The faculty and the future

Abstract

The history of higher education belies the common assumption that educational institutions are static and that faculty oppose change. Many faculty do, however, resist innovation, a resistance based not in reactionism but in a basic concern that innovators are losing sight of the centrality of the faculty role in education. That concern, although understandable, has no basis in fact, as a review of current alternative models makes clear. Indeed, one can postulate that no alternative model that avoids or minimizes the impress of the faculty can expect to meet the requirements for effective learning. Developments of the 1970s should be seen as attempts to restore earlier values of teaching and learning while responding in a new social context to a highly diverse, mass student body. The implications of this assumption bode extremely well for the future.