Values

Documents/AACU/Values

The Interdependence of Inclusion and Excellence -- With this plan, AAC&U reaffirms its conviction that quality and diversity are integral and mutually enriching dimensions of an educationally effective learning environment. Building from its longstanding commitment to equity and inclusion, AAC&U will vigorously challenge educational traditions and practices that, historically and today, steer less-advantaged students toward programs that teach narrow skills for an initial job, while more advantaged students reap the benefits and value of a liberal education. Against these well-documented trends, AAC&U will stand with the LEAP National Leadership Council’s call to “Aim High—and Make Excellence Inclusive” by identifying and promoting institutional policies and practices that help all students, whatever their background or area of study, develop the important outcomes of a contemporary liberal education. AAC&U will make it a high priority to promote educational practices that can help students from underserved groups and backgrounds—who are, collectively, the “new majority” in higher education—achieve these essential learning outcomes.

Liberal Education across the Disciplines and Professional Fields -- Over the next five years, AAC&U will work vigorously to challenge and change the traditional equation of liberal education with study in the arts and sciences alone, and/or with study in general education alone. AAC&U will provide advocacy and action to advance the “essential learning outcomes” as a framing for the entire educational experience, as necessary elements in any college education that seeks to prepare graduates successfully for work, life, and citizenship, and as the best standard for student success.

Civic, Diversity, and Global Learning -- from School through College -- While colleges and universities place high value on preparing students for responsible citizenship in a diverse democracy and the global community, the evidence suggests that there is little public understanding of this aspect of college learning. AAC&U will work to articulate and promote a compelling contemporary framework for the preparation students need—encompassing knowledge, skill, choices, and action—to become responsible participants in a diverse democracy and in the global community. AAC&U will highlight campus models that connect this framework with learning in the arts and sciences and in the professional fields.

Authentic Assessments as a Catalyst for Individual and Institutional Learning -- AAC&U will vigorously promote approaches to assessment that are designed to focus both student and faculty attention on the essential aims and outcomes of a college education. While supporting the new calls for greater transparency and accountability, AAC&U will continue to resist—and will provide alternatives to—the use of multiple-choice tests as the primary index of the quality of institutions’ or student’s achievement. The organization will focus on assessments that both foster and demonstrate students’ ability to integrate and apply their learning to complex problems and projects.

The Central Role of Faculty in Achieving Inclusive Excellence and Authentic Assessment -- Faculty have played the driving role in establishing U.S. world standing in higher education; faculty vitality is the single most important determinant of educational quality. Yet faculty have been under relentless attack for decades, both in the press and through funding policies and exigencies that force campuses to turn to adjuncts rather than full-time faculty. The new challenges of achieving inclusive excellence fall on a faculty that feels overburdened and undersupported. AAC&U will remain a strong voice for the importance of faculty quality and vitality in principle and will work actively to foster faculty leadership and creativity in practice. In partnership with faculty, AAC&U will emphasize quality improvements within the regular teaching, curriculum, research and departmental responsibilities of faculty, challenging the widespread practice of improvement through an unsustainable expansion of faculty roles and assignments. And AAC&U will continue to provide rich opportunities for faculty development that feature faculty members’ own curricular, pedagogical, technological, and assessment creativity.

Integrative and Applied Learning -- In and Out of the Classroom -- The real test of educational excellence is whether students apply their learning in their lives beyond the classroom. Integrative and applied learning are therefore catalytic themes in AAC&U’s vision of essential learning for the twenty-first century. With these ends in mind, AAC&U will work to advance the importance of the larger educational institution as a crucial laboratory for liberal learning, democratic and global citizenship, and work preparation. AAC&U will work vigorously to promote and expand existing designs for helping students become more engaged, more intentional, and more reflective about the larger implications and applications of their college learning. And, AAC&U will make it a high priority to discover, develop, and promulgate academic and student–life partnerships that help traditionally underserved students achieve—and apply—the essential learning outcomes that are the center of this strategic plan.