Editorial Columns

Connecting with Today's Students

Remember 1997?  Google had just been introduced. The price of a gallon of gas was about a dollar. President Bill Clinton had just begun his second term in office. And the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities released Returning to Our Roots: The Student Experience, which found “a critical need to reform undergraduate education” and to “focus on universities as genuine learning communities” that put students first.   

As chair of the Kellogg Commission, I embraced that imperative and have worked to promote the notion of student-centeredness in higher education.  Now, a dozen years later, we are faced with rising costs of operations, a changing competitive landscape, shifting demographics, reductions in state appropriations, increased pressures for accountability, and a widespread economic downturn.  

Yet, a fundamental question remains unchanged: How do we balance our goal of living the vision of a student-centered university with our mission of advancing excellence in teaching, research and service?  

There are no easy answers, and generational differences among students, faculty, and administration present some challenges.  In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not getting any younger. The average age of a university president is 60 years old, and retirement is within the sights of an estimated 6,000 higher education administrators who will need to be replaced annually through 2014.[1]  Although some may be busy attending retirement celebrations, we can’t forget the need to find common ground with the 17 million students on college campuses today.

Today’s Students  

I have been in higher education administration for 32 years and am the father of two recent college graduates. I have found that learning about teenagers is a lot like programming a VCR--by the time you figure it out, everything has changed again. 

So what have we learned about today’s students, and how can we better connect with them?    

Let’s begin with time management.  If you think there isn’t enough time in a day, consider this: A recent study found that the average young person manages to pack 23 cumulative hours of activity into every 24-hour day.[2] They do so by engaging in up to five activities at once, and they’re not just walking and chewing gum. Seventy-seven percent send and receive text messages on mobile e-mail devices while driving a car, and 41 percent text while skiing, on horseback, riding a bicycle[3]--or listening to a lecture in a college classroom.

They’re also watching videos online--billions of them. The ease of capturing, editing, and posting videos has facilitated a proliferation of new video sharing web sites. Web-based delivery has been called “the currency of the modern media marketplace,”[4] and students are at the forefront of embracing video for entertainment and education.   

Although students still use e-mail to communicate with “older” people like us, they “talk” to their peers through social networking sites like Twitter, badoo, bebo, Tagged, MySpace, and Facebook, which is the number one social networking site in the world.[5] More than 85 percent of students use social networking sites, with nearly 60 percent checking in on a daily basis.[6] To better connect with students, 34 percent of our faculty at Penn State now have Facebook accounts, but the idea of instructors on social networking sites has received mixed reviews in a survey of undergraduate students. Although approximately half of all students said they use the sites as a mechanism for communicating with classmates about course-related work, only 5.5 percent said they use the sites to communicate with their professors.[7]   

Clearly, we’re not on the same page, and the communication gap is in danger of  becoming a communication gulf.

Mark Zuckerberg, the 25-year-old founder and CEO of Facebook, said, “The other guys think the purpose of communication is to get information. We think the purpose of information is to foster communication.” More often than not, we’re seen as “the other guys.” At the same time, today’s students don’t just think differently, they are different.  

We are serving the most diverse group of students that higher education has ever seen. Between 1980 and 2000, total minority college and university enrollment surged by 122 percent,[8] and now approximately 44 percent of the nation’s students are minorities.[9]  

Women also have increased their representation. In the 1960s, approximately 40 percent of college students were female; today, women make up 57 percent of traditional college students.[10]  

Home life today is also different from what many of us remember. In 1960, only 8 percent of families with children under 18 were headed by single parents; now, it’s 30 percent.[11] Many of today’s college students have experienced a childhood with scheduled play dates, an abundance of activities, after-school care, seat belts, bike helmets, and a level of over-protectiveness not seen since the movie Jaws made parents across the country abandon the beaches. But today’s students also have been schooled in tragedies like the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Virginia Tech shootings, and Hurricane Katrina, and the benchmarks of this generation are vastly different from our own.  

Combined with financial pressures and worries about grades, it’s no wonder that in recent months, 85 percent of the college students reported feeling stressed in their daily lives.[12] At Penn State, the number of students seeking assistance from our counseling staff has more than doubled since the 1980s.  

Creating a Student-Centered University

Twelve years ago, when the Kellogg Commission started the discussion about a student-centered university, we considered ways to make the curriculum more engaging, improve communication, and enhance the campus environment. These efforts are a work in progress, but I have seen great success in several areas at colleges and universities across the nation.  

Engage Students with Technology. Today’s students have never “rolled down” a window, cut and paste has never involved scissors, and the world wide web has been accessible since they were born. They require 24/7 accessibility, interactivity, and high-speed connections. This is a plug-and-play generation, and although it is expensive, the opportunity to engage students with technology is extremely promising.  

At many of our universities, we’re providing students with the rich content they crave through on-demand podcasting, online coursework, downloadable videos, and tools that enable groups to collect information, edit documents, and share resources.  

Mobile phones also represent a ubiquitous influence. At last count there were 4 billion mobile cellular subscribers on the planet.[13] At Penn State, more than 95 percent of students have cell phones, a growing portion with Internet access. With the growth of mobile broadband, these portable, personal devices are becoming the technology of choice for communicating, surfing the web, taking and sharing photos, and making videos.  

At Penn State, we have launched a self-guided iHear tour that allows cell-phone users to listen to interesting facts about university landmarks. We can expect to see increasing use of devices we have yet to imagine.  

Make Personal Connections.  Although technology can facilitate connections with students, studies have shown that the “offline” world is still the primary influence in young people’s lives. Given this reality, there is no substitute for spending face time with students.  

Every year, I stay overnight in the residence halls with students on arrival weekend. I help them move into their rooms, eat with them, and share living quarters with them. I do this to keep my finger on the pulse of our student population, and it has been an extremely informative experience. My residence hall stays have launched ideas such as the founding of a late-night entertainment program that attracts thousands of students, extended hours in our exercise facilities and student service offices, and even more hooks in the residence hall bathrooms. Hooks? Well, some requests may seem trivial in the overall scheme of things, but I have found that many great ideas come from asking students the question, “If you were the president of the university, what’s the one thing you would change?”  

Practice Early Intervention.  One of the most important things we can do for our students relates to an e-mail I send out within the first week of every new academic year. I ask faculty and staff to pay attention to early indications that students may be in personal or academic distress. Most students who receive failing grades in college show signs of it in the first few weeks of their freshman year, and sometimes the most modest of interventions can help a student through this time. Those interactions are often critical, and I am always gratified to hear of lives that have been changed because someone took the time to engage a student.

This parallels a message I give to all the new students during the Freshman Convocation. I tell them, “My most important advice to you as a student is to get to know at least one faculty or staff member well during your freshman year.” I suggest someone in the campus clergy, student affairs, or the admissions office. It could be their academic adviser or a faculty member. In doing this, they have someone they might be comfortable approaching if a problem arises.  

Personally, I also feel it is critical to step outside my role as president and to engage students in other ways. For example, I’m the adviser for the student Performing Magicians. I eat in the residence halls from time to time, visit athletic practices, play in the intramural racquetball tournament, perform at student events, and I’m a frequent guest lecturer in courses. This fall, I have been entrusted with my own class--the inaugural group of Penn State’s Presidential Leadership Academy.  

Recognize the Role of Faculty and Staff.  On our smaller campuses, it doesn’t take long for our faculty and staff to get to know most of the students. But at our large University Park campus, it takes a lot of interaction to make a big place feel small.  

For staff in areas that do not deal directly with students on a day-to-day basis, it sometimes can be difficult to envision how one fits into the student-centered philosophy.  

As leaders, it is crucial that we take our message to the frontline staff, faculty, and administration. As often as possible, I emphasize that every employee’s work is a valuable part of the student environment because we all are working to create an atmosphere conducive to living and learning. From the physical environment to the intellectual environment, student life benefits enormously from everyone’s efforts.  

Conclusion  

These suggestions are designed to support an academic environment that exists, first and foremost, to educate our students, and the trends are encouraging. A recent survey found that, compared with five years ago, there is more emphasis on engaged learning, undergraduate research, and the first-year experiences that support the transition to college.[14]  

This is good news for our students and higher education because no matter how much brilliant research we generate, how many award-winning books we publish, and how many people we serve through outreach activities, our principle mission is the education of students.   

[1]  Bureau of Labor Statistics. Table 1. Employment by major industry sector, 1996, 2006, and 2016.

[2]  A BETA Life-Youth, OTX Europe in association with MTV Networks, 20th Century Fox, Fox Mobile Group, Nokia, and Channel 4. (2008).

[3]  Osterman, C., ed. for Reuters. (2008, November 21). Survey: 71 percent of Americans text while driving? eWEEK.

[4]  Sebastian, M. (2007--08). Video will not kill the communications star…but it will affect your job. Ragan Web Content Report.

[5]  Caruso, J.B., & Salaway, G. (2008, October). Key findings: The ECAR study of undergraduate students and information technology. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research.

[6]   Caruso, J.B., & Salaway, G. (2008, October). ECAR study. EDUCAUSE.

[7]  Caruso, J.B., & Salaway, G. (2008, October). ECAR study. EDUCAUSE.

[8 ]  American Council on Education. (2003, October 8). Minority college enrollment surges over the past two decades; Students of color still lag behind whites in college participation. ACE’s Minorities in Higher Education Annual Status Report Examines 20 Years of Postsecondary Data and Trends.

[9]   Glod, M. (2009, June 1). A changing student body. The Washington Post.

 [10]  Marklein, M.B. (2005, November 19). College gender gap widens: 57% are women. USA Today.

[11]   U.S. Census Bureau. (2004, June 5). Chart: Families with children under 18 headed by single parents.

[12]  Benac, N., & Tompson, T. (2009, May 21). AP poll: Many students stressed, some depressed. Associated Press.

[13]   International Telecommunication Union. (2009). Measuring the Information Society. The ICT Development Index.

[14]  Hart Research Associates. (2009, May). Trends and emerging practices in general education: Based on a survey among members of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. -->