Giving Compass' Take:

· Tara García Mathewson discusses the need for change in higher education and how to make it more relevant and worthwhile. 

· How can colleges and universities adopt more innovative strategies? What are some ways to make college courses more relevant?  

· Learn more about higher education and why students need both college and technical education. 

The American higher education system, as it exists today, runs the risk of ripping off an entire generation. That’s according to Cathy Davidson, an English professor and director of the Futures Initiative at the City University of New York, which focuses on envisioning the future of higher education. Students are paying too much to gain too little knowledge that is fundamentally useful to their lives, she said. Davidson, who wrote “The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux,” has some suggestions for how to fix this problem, and the stakes are high.

“If you’re ripping off young people, you’re ripping off your whole society,” Davidson said. “You’re ripping off the future.”

“The New Education,” which recently won the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ Frederic W. Ness Book Award for contributions to the understanding and improvement of liberal education, profiles faculty members and institutions that Davidson believes are changing to better prepare students for the modern world and workforce. They are emphasizing interdisciplinary studies, making lessons relevant to students’ lives, encouraging collaboration and teaching students how to keep learning and adapting to a changing world even after they leave college.

Read the full article about making higher education more relevant and worthwhile by Tara García Mathewson at The Hechinger Report.