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In a three-episode series, HigherEdJobs Podcast host Andy Hibel talks with Emeritus Professor John Thelin from the University of Kentucky College of Education, whose teaching and research interests focus on the history of higher education and public policy.
Hibel said he hopes the conversation enables listeners to learn “a little bit more about where academia has been and where we are now, and maybe think about where you want to push the needle in the future.”
In the second episode, the conversation turns to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, which Thelin said was “intended to be a very pragmatic, non-judgmental, [non-hierarchal] way of bringing some coherence to the thousands of colleges and universities.”
“When I was a graduate student at UC Berkeley, I had a job working at the Center for Research in Higher Education, and one of the cubicles down from me were the architects of that system. So, I watched it all from the ground up,” he continued. “Over decades, it became regarded as this pecking order and hierarchy so that institutions were positioning themselves — how can they get into this category — when it was intended simply to say, ‘This is what we do. Here are institutions in a comparable way.'”
Hibel and Thelin note that there tends to be an obsession with a handful of prestigious institutions, yet there are institutions across the country doing incredible work that is underpublicized.
“Even though I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of being affiliated with very prestigious universities,” Thelin stated, “I am really more intrigued and impressed by those that get less publicity — that go about their work, whether it’s undergraduate or graduate or professional education or whatever, with less ostentation. I think it’s a greatly under-appreciated sector or side of this landscape of American higher education.”
Hibel asked Thelin what things look differently across the country “as far as the classification of institutions — not for the Carnegie purposes — but more for the purposes of where it drives institutions and their mission and what they hope to accomplish.”
Thelin shared that he has seen colleges and universities turn their focus to resiliency and adaptability, especially in times of change. Yet, he cautions that sometimes this can lead institutions to imitate others, leading to oversaturated fields and too many institutions on the same paths instead of remaining truly distinctive.
Other highlights of this episode include discussions of the impact of the Morrill Act on higher education and whether academia is serving no one by trying to serve everyone these days.
