The Future of Leadership in America

I received this email from Rick Cherwitz this morning and it stopped and made me think– What can all of us trained artists do about changing these statistics? Would love your suggestions and I bet Rick would too..
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Folks,

In the process of working on an article, as well as preparing for my interview for the national audio forum on diversity later this month (via Inside Higher Ed), I have pulled together some data with which you may be familiar.

These statistics should give us pause: (1) African Americans and Latinos comprise nearly 35% of all U.S. citizens in the age range of Ph.D. candidates. (2) 44% of the nation’s children come from underrepresented groups and this will grow to over 50% by 2023 and above 60% in 2050. (3) Yet these same groups constitute only 18% percent of bachelor’s degrees conferred, 12% of the total research doctorates awarded, and only about 21% of all graduate degrees. (4) While national data about first generation students is not available (or at least I have been unable to discover it), it is clear from my work locally with IE that the same issues/problems are faced by this population.

Unless substantial increases in each of these categories are made, our nation’s capacity to discover and disseminate knowledge–to be a world leader–will be seriously threatened, as will our ability to produce a well-trained workforce capable of keeping the U.S. competitive in the global economy.

Rick

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Richard A. Cherwitz, Ph.D.
Professor and Director, Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE)
A Cross-Disciplinary Consortium: “Educating Citizen-Scholars”
Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement

https://webspace.utexas.edu/cherwitz/www/ie/

Department of Communication Studies
The University of Texas 1 University Station A1105
Austin, Texas 78712
VOICE: (512) 471-1939 FAX: (512) 471-3504

https://webspace.utexas.edu/cherwitz/www/

spaj737@uts.cc.utexas.edu
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The Impending Demise of the University

You may have seen Don Tapscott’s recent article about the future of the University:

http://edge.org/documents/archive/edge288.html#tapscott

Tapscott paints a very compelling picture of the radical changes coming in higher education, probably much sooner than most anticipate.

The article was forwarded to me by Rick Cherwitz founder and director of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE) consortium. Rick’s note on the article is worth passing on:

“As you know, I agree that we need a new model of pedagogy–one that
involves more than simply implementing new uses of technology, as Tapscott
suggests. Universities (as well as K-12) are broken in a more fundamental
way. While biased, I think we need organic, student-centered, problem-oriented, entrepreneurial approaches to learning. Tapscott is on the mark in explaining why universities are so slow to change. His approach resonates with the IE platform for education.”

In view of Tapscott’s observations, you might find interesting an article
on IE that was just published this week.

Gary Beckman and Richard Cherwitz, Richard, “Intellectual
Entrepreneurship: An Authentic Foundation for Higher Education Reform,”
Planning for Higher Education, 37:4 (July-September, 2009), 27-36.

https://webspace.utexas.edu/cherwitz/www/articles/ed-reform.pdf