The Near-Term Future of Student Affairs
William Barratt
Indiana State University
Abstract
To identify the significant issues in student affairs 1995-2000, a group
of twenty-five student affairs practitioners, faculty and students, were
formed. Using e-mail technology and structured group techniques, five clusters
of issues were identifies as important in the near term future of student
affairs. First, the diversity of interests, values, and intents within
and between student groups based on ethnicity, gender, social class, academic
preparation, age, etc. will increase. Second, there will be general decreases
in funding and increases in external pressures on post-secondary education
and student affairs, and the need for accountability will continue. Third,
increased uses of technology will change the relationships between the
student and the campus and between professionals in post-secondary education.
Fourth, student affairs in whole or in parts may redefine its role to adjust
to new conditions. Fifth, the uses of systems thinking metaphors, models
and paradigms will increase.
The Near-Term Future of Student Affairs
To identify the significant issues in student affairs 1995-2000, a group of twenty-five student affairs practitioners, faculty and students, were formed into what became called the Student Affairs Oracle Group. Using e-mail technology and structured group techniques, the Oracle Group identified five clusters of issues in student affairs which should be important at least until the end of this century.
The Oracle Group members were: Richard Antes, Will Barratt, Ellen Broido, Stan Carpenter, Diane Cooper, Michael Cuyjet, Mike Dannells, Bill DiBrito, Richard Dornberger, Pat Enos, Nancy Evans, Tom Hadley, Kirk Hollowell, Gary Hanson, Margaret Healy, Curt Kochner, Susan Komives, Debora Liddell, Chuck Lynch, Tim McMahon, Michael Rheiner, Chris Sohn, Donna Talbot, Terry Williams and Jamie Washington. This article is the joint effort of all the Oracle Group members. They have contributed the primary conceptual content, and have provided much of the language.
Predicting the future is a tricky business. In the near-term, accurate predictions rely on well informed analysis of current conditions. The future, like the present is an interrelated whole, and predictions of the future need to take into account many different trend lines, influences, fashions and histories in order to converge on an approximation of the wholeness of the future. Using a mixed group of professionals to make predictions allowed the richness of members' points of view to be reflected in the richness of its predictions.
Method
In the Fall of 1994, e-mail solicitations were made to more than 40 student affairs professionals requesting their participation in an on-line discussion group. Prospective Oracle Group members were not randomly selected, but were asked to join based on their professional experiences
and activities, diversity of points of view, background, and on their ready access to e-mail. Faculty members in the group were asked to solicit a graduate student from their campus to join the group.
Participants
The Oracle Group consisted of 12 full-time faculty (most of whom had previous administrative experience), 11 full-time administrators (many of whom have teaching experience) and 2 full-time students. Included in the group were four ethnic minorities and 4 new professionals. Two group members did not continue with the project and are not included in the totals. A least 75% of the Oracle Group members participated in each round of the e-mail discussions. Group members were not discouraged from sharing their work among colleagues and students, and submitting the results of this group effort under their name. In this way, the Oracle Group was opened to many influences and points of view.
Procedure
Work began once members had made a commitment to work with the group over a multi-month period. The work of the Oracle Group was divided into rounds. Each round consisted of a question from the author, who acted as moderator, and individual responses from group members. The moderator collected the individual responses and edited them into material which included all of the topics discussed.
Round 1. The first round was designed as a brainstorming session. Oracle Group members were asked the following:
During the remaining five years of this century many interesting things
will happen in Student Affairs. Would you please list the 5 to 10 issues,
concerns, trends, themes, cultural events, etc. which you believe will
be important in Student Affairs during 1995-2000. These may be new issues
or continuations of old issues. Group members submitted 164 items, which
were edited by the moderator to a list of 39 statements. Items which were
similarly worded, or concerned similar subject matter were condensed into
a single item. Each item preserved, as much as possible, the original language
from the submissions.
Round 2. The list of 39 statements from round one was sent out and the Oracle Group members who were asked to ". . . select the seven (7) items that you think will be the most important in Student Affairs from 1995-2000." A ranked list of the 39 items was generated based on the number of times each item was selected as "most important". Because it was possible that important issues may have been omitted, members were told that they would have an opportunity to reintroduce issues in a later round.
Round 3. The 39-item ranked list was sent out to Group members (containing the number of votes each item received) with the charge to ". . . select FIVE (5) items, or groups of items, that you think are the five most important on the list. Feel free to group similar items together as a single item." Any item not selected by any member was omitted from the list. Based on member input, several items were combined resulting in a ranked list of 13 items.
Round 4. The 13 item list was sent out to group members with the
following request:
1. Select and rank the five issues that you believe will be the most important in Student Affairs in 1995-2000. In the process feel free to combine topics, or even to add new material.
2. Annotate your five issues by adding text that illuminates the fullness and complexity of each one. Members submitted material that provided several ways to analyze the 13 items, and to group them into meaningful issues. Using this member input, the moderator created a list of five broad and interrelated issues.
Round 5. The five broad issues generated in round 4 were sent out to oracle members with the following directions:
Looking at the list, there are a lot of "ands', "buts", and "this means" which need to be included for each of the five items. Your job -- please add commentary, clarification, illumination, illustration, caveats and creativity to each of the five issues identified below. Members submitted a wealth of material to integrate and clarify the five broad issues. The five issues were also analyzed using with the material submitted in the previous rounds to make sure that the issues were as inclusive as possible of all the material submitted.
Results
The primary finding of the Oracle Group was that the future, like the present, is very interrelated and is subject to multiple interpretations. The multiple interpretations generated by members helped to illuminate the diversity inherent in all of the futures of student affairs. The findings of the Oracle Group defy a deconstructivist analysis into a hierarchical list. The fundamental interrelatedness of the identified themes reflects one of the Oracle Group findings: that of the increasing uses of systems theory.
Five broad areas constitute the majority of the predictions for student affairs 1995-2000:
1. The diversity of interests, values, and intents within and between student groups based on ethnicity, gender, social class, academic preparation, age, etc. will increase.
2. There will be general decreases in funding and increases in external pressures on post-secondary education and student affairs, and the need for accountability will continue.
3. Increased uses of technology will change the relationships between the student and the campus and between professionals in post-secondary education.
4. Student affairs in whole or in parts may redefine its role to adjust to new conditions.
5. The uses of systems thinking metaphors, models, and paradigms will increase.
A quick review of this list should settle minds that the Oracle Group
foresees no radical changes. Many of these 1995-2000 issues have been with
student affairs for decades. This conservative list does not mean, however,
that things will remain the same. One strong underlying theme was that
times are very different, and the level and pace of change will be greater
than ever. These 1995-2000 issues are also about student affairs in general.
On each campus these issues will become reality in a different way, reflecting
the environment of that campus.
Diversity
The first issue, diversity, was ranked by a wide margin as the most important theme for student affairs 1995-2000. Two different responses to diversity were identified by the Oracle Group: First, adjust the campus to the diverse groups -- which is the process of accommodation. Second, adjust the diverse groups to the campus -- which is the process of enculturation. These responses are not mutually exclusive but require very different practices.
New and different student populations, faculty populations, national and international demographics will continue to change the pressures on the campus. Some of these pressures will come from on-campus groups, and some will come from off-campus stakeholders. These different pressures may require a redefinition of the role of student affairs in dealing with the changing campus environment.
1. Changes in the underlying theories and research of student development will be required to account for new and different populations. Issues of generation, ethnicity, gender, social class, and even nationalism will need to be explored further.
2. Different concepts of community, rights and responsibilities, organizations, relationships with on-campus and off-campus groups will be required. Most of the current organizational concepts for both student affairs and student organizations come from a Euro-centric tradition. The new diverse campus may require new ways or organizing or new ways of enculturating students to traditional organizations.
3 Different practices in teaching, advising, programming and delivering student services to new student populations will continue to be a major issue. Just as adjustments are often made for studentlearningstyles, adjustments may need to be made for other important individual differences.
4. Different practices in managing the changing stakeholder groups will have to emerge. New practices, such as increased stakeholder contact, increased uses of accountability data, increased sensitivity to stakeholder concerns may be required.
Funding
The second issue identified continuing decreases in funding for higher education, increases in external pressures from parents, legislators, alumni and external stakeholders, and increases in internal pressures from students and internal stakeholders. These pressures are related to changes in US and international demographics. Individuals' perceptions of the role and function of the undergraduate experience are a dynamic thing, and reflect underlying social changes.
As views of college change, pressures to comply with these new views follow. Many of these new views of the undergraduate experience will combine to increase pressures for accountability in student affairs, based on the many role definitions (metaphors) of student affairs coming from the many different stakeholders. Many new metaphors of post-secondary education reflect an individual consumer mentality. If the beneficiary of the undergraduate experience is perceived as the student's rather than society's, this view suggests that the cost-burden for college should fall on the student, decreasing governmental and social contributions for college costs. Accountability to the many external and internal pressures may lie with new information relying on new models of new students to whom services are delivered in new ways. This decrease in funding will require a concomitant administrative response, such as new organizational practices, organizational structures and outsourcing services.
Technology
The third issue, increased uses of technology in education will likely have a significant impact on the practice of student affairs. Developments on the information superhighway, telecommunications, e-mail, CUSeeMe, etc. will profoundly affect communication in post-secondary education.
New relationships between the college and the student will emerge as the result of these new technologies. The nature of these new relationships has yet to be determined.
1. New relationships between professionals will emerge as a result of these new technologies. The use of the Oracle Group constitutes such a new development in relationships between professionals, as do the various Student Affairs lists and news groups.
2. College teaching and student services were developed in an era of on-campus face-to-face education and services. This mode of education delivery may be radically shifting. This change will vary tremendously from campus to campus, but will generate change.
3. Distance learning, Internet access, Gopher servers, WWW servers, easy-to-use HTML editors, textbook and CD-ROM packs, e-mail and e-conferencing, phone-mail, teleconferencing, satellite up-links and down-links, off-campus learners and other technology-driven trends will create new relationships between the college and the student, and between members of the profession.
Role of Student Affairs
The role of student affairs, and of student affairs professionals may shift in response to these trends on campus in 1995-2000.The historical foundations of the profession may not provide the framework for the future of student affairs. Challenges to the idea of student development as increasing autonomy and complex cognitive processing have already been raised in the discussions about gender, ethnic and spiritual identity. Challenges to the traditional ideas of student
organizations are coming from many non-traditional campus groups. New knowledge and new practices require more training.
1. One response to new roles may be an increased professionalization among staff. Continuing professional education may be a typical response to changing times.
2. For the profession, more direct alliances with the academic mission
of the campus may be called for. These new alliances may call for revisions
to the theory base and call for new practices.
Systems thinking
Increased uses of systems thinking and systems models will likely have an impact of the practice of student affairs. The fundamental interrelatedness of the four issues above illustrates the need to use more systems-based metaphors, paradigms and models.
1. The response to the profession of the issues presented during the next five years will have to be multi-modal, multi-paradigmatic, multi-systemic, and multi-cultural.
2. Shifting the focus in student affairs into systems thinking will shift attention onto issues of community, and onto other campus issues. The theory and research base of student development represents the US tradition of autonomy and the ascendency of individual growth over community growth. The Campus Ecology movement has for 20 years sought to examine the relationship between the campus community and growth, but the largest volume of student affairs theory, research and practice remains firmly focused on individual growth, and not campus community.
3. An increased recognition of the interconnections between campus programs, campus organizations, student affairs practices, academic affairs and desired educational outcomes will require more systemic approaches to campus management.
Discussion
There are two areas of discussion to be drawn from this study. The first area of discussion is that the future of student affairs is uncertain, but that broad categories of changes can be identified. The near-term future will most likely be similar to the near-term past, but identifying the important changes is no easy task. Many Oracle Group members "pet" predictions were omitted quickly fell by popular assent. What did not enter the discussion was as interesting as what is on the list. There was little discussion of drugs on campus, and violence on campus was mentioned only in the context if divisiveness.
How accurate are the results of this research? The methodology employed here is neither quantitative nor qualitative. There was no random sample of subjects, no control groups, and none of the traditional scientific method was employed. The methodology here flows from the idea of the town meeting and the voices of the people. The results here are as accurate as the perceptions of each Oracle Group member, and each idea was scrutinized by each member several times.
The information here is limited by many factors. The use of e-mail technology may have influenced the identification of technology as a major issue in this project. The identification of the five theme areas are a group effort. A different group may identify different theme areas.
The second area of discussion concerns the methodology itself. E-mail groups, such as were developed here, are a usable technology for generating ideas and for group discussions. Synchronous communication in meetings, groups, and conferences, are a way of life in student affairs. Asynchronous communication, in letters, memos, reports, articles, and newsletters, has been largely reserved for information communication. E-mail technology greatly enhances the convenience of asynchronous communication regardless of distance, and further e-mail allows for timely interaction between group members, simulating a thoughtful discussion, or a thoughtful town meeting.
Of what use is the information from the Oracle Group? These predictions
should help student affairs practitioners to focus attention on their campus
efforts in each of these five areas. The methodology used here can be employed
on an individual campus to identify issues which are campus specific.