Lessons for the Post American World
by
Fareed Zakaria


The recently published book entitled: The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria raises interesting challenges for the American society and more importantly for our systems of higher education. Changes in our society often gather force in our colleges and universities and the change that will be necessary in the future requires that our institutions begin now to acquaint our students with these trends and America’s possible responses.

Primarily, we need to bring about an attitude change in our students regarding America’s role in future international relations and the world society. The author illustrates that gone are the days when America leads the world in a number of factors and more importantly our sole super-power status is no longer seen as the moral authority to serve as the world’s top cop. The importance of America’s economic status will be challenged in the future by a variety of countries most importantly China, Russia, Brazil, India, the European Market, and potentially Mexico. As America’s leadership dwindles in comparison, the attitude of our country needs to embrace is one of becoming a team player and leader rather than the control commander (or the decider) of future events.

The challenge for higher education, therefore, becomes one of embracing the global changes and finding ways for our students to learn how to effectively participate and remain an effective partner. While these changes will take time to accomplish, we cannot afford to debate the future but rather begin now to make changes in our system of learning.

To begin with, we as educational leaders need to live what we teach. Our first step should be to develop a method of measuring ourselves on an international basis. As other countries ramp up their spending on higher education and strive for increased quality in their institutions, we can no longer afford to pretend that our institutions sit at the pinnacle without fear of competition. As our economy has learned, just about everything is now in competition with on a global basis and so should our institutions of higher education. As our federal government has closed the door to international students entering our institutions for fear of terrorism, we are finding the best and the brightest from other countries seeking educational opportunities elsewhere – thus turning off the brain drain from their countries to the detriment of America.

Our second step should include the introduction of global perspectives of current events affecting our society into our classrooms. This can easily be accomplished through such sources as I-Tunes U where students can listen to and sometimes view lectures on topics also being taught in our classrooms, thus bringing about a broader perspective and a richer understanding of the subject. For that matter, as other countries debate issues in higher education, we as leaders in our country should also be exposed to these concepts by also listening and learning from their debates. If we are to retain our educational ranking on a global basis, we will need to learn what others are thinking and doing. As an example the efforts in Denmark and Great Britain to establish quality improvement indicators and programs for their systems of higher education should be part of our training for trustees and presidents.

Another source and potentially required reading for our students could be the web sites for newspapers from around the world. Regular reading of the Daily Times of India or other English versions of global news would provide our students with perspectives challenging the traditional American views of issues affecting our world. Thus providing the opportunity for our students to learn how to participate in the world as a team member and potentially a team leader rather than only advocating for the American perspective on issues as handed down by American television.

As we introduce our students to global perspectives, we need to introduce the world to our future leaders by getting more of our students to spend time in other countries. Our government needs to step up in this matter and provide funding to allow for international experiences for all college students. This will actually have a dual impact of allowing people in other countries to be introduced to our citizens other than our soldiers as well as allowing our students to have a better understanding of the competition they will face in their future employment. I experienced this first hand during an opportunity to provide training to communities in Kazakhstan as I came back with a better understanding how their country is poised to become an economic power-house in central Asia with a budding democracy. Instead of invading Iraq to spread democracy, we could have been more effective by increasing support of these beginning steps of democracy in Kazakhstan as it borders China, Russia and thru the Caspian Sea, Iran as well as being very close to Afghanistan. Kazakhstan has oil reserves that are for the most part yet to be tapped but have the possibility of being rather competitive with Iraq. China, Russia, and Europe have recognized the importance of this country and are developing economic ties to assure access to these oil reserves. During my visit three years ago, America’s reputation was still repairable if we were to develop educational partnerships and opportunities for their people to have a greater understanding of the democratic processes. We as educational leaders can do our part by increasing the requirements and opportunities for our students to spend a semester or a year in another country irrespective of the educational program the students are involved in. In community colleges, we need to provide the opportunity for our career education students to also go abroad, as example, sending building trades students to a country in South America to both learn about their building practices and to help improve facilities where needed could have a dual purpose.

When I started my education in a military institution, much was made of the individual leader, the command and control concept of leadership. As I was retiring from my role in university administration I looked back and acknowledged that command and control leadership had given way to team development and leadership. I was no longer expected to be the all knowing leader rather to be the person able to draw out the expertise of my diverse leadership team to improve the performance of our institution. These same management concepts are required in business and government. The future as described by Mr. Zakaria, will take this concept a step further by requiring our thinking to be globally diverse and include a more shared governance approach to decision making. While the process may take longer, it provides each of the players with a stake in the future both the reward as well as the responsibility. Our institutions need to both lead by this example as well as educate our students on its advantages and how to improve its effectiveness.

Finally, we need to re-engineer our concept of higher education as the ivory tower behind ivy covered walls only accessible by those deemed worthy enough by barriers that we have imposed to create the exclusivity of our institution. America’s success has been based upon the opportunities we have offered to anyone to become a success. As higher education becomes much more important as the ticket to such success, we need to assure that anyone can access such opportunity and become a success. The change has to occur from inside our ivy walls thru the tearing down of our towers and creating instead a stronger link (a supply line if you will) between the elementary and secondary schools of our nation and our higher education institutions. We can no longer afford to sit in our towers and look down on these other systems of learning and tell them to bring us better students. We have a shared responsibility to improve the quality of students and create the opportunities for all students to access higher education. Programs such as Early College High Schools, Career training starting in high school but thru community colleges, basic skills training available for middle school and high school students by community colleges, and improved re-entry programs coordinated with employers for older adults are a few of the improvements we should be looking to make.

As the author points out in his book, dollars spent on military solutions to threats against our country may be politically popular but they will not solve the problems. Our country’s role in the future world will be benefited by better educating our students on how to partner with other societies and countries to make better decisions of global issues. The defeat of terrorism can best be accomplished by improving the economic opportunities throughout the world and developing relationships based upon mutual respect and cooperation. Sending 300,000 students abroad rather than 300,000 troops is less costly and more effective in improving the global respect of America and our ability to remain a participant of economic leaders in the future.


The Second World

By Parag Khanna

The lessons from this book for community college trustees are described in the following summary:

First and foremost, education of our nation matters. We need to do all we can to bring in students and assure their success by obtaining as much education as possible. Our nation faces the real possibility of losing its middle class and moving to a society of only two classes, upper and lower.

As we work towards improving the education of our nation we need to also ramp up our economic development activities as job development/opportunities for our graduates also matters. We need to do all we can to help retain and reinforce a strong middle class and to reduce unemployment and under-employment especially among the lower wage earners in our nation.

As we stress improvement in education, we need to eliminate the silos of our current educational systems and develop a better link with the K-12 systems as well as the university systems. As our colleges experience the pressure of the majority of students entering our colleges unprepared to perform college level English and Math the success of the students is at a greater risk. We need to help change this scenario by development cooperative programs to improve the academic preparedness of our entering students.

While the above ideas are inward looking, our colleges must also create a world view and context for all our academic programs. Decision making can no longer be accomplished on only what is best for our nation or for our national interests. We need to have leaders aware of and involved in a global context of decision making. Our economy is no longer just a local or even a national economy but rather global and our students need this understanding in order to succeed in the future. By having our students travel and study throughout the world enlightens them on a global basis but also acquaints other cultures and peoples with our future leaders.

Finally in order to have higher education available to all in our society, we need a better financial aid system that will allow students to acquire the highest level of education they can without the adverse impact of future indebtedness that carries on for decades. Potentially, we may wish to devise a system whereby employers hiring our educated students will be responsible for most of the educational costs.