Major Trends and Issues in Higher Education Today: Implications for Improved Instruction

Abstract

WE CAN no longer refer to our American institutions of higher learning simply as communities of scholars. Neither can all of their activities be identified as educational. One characteristic, however, dominates the transformed institutions. It is the pursuit of knowledge-a pursuit more intense and with clearer ends in view than previously. The ends no longer are to know but to use and to produce action-to free men from drudgery and starvation, to enable man to defend himself, to extend life, to reduce pain, and to influence and to improve man's mind. Neither is the pursuit of knowledge confined to universities-it permeates the inner core of all types of institutions of higher learning as well as many businesses, industries, and governments. Even churches are dissatisfied with old ideas and are earnestly searching for new answers to old problems. This quest for hard knowledge, the kind that produces, the kind that provides immediate tools for the management of man and his environment, has followed military demonstrations that scientific knowledge is power. The military uses of science and technology during World War II, and since, were effective, visible, and impressive. The excitement and enthusiasm for discoveries and their magic techniques returned to campuses with World War II veterans. Sputnik I reinforced and accelerated the pursuit of knowledge. So a swift and basic transformation of higher education was triggered in the postwar era.