The Time is Now
Our students are already rewriting the narrative—we just have to decide whether we’ll join them.
Dear Colleagues in Higher Education (especially those at mid-sized directional primarily undergraduate institutions in the United States),
We are running out of runway.
The world around us is changing faster than our institutions are willing to move. Students are questioning the value of college, faculty are stretched thin, and the public narrative about higher education is eroding. Yet inside our campuses, we often act as if staying the course is still the safest option. It’s not.
Don’t worry about our R-1 peers. We are not them, and they are not us. We cannot compete with them on many fronts, but they don’t have many of our assets at regional PUIs. But we need to embrace change…and the time for change is now.
We’ve weathered budget restrictions, enrollment declines, and pandemics. We’ve come through a system built on privilege and assurances that promised stability as long as we stayed the course. Along the way, we’ve produced invaluable insights—social, physical, and metaphysical—that have reshaped human understanding across generations.
But it no longer works for our image. This does not resonate for the students who arrive at our institutions - they are looking for their “why”. They are more anxious and concerned about their career now than ever before, so what they are looking for is a pathway for career goals and success.
Higher education (authentically) must be about the student’s goals and definitions of success. If it’s not, we are destined to fail. The beauty of the academy is something that can be discovered, the purpose of the university should be student success.
Eastman Kodak’s story offers a lesson worth heeding. Kodak once led its industry but collapsed because it denied the realities of technological and societal change. The company protected its identity at the expense of its future. Higher education risks the same fate when we deny how profoundly today’s students—and the world around them—have changed.
I have spent 17 years teaching in college classrooms, 15 of them at Eastern Illinois University. As a tenured full professor of sociology, I specialize in quantitative methods, social theory, poverty, food insecurity, and welfare policy. Like many faculty colleagues, I received little to no formal training in teaching. So, as many of us do, I taught as I had been taught—finding a rhythm early on and rarely straying from it. That rhythm becomes our pedagogy.
Their advice still hits today: “I quickly learned that belonging and connection had to be established before true learning could happen. I needed to change my pedagogy to situate the student in the discipline, not try to force it upon them.”
For much of my career, I taught statistics—a required, gateway course for sociology and criminology majors. It was a class students approached with apprehension. Each semester began with that familiar mix of anxiety and obligation that signals disconnection rather than engagement.
When I was a junior faculty member in my third year of teaching, I asked a mentor to help me be a better instructor. Their advice still hits today: “I quickly learned that belonging and connection had to be established before true learning could happen. I needed to change my pedagogy to situate the student in the discipline, not try to force it upon them.”
As Director of Faculty Development and Innovation at EIU, I heard the same story repeatedly from colleagues: we tend to teach as we learned but discovered at some point that it was not effective. And while we discuss pedagogy often in workshops and learning communities, it’s usually among those already invested in teaching improvement.
I share this background because it grounds what I am about to say:
Students do not feel like they belong in our classrooms because they do not see the purpose—the “why”—behind our courses.
This past summer, colleagues and I called and texted returning students who were eligible to register but hadn’t yet done so. The stories were familiar: financial strain and a lack of connection to campus. One student, who had planned to major in business, decided instead to start a dog grooming company after their first year. They simply couldn’t see how their degree aligned with their goals. That conversation has stayed with me. This is higher ed’s “wicked problem”.
Higher education must urgently pivot from preserving its traditional identity to centering students’ purpose, belonging, and future relevance—by reimagining curriculum, pedagogy, and institutional culture to meet the realities of today’s learners.
Higher education can do better - especially at our regional primarily undergraduate institutions. Based on my experiences as a faculty member and administrator, I offer a few recommendations for how:
1. Connect the curriculum to careers.
We need to center purpose in every classroom. Career Services and faculty should collaborate to embed service, experiential learning, and career exploration into all courses. Curate internships and applied projects that help students see the real-world value of their studies—especially in interdisciplinary contexts.
2. Build a first-year curriculum that serves all students.
First-year and summer bridge programs rightfully focus on at-promise students, but high-achieving students need community and foundational belonging too. Inclusive first-year experiences set shared expectations for what it means to be a college student. When these programs are integrated—rather than siloed—they foster peer networks across academic and social divides, reducing imposter syndrome and stereotype threat for everyone.
3. Center instruction and innovation.
Instruction matters. Faculty are brilliant scholars, but centering students often requires unlearning how we were taught. Academic freedom is also the freedom to innovate—so give yourself permission to experiment with pedagogy. The rewards, for both students and faculty, are worth it. David Franklin’s Invisible Learning is a testament to student-centered teaching (and useful for my own pedagogy).
4. Empower and reward faculty innovation.
Institutions must invest in educators who design learning for today’s students, not yesterday’s. Innovation should be part of evaluation, contracts, and promotion—not an extracurricular activity. We are teaching institutions now. Let’s own that with pride and purpose and accountability for our students.
5. Acknowledge (and invest in) the impact of all educators.
Faculty are vital, but they are not alone. Advisors, peer educators, supplemental instructors, coaches, RAs, and financial aid staff—all of them educate. All of them shape belonging. We must break down the ideological silos that marginalize non-faculty educators and instead honor the collective ecosystem that supports student learning, and invest in these services.
6. Stop blaming students for being “unready.”
College readiness is not a student deficit—it’s a systemic design challenge. Universities must integrate remedial and supplementary learning with degree pathways so that every student can connect skills to purpose. Seeing students through a growth mindset is essential; otherwise, we limit their potential before they have the chance to realize it.
I believe deeply in the power of higher education. It changed my life—as it has for so many of you, and for countless students past and present. But belief is not enough. If we don’t pivot now, we risk becoming obsolete by our own resistance to change.
Like Kodak, we can cling to what we were—or we can evolve toward what our students need us to be.
The next chapter of higher education will not be written by those who defend the past, but by those who reimagine the future with courage and care.
Our students are already rewriting the narrative—we just have to decide whether we’ll join them.