to reach out to faculty to work on bettering opportunities for higher learning. 

The SPPV and Learning Reconsidered documents offer ways that we should contribute to students’ education; the pins to our class Pinterest board offer insight into what our higher education system looks like now and how we can evolve to best support students. Everything we have examined in class shows that little has really changed in the roles we play as student affairs professionals, but that universities are no longer offering the best education to prepare students. Because of this need for change, it is ultimately up to us as professionals to take all of this information and make a decision about whether or not we want to make a change in the quality of education college students are currently receiving.