Reimagining Higher Learning for the 21st Century,
A conversation with
Provost Adam Bush and Jack Tchen

I love what Adam Bush says herein. This is part of a “Hacking Universities” series of discussions that incubate and accelerate changes we need to make right away. The spirit of Wayne Yang’s A Third University Is Possible is here from the vantage of the founder of a new type of college. Recently, poet and President of the Mellon Foundation Elizabeth Alexander changed Mellon’s guideline of funding away from “higher education” toward supporting sites of “higher learning,” thereby acknowledging Elders of communities hitherto systemically excluded and other places of advanced learning. How can we reimagine new sites within the old? And how can new formations emerge?

—Jack Tchen

So, Adam, I really appreciate your being willing talk at this kind of last minute like this, but I'm really trying to grapple with this question of how to, of all the institutions of our culture, I would like to believe that universities can actually begin to tackle the large questions not just of the day, but of our future, globally. And clearly, with the IPCC reports about the 11- to 10-year window we have and, in fact, we seem to be hitting some of those temperature thresholds even sooner. Certainly, in Jersey, I know, we've already hit it, that they're expecting to be 10 years from now. And of all the institutions of society, I would've hoped that universities could say we can take them on. And we have, in some ways, the resources to do that. But also, it seems that we're organized in a way that's kind of upside down at this point. And we shy away from being able to say, the biggest issue of our lives and humankind, right. So, and maybe that's just silly to pose it that way. But, you know, but if that 10-year window is true, then what does it mean really, for all of our students and our communities that we are connected to, right? So I just love for you to kind of help me think through these questions, you know, having been involved in setting up I don't know if you use the term alternative university, but some kind of different kind of way in which university can operate and certainly having attended conventionally organized research one universities and studying with fantastic people as you have, but understanding the unresolved tensions of that structure and system. Yeah, so I just love to, you know, have you talk about and think about it, you know.

I'll just start, but hone me in, in whatever direction. I think universities are set up in a way that even like gen-ed distribution requirements and things like there's like these buckets that students move through towards a degree and I'll talk about more from the undergraduate student experience than anything else. And there's great project-based learning that every school and really project-based learning is a professor coming up with group projects that people tackle that's due December 13th, because they're turning in grades December 15th. And so, it's like even when you're doing things that matter to the students it’s still on this arbitrary timeframe of the semester and tied to these things of like the credit hour. So what College Unbound is trying to do, but I think what universities at large could really be doing, is not project-based learning but interest-based learning [unintelligible] goal or maybe just urgent learning. And what does it mean to document, support, and unpack that learning in real time with students? And that it, it doesn't necessarily decouple it from learning outcomes. It doesn't take it away from a syllabus. But how's a syllabus been set up in a way that, that fosters that, that fosters that organically, and follows the students’ lead? Because the student body's really navigating these things in real time. And when I think about traditional undergraduate population, let alone my undergraduate population, that's for the most part late 20s to late 40-year-olds, but they're the ones with kids who are inheriting a lot of the stuff. They really are, they come in with a systems critique, they come in with an understanding of things that have affected them. And, college undergraduate experience helps, hopefully, give them the tools to not just have the systems critique, but the actionable steps that they are doing. And actual steps that aren't a college project, that aren't based on the college campus, but are the things that sustain them as activists and organizers and practitioners throughout their life. And, yeah man, I think in a lot of ways, I'm just repeating back to you what you said, but I don't think colleges, traditional colleges are set up in a way to do this well right now. And so that's, that's my sort of curricular answer. I also have a like structure of a university, infrastructure of the university answer, which is, colleges are, are, let’s see, a model of the successful college is that it's getting bigger and bigger and growing its student body and then also with that growing its footprints. And either it's growing its footprint or it's growing its online footprint and dealing with learners in a very different way then. But a traditional college campus for the most part is like growing as a campus, as a student body is, and I want to call that model into question. College Unbound works to call that model to question a lot and I'm not trying to build a campus. Right now, we have offices where we squat on the campus of a high school. And the student body gathers either at that high school at night, then turns into adult learner campus, or they gather in adult learning centers, or in public libraries, or the conference room of the United Way of Rhode Island, or at a conference room of a community health center. What we're trying to do as our model is really think about underused public or semi-private spaces where people are already gathering. And how do we recognize the learning that's taking place there. And also squat in those spaces so that you are embodying the practice of a college that has learning, that recognizes learning all around the world. It's not to then say we value learning where it happens, but come to this classroom and that's where you document it. It's we value it where it happens, and we are going to make sure we recognize it in those spots. And I think college at large can do that. I think there's so many spaces that you've been involved in, can, can do that, and can be sites of higher education. Without it being go to do this field trip experience and bring it back to the classroom. And so, when we're thinking about how higher education responds to a very quickly changing world and global catastrophe, I think it needs to be thought of as a curricular challenge and also with that supporting research and everything goes into that. But also an infrastructure challenge, and how we building different types of universities that work with the world differently, work with space and place differently, that will allow different types of scholars to develop. And it will break down I think this, this dichotomy between the classroom and the world at large.

So, if you were to reimagine, I love your idea of an urgency curriculum or an urgency-driven, you know, kind of approach. Which in some ways, in the case of climate catastrophe, and all the associated parts of unsustainable growth and development that contribute towards that. And then the necessity to not only decolonize, challenge racism, you know, get away from the carbon economy, all these kinds of things. How do we then maybe begin to change existing universities as they currently exist with the budget limits and the, the structures of courses and faculty, individualized faculty curriculum that are built in? How do we begin to change it as, as we're in those 10 years, right, we don't have a lot of time, we can't build an ideal model, but we need to kind of begin to change it as we are still…

Yeah, build the plane while you're flying in it.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, our student body's living through this rapidly changing world. And they are feeling the effects of it. And they're coming into college with different priorities. And my stepdaughter say her number one priority of how she's making decisions, how she lives her life, is really about climate change. And I even now don't approach decisions in that way. I think that should, but I think it's built into how young people are entering into higher education. I'm sure it plays into what colleges they're choosing to go to. But I'm also sure it goes into what majors they're selecting and what work they're trying to do while they're undergraduates and what decisions are making as they, as they graduate. So I think in a lot of ways, it's just that higher education needs to respond to students in real time, and understand who they are as whole people. When they're walking in, not walking into two years of a gen-ed curriculum, and you do this, and then you move on to do your major, or gen-ed curriculum, but you have your intro classes, and then you kind of find you want to do environmental science, and then you really hone in on a project, and then you get to when you get to graduate school, I think folks are able to tackle these issues from day one. They’re certainly tackling them on day zero before they get there. And so how do we take them? How do we learn from their urgency, and respond to that in their first moments of being in college, and follow that through line? I think it's, it's a redesign of everyone's curriculum. I think it's a, a re-honoring, it's a different kind of recognition of what's valuable, and what the goals of higher education are. And, to make sure that that's seen as both someone growing to who they want to be as a full participant in their learning in their life, but also collectively, if they are able to be actors and ensuring that there is a future. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think in a lot of ways it's very simple. It's just listening to young people as they enter into those spaces, or in the case of College Unbound, listening to adult learners who are dealing with those issues and the choices they make of where their kids are going to school, what food they're buying, what food they have access to, what clean water they have access to, what cars they're driving. They're making decisions that are connected to the climate crisis immediately, every day. And then they're coming to college that asked them to do arbitrary hypothetical questions and tasks, instead of really being grounded in the competencies and questions that they bring into that space. So, I think there's a lot of heavy lifting on our end, that we as higher education need to do, to just, to listen better, and with that redefine what we're asking of, of folks who are on their way to a degree.

So, I agree that this certainly is on the minds of all the young people and the climate actions that are going on now with very young people is that is evidence of that. And that immediately affects how they think about their futures and therefore what choices they make and what college can be for. So, in part that could be handled by just opening up spaces that become much more responsive and flexible to them, from the very beginning, as you're saying, and maybe even the selection process. And, so, what would convince universities, and how they make decisions, and how they are willing, even temporarily, to open up such spaces, to try out these kinds of things? You know, what might be a, an approach or a logic that would appeal?

I don't think institutions change unless they have to. And so, I think change, like when we started College Unbound a decade ago, we were the kooky ones saying college wasn't working. Like lots of people now say higher education is working for certain type of student and as a, as a field is not doing what it should be doing.

Why I go into debt, when the world is on fire?

Yep, right, exactly. And so, students are not going to college in the same way or different types of students are. And post-recession, adult learners enter the picture in a different way, and whether that was a bubble of post-2008 or whether that's a different kind of student demand that's now on higher education. And colleges are going out of business. And cost to run campuses are going up and then continue to go up. So, it's gonna force bottom-line decisions. It's how, when those bottom-line decisions are being made, it becomes the reason to act differently. It’s like the example I used last night about CUNY and the Open Admission Strikes of '69, came smartly in response to budget cuts being passed down by Albany. And students took that to then say, open admissions, you'll be able to, you're going to grow, you're going to have a university that reflects the city in which you're in, which is your public mission. And so, those budget-cut decisions are already, for the past 10 years have been made, certainly by public institutions, but also it's a lot of small private institutions that are going out of business all around the country. How are those opportunities to reframe curricula, to rethink what a campus is, and to think about how we're engaging our students differently?

So, there's a robust kind of alternative that begins at the very orientation of students and even appears in the catalogs that is created by group of faculty, administrators, and students who want to do it. Then that opening, if it's done well, should begin to bring in those kinds of students. Even students who may not consider going to that university, but all of a sudden see this as a real, interesting, possible option for them.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're, you're positioning it sweetly and gently as the, like a faculty and student committee will propose these things, it will get adopted in the catalog, that will appeal to certain students, and attract new students. And I agree with that. And, your point of the world is on fire, it's any college that is not doing this is not going to be able to sustain itself. And needs to think critically about these issues because they're at the forefront of students, and so, it's about how do they attract students, but also for their own institutional sustainability. They have to be grappling with what decisions they're making about financial budget lines, about what work they're invested in, about what the future of work is. And I think that that calls into question a university's relationship with its staff, with its facilities management teams, with its neighbors and its neighborhood. Universities have drawn on the resources of their neighborhoods since their founding, and I think a lot of that is being called out now, appropriately. And, so what does it mean to create open institutions in a different way that have a public good at the forefront of them. Because that's the only way they're going to be sustainable. That's the only reason that makes sense to have a campus.

So, zero carbon, and, and some kind of approach towards sustainable planning doesn't sound like it's sufficient. It's, it's an important beginning, but in some ways, those are steps assuming that we have a long term. So, how do we, so I get the idea of appealing to would-be students coming into a place and maybe transferring to a place that has a much bigger vision that matches their sense of urgency. Do you think that then becomes a way to begin to shift those who are already on the campus, as well?

I think higher education at large, like a student experience is not going to be seen as a four-year college student experience. And even right now, when that's recognized as like, the ideal college experience, it's, it's less than 25% of all college students are that. But I think even those 25%, I think that number is gonna shrink. And a learner's relationship to an institution will be in going in and out as they're learning things in real time for, for sure skills and workplace things, but also for a very rapidly changing world. And, I think that could be a very healthy shift for higher education. I don't want it to be a, I want this job, I get this skill, I then go do this. Look, I'm not, I think that's crummy. But I think that there's a really exciting version where it is, I am an active learner and actor in this world. And as that world continues to change, I want to make sure I'm a part of a community of learners. I think that's a, that's an institutional refrain. That calls into question admissions and finances and institutional citizenship. But, it's an institution that revolves around a student experience that isn't 18 to 22 years old, but a, “I'm gonna be doing this, the world's going this way, I'm going this way, I want to learn this stuff, it's gonna take me on these detours.” And that's a really healthy, interesting way of thinking about just lifelong learning. And, and it, so, I think that that provides opportunity, I'm not trying to be Pollyannaish, but it's like, I think that provides opportunities for rethinking higher education to respond differently, not just as a how do we have a climate change curricular focus and speaker series for our freshman seminar. But I think, I think the learners connected to an institution, that relationship, will change dramatically over the next decade.

That's, that's powerful. Certainly with the advent of AI, and what the forecasts are about how that's going to change jobs, and therefore major, the choices that people have of majors, and it's going to make all, all large categories of positions gone, and then what the, what's the role of career decisions being made? But also, I think what you're saying is that lifelong learners, and alumni who haven't had really ways of reconnecting to the campuses, many of which they love, and had some of the best years of their life, it opens the doors for them to come back in and actually co-mentor and mentor and be involved in a much more dynamic set of relationships.

And, I think, a relationship to an institution will be more of a relationship to a region. I mean, I don't think a, like there's a lot of really crummy, exploitative, part-time faculty relationships to higher education right now. So, I'm not glamorizing that. And, I think part-time faculty who are trying to do full-time work are connected to a region where they are between institutions. And I think there's a version of a student relationship where they are moving between schools, learning different things in different ways, and that's kind of cool. And so, for alumni to, and for staff to, I think it's how institutions relate to one another. I think that that will evolve over time, as well. Instead of being more insular and more territorial, these are my students and these are my alumni, it will be, these are the issues that are affecting this metropolitan area, this region, how are we collectively tackling them?

So for example, in Newark, just within blocks of our campus, literally across the street is New Jersey Institute of Technology, which has departments and specializations that we don't have on our campus. And then down the street is the Essex County Community College. Just two years, and they're happy when they can place their students in either one of our two institutions. So, in a sense, you’re suggesting not being so, so caught up in those institutional borders and thinking of the educational experience for a larger community. And how can we work together? Now, in this sense, you know, anybody who's thinking about university economics are going to go crazy with this because of who pays who and what is that get divvied up. But there's also a powerful argument, because none of our institutions really can cover the full range of what each other does. And to understand the interconnections that we have is, in some ways, more powerful than worrying about keeping account of, you know, who's paying for what. And I think in some ways, there's an argument there in a similar way to open admissions. But there's something about that, that's a brand-new way, or a new, old way of thinking about the public and public education, and that creating an even larger demand and thirst for what can be offered. Okay. [chuckles] Well, fantastic. So, if you were to start a brand-new place right now…

Right, yeah.

How would you go about doing it? I mean, so you've, you've, you've done this, and it's amazing. Yeah, in fact, maybe you can talk a little bit about what you did, and when you did it. But then if you were to now start in a different circumstance, you know, and maybe, since you're in Providence, and you're along the coast, and you're much more aware then, how many years ago, 10 years ago, of all the issues that are hitting us. And it’s not to say that the issues that are central to your, your vision of this, of your school, needs to be diminished, but all of a sudden, there's this catastrophe looming over all of us, right. So how would you reimagine that? I'm just curious.

I'll give them like two minutes, what is College Unbound thing and ramble a little bit. My theory of change a decade plus ago when starting College Unbound, that we are going to embed degree pathways within already accredited institutions that were connected to community-based learning. That we're gonna create opportunities for different types of students who will go to those institutions. And then we’re gonna have a consortium of colleges, universities, of colleges and pathways and output. And in some ways it was like an Imagine America kind of thing that had credit associated with it. And I still believe in that influencing institutions from within, and being a partner with colleges and universities was exhausting and demoralizing, and as leadership change any of those schools, we were the lowest priority, and when budget cuts happen. And so, as the landscape changed, we were just, it's that like, if you're not at the table, you're what's for dinner kind of thing. And, and as are, we got clearer and clearer about who our student body was, which was returning adult learners, who were looking for a curriculum that recognized who they were, and didn't want to be in a classroom with an 18-year-old, traditional college student, and tried 7 times to pass math at the community college, but that course never changed, like, didn't do it. Or we're told to go to the bursar's office on the first day of register and didn't know what a bursar was and left because they were humiliated. They need a different kind of college that was responsive to those, those questions. And as we started to work with the student body, we also pushed against the institutions we're partnering with, saying we need to be in control of certain characteristics of the curriculum, or of things as like silly as add drop dates or things like that as, as folks were navigating going back to school. And as we couldn't, we started to push to create an independent institution. So, in 2015, we were recognized as the 13th post-secondary institution in the state of Rhode Island. Began to navigate accreditation. In 2018 we passed our candidacy vote into accreditation. Just this year, 2019, got access to Title IV for Pell Grants and, and subsidized/unsubsidized student loans. And, you know, like I, like I said a little bit before, our college is not, the plan for the schools is not to build a campus, but to build a radical higher education infrastructure that recognizes learning where it happens, and to be an excuse for students, for learners to gather in different ways, and to collectively see one another and tackle work that's important to them. And that's within organizations. So like Ashé—the Ashé Cultural Arts Center or the United Way of Rhode Island—when students are employees of those institutions and sort of taking, tackling work that build the capacity of those, of those nonprofits, it, it changed the relationship between work and school and degree and individual and collective. And, now that we've like accessed Title IV and, and are still navigating the accreditation, we want that higher ed infrastructure not just be College Unbound as a thing, but how can we use that infrastructure and that back office to help support other organizations, or other scholars that are doing that work and want to begin to work with adult learners differently. And so, I think about it as like, a student of yours that was with a nonprofit then went to go get their degree, instead of going into traditional higher education then trying for a tenure-track job is really going back to that organization to support those employees or allies or affiliates or folks around a shared affinity to tackle that work. And so college becomes the excuse to bring people together. And that idea of college being the excuse, I think is really important. I don't mean excuses and something like shortchanges, but something that becomes the added incentive kick-in-the-butt for people to gather. And when you're gathering, you’re then doing different work or you're learning from another, from one another, first casually, but also very formally and very critically. In College Unbound, students rest together once a week in small cohorts where dinner is always provided, where childcare is always provided. Break bread together, and out of those conversations over dinner you are recognizing what's important to one another. And the issues that people bring to the table are ones that even if at day one they don't see as connected to an impending climate crisis, they are the issues that clearly are a result of issues of a climate crisis, or things that have continued to exasperate that crisis. So, issues around clean water, food accessibility, around transportation and pollution, around the infrastructure of their city. These are all the things that are on learners’ minds, and they need to come together to workshop them or come together to get angry together, to push for public intervention in that. And that's what's happening through the school. You know, it, it's both a very local Providence thing, and it's very much set up so that it happens wherever it happens. And Rhode Island has more coastline than the state of California.¹ The state is 3% bigger at low tide every day. I'm curious of how those numbers are going to change over the next ten years. And those issues are critically important to our student body’s life and livelihood. And it's, I mean, I know in other colleges like in Rhode Island, they have cute on-campus debates of like should they build an offshore windfarm off the coast of Block Island. And that's like a real debate that's happening, and when it's done on the college campus, it's like this cute debate. Our students are the ones who are the fishermen, who are the ones who are out in the waters, who so, so they have a different relationship to those things and need the space that is a city council meeting or town hall meeting. But they also need the space of others like them gathered together to workshop and understand those issues. And that's what I want this college to be, and all colleges to be.

So, could you explain your relationship to Ashé, and the work and the amazing work that Carol Bebelle has done in New Orleans? And how, so how is it that they gather there? They come back and they go back and forth? Because it does suggest the possibility of other sites, that are not strictly limited to Rhode Island, but I understand the accreditation is within that state.

Yes, so I mean accreditation actually allows us to go wherever; it's state approval. That is the kind of deciding factor. I mean, the thing that I'll say on camera but isn't the official on-camera answer is when I was running Ashé calls around with Carol, it was a semi-illegal operation where the school partner in, in Rhode Island thought they were running a distance learning program, where the students in New Orleans never saw it as distance learning program. They gathered in person and they did the work they want to do. And we just had faculty meet with them together. So, it was like how do you, how do you both check all the boxes, and also do the work you need to do anyways, because that's what the situation calls for. The partnership with Ashé grew out of Carol saying I need to think about how I'm training my next generation of leaders of the Ashé Cultural Art Center, but also cultural and community leaders of New Orleans who need degrees to move forward or to really maintain their jobs as they are so they're not getting passed over by younger, less experienced folks with degrees. And so, Ashé College Unbound grew out of that, that urgency. We started a bachelor's program that would meet at Ashé weekly, where students had individual projects of import to them and connected to their workplaces, but also would come together to debate the things that were collectively necessary to tackle. And that was about the livelihood of the Ashé Cultural Arts Center. It was also about the neighborhood of Central City in New Orleans. That was also about changing neighborhood demographics and access to funds and philanthropy in a post-Katrina New Orleans. That was about a changing shoreline and where that activism and work was happening. And Ashé College Unbound’s work did, and should, and needs to feel very different than the United Way of Rhode Island's work as they navigate College Unbound. That needs to feel very different than the community health center’s work. These affinity groups are tackling things that they need to, that they are worrying about and questioning as they go through the week, and so they have a reason then to come together. With Ashé, the idea of that of, that model of the cohort in two ways is, is I think different than the pattern that really challenges higher ed stuff. So like, that Ashé group, there's 11 of them, they graduated, it wasn't the next year, we insisted there need to be 11 more folks at Ashé. At some point there will be another cohort Ashé, but the idea is that there's an accordion of going back and forth, that I think challenges that growth model of traditional higher education, where it's only a success if it continues to get bigger. The idea here is as folks graduate, then that program goes away for a little bit and it comes back when there's the student need in that way. Or it will change shape or go to a different part of the city. That to me is, I think, really important for how higher ed needs to think of itself, I mean NYU just gets bigger and bigger and claims more and more territory. Instead, what could it be to have temporary campuses that open and close to deal with urgent issues of those spaces? Like that's really interesting. And, at a site like Ashé, the Ashé Cultural Arts Center is in conversation continually with Ifetayo [Cultural Arts Academy] in New York, with organizations in Minneapolis and Chicago and Los Angeles, both on their own and through funding from Kellogg, from Ford, from Kresge, from Surdna. These foundations that give funds to build linkages and shared programming between the sites. Foundations shouldn't be the only ones that are bringing them together. Or we should at least piggyback on that foundations have done that, to then recognize the learning that happens in those spaces. And when you do that, the work with a site like Ashé really becomes national or even global movement building. It's higher education as that excuse to bring people together differently, to tackle those issues that are locally important, but also globally urgent. And, so that Ashé is doing New Orleans work, but also thinking about community and cultural development nationwide. I think about violence intervention organizations in Providence, that are always talking to Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, and they're already flying to each other. Why can't that be a college program where folks are really, in a deep exchange of ideas of what interventions work here versus there? How can we publish about it? How can we do this work better, differently, deeper? That's what I want us to do. That's what I want all of our education to do.

Fantastic. Yeah. That's great. Thank you. This is very suggestive, very helpful. And I'm also getting a text from Erica saying I need to be at this other meeting. Thank you. This is really useful.