Continuous Improvement in Undergraduate Education: A Possible Dream

Abstract

ness model in the face of a tsunami of change that is redefining both the need for their services and the ways in which this need can be met. Demand for a higher education has soared because a college degree is as essential for achieving a middle-class income today as a high school degree was in the 1970s. Created to serve the uniform needs of an upper-class clientele, colleges now serve an enormously diverse student body. Whether measured by age, educational and cultural backgrounds, race, gender, or need, the diversity of the people served by the system has greatly expanded. Expectations have also grown sharply, as students demand a greater scope and depth of expertise and seek to acquire the complex constellation of talents needed to participate in a fast-paced knowledge economy. Pressures for change are mounting, as administrators struggle to find ways to meet these new demands in the face of constrained public funding and growing public concern over increasing tuition prices. Even the best universities have reacted to these pressures by making incremental changes in class size and trying to better integrate research and instruction. But these changes are costly and it is difficult to see how they can scale-up to meet the enormous demand. Most knowledge-intensive, service-producing industries have restructured their operations around new information technologies to improve productivity and deliver new, personalized services. For a variety of reasons, education, health care, and several other enterprises organized to meet both public and private needs have been slow to adopt these innovations, and higher education is no exception. But higher education must find a way to introduce the deep man-