By Brian Herman, Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota, President/CEO and Claudia Neuhauser, Associate Vice President for Research and Technology Transfer and Professor of Mathematics, University of Houston, Vice President

Landing on the Moon

Fifty years ago, on July 20, 1969, two Americans became the first humans ever to walk on the moon. It was America’s response to establishing technological superiority over Russia after the Soviet Union sent Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961, the first human, into space.

In One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon, Fishman recounts how Kennedy made it clear that his original determination to go to the moon was to overtake the Russians. He was told, after the Gagarin flight that going to the moon was the only way to beat the Russians in space. He believed that “The Soviets have made it a test of the system. The Soviets had bragged from their very first space launch about how their performance in space proved the superiority of communism over democratic capitalism.”[i] Kennedy asked Congress on May 25, 1961 to appropriate funds “to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.“[ii]

It took less than ten years to land a man (actually, two men) on the moon and return the crew safely to Earth.  This achievement took an enormous effort. At the height of the program, over 400,000 people worked on the Apollo program, across all states, costing a total of $126.4 billion in 2018 dollars.[iii]

The National Defense Education Act of 1958

Landing on the moon wasn’t the only response. The United States responded initially after Sputnik in 1957 with the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958[iv], whose purpose was “to strengthen the national defense and to encourage and assist in the expansion and improvement of educational programs to meet critical needs.” It passed the House and Senate with an overwhelming majority and was signed into law in 1958.

Much of the funding appropriated under the NDEA went to federal grants and loans for students and strengthening science, mathematics, and modern language instruction. As a consequence, enrollment in higher education more than doubled in the 1960s. Enrollment grew from about 3.6 million to 8.0 million during the 1960s.[v] Much of the growth was in 2-year colleges. To accommodate the rapid enrollment in community colleges, new community colleges were founded at a rate of about one per week on average during that decade.

Educational attainment has increased dramatically since 1957. In 1957, only about 9.6% of men 25 years an older and 5.8% of women 25 years and older had completed four years or more of college. In 2018, this percentage was 34.6% for men and 35.3% of women 25 years or older.[vi]

Despite the enormous increase in students attending college and getting degrees, we are again facing the prospect of losing technological superiority. As Robert Mueller’s recent report[vii] indicates, Russia has developed capabilities to interfere in our elections (and likely many other damaging capabilities), and as Thomas Friedman recently pointed out, “China has its eye on dominating the two most important industries of the 21st century: artificial intelligence and electric cars. It intends to use A.I. to perfect its authoritarian control at home and electric cars and batteries to liberate itself from dependence on the “old oil” of the last century. China knows that data is the “new oil,” so the country whose government and companies can capture the most data, analyze it and optimize it will be the superpower of this century.” [viii]

Growth of Postsecondary Education

As was the case for the Race to the Moon, postsecondary education will need to be part of our country’s equation of staying competitively ahead of Russia and China. But, unless substantive changes occur in our postsecondary education infrastructure and not simply by pouring more money into our current institutions, our country will not be able to meet these new challenges.

The current system of colleges and universities was established during the 1960s when California under University of California President Clark Kerr launched a Masterplan for Higher Education[ix] to meet the enormous demand. The Master Plan called for a 3-tiered system: 2-year colleges, 4-year colleges focused primarily on teaching at the undergraduate and Master’s level, and research universities. The plan ensured that only a small number of research universities would provide doctoral and professional education and that research became the almost exclusive purview of research universities.

This system spread across the U.S. and worked well for decades. Research universities grew and flourished. Today, less than 10% of postsecondary institutions are classified by the Carnegie Classification as research universities and they enroll 36% of all postsecondary education students. On the other end of the spectrum are the community colleges that make up 36% of all colleges and universities and enroll 34% of all postsecondary education students.[x]

A Focus on Quality and Outcomes

Where higher education has failed is in not focusing more on quality and outcomes that matter in creating a successful society. The current focus of our higher education system needs to shift from simply increasing the number of students who enroll (and graduate) to producing individuals that remain competitive throughout their lives for today’s and tomorrow’s rapidly changing economy. Today’s students need to leave universities with skills in complex problem solving, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, working in teams that are fluid and change repeatedly and be technology savvy. Developing these skills is best done by solving problems that do not have clean solutions in the back of a textbook, come from real-world problems posed by the public or private sector or the community and require clear and effective communication of implementable solutions back to whoever posed the problems.

The current system of higher education is ill-suited to provide every student with these kinds of experiences. There are three main reasons: First, only 1 out of 3 students attend higher education research universities who could provide these skills, while 1 out of 3 students attend community colleges that do not have the capacity to provide these experiences. Second, research universities still use the one-on-one apprenticeship model that does not scale well to the millions of students who need to acquire research skills. Third, except for 2-year colleges, our higher education system caters largely to full-time students and only provides limited life-long learning opportunities for those who are already in the workforce.

To remain competitive and ahead of Russia and China, we will have to scale access to real-world problems to current enrollment numbers that could be achieved through a combination of integration of educational activities across institution types and a much deeper involvement of the public and private sector and communities in the delivery of educational experiences.

---

[i] Fishman, C. (2019). One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon. Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

[ii] NASA History: Excerpt from the ‘Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs.’ President John F. Kennedy. Delivered in person before a joint session of Congress May 25, 1961. (https://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/features/jfk_speech_text.html; accessed on June 29, 2019)

[iii] Fishman, C. (2019). One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon. Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

[iv] National Defense Education Act. Public Law 85-864. September 2, 1958. (http://uscode.house.gov/statutes/pl/85/864.pdf; accessed on June 29, 2019)

[v] National Center for Education Statistics. Table 301.20. Historical summary of faculty, enrollment, degrees conferred, and finances in degree-granting postsecondary institutions: Selected years, 1869-70 through 2015-16. (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/current_tables.asp; accessed on June 29, 2019)

[vi] CPS Historical Time Series Tables. Table A-2. Percent of People 25 Years and Over Who Have Completed High School or College, by Race, Hispanic Origin and Sex: Selected Years 1940 to 2018. (https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/educational-attainment/cps-historical-time-series.html; accessed on June 29, 2019)

[vii] The Mueller report, annotated. Washington Post Staff. Updated April 20, 2019. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/politics/read-the-mueller-report/?utm_term=.8ee82d31cff4; accessed on June 29, 2019)

[viii] Friedman, T. Trump Takes On China and Persia at Once. What’s to Worry About? He’s imposed pain. Now, if he only had defined plans and goals. New York Times. June 25, 2019. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/opinion/trump-china-iran.html; accessed on June 29, 2019)

[ix] Coons, A. G., Browne, A. D., Campion, H. A., Dumke, G. S., Holy, T. C., McHenry, D. E., & Sexton, K. (1960). A master plan for higher education in California, 1960-1975. Sacramento: California State Department of Education. (http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/masterplan/MasterPlan1960.pdf; accessed on June 29, 2019)

[x] Data from The Carnegie Classification of Institutions: 2018 Update Public File. (http://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/; accessed on June 29, 2019)