Lindsey Pascoe Source 5

How is the functioning of higher education related to academic success?

Boswell, Martin. Giving effect to quality audit recommendations: a case study from an organisational culture perspective. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 37:5, pages 572-585. (2015). Web.

This article discusses how the US system of higher education is declining in its effectiveness. Research on student choice has revealed that many applicants in higher education make enrollment decisions based on a wide variety of educational, social, and personal factors. This is causing universities to make investments on things that are attractive to prospective students rather than things that can potentially impact student learning. The rise of grades in these institutions has also not been accompanied by growth in student learning. Instead, students who have enrolled in STEM major courses have been shown to change major after beginning school and switch into majors with better grade inflation.

This source changes my thinking regarding higher education because I had not thought about the fact that the way higher education is run can be leading to these increases and declines in certain fields. Because these institutions are aiming to recruit students while not taking into account how well they might do in school, they are causing academic success to go down the drain. Students are no longer challenging themselves in STEM majors but are rather taking the easy way out and switching into classes with better chances of doing well. Thus, universities are not striving to enhance their student's academic success but are instead looking to get the highest enrollment rates. This brings about the new idea that STEM majors seem to be increasing in first year students but their is still a shortage of these specialized individuals due to the switching of major when classes get too hard. I agree with this source that there are many outside factors that influence student enrollment, not just academic success. This source leads me to answer the question for the blog that higher education functioning aimed towards higher enrollment rates causes a decrease in academic success due to students opting out of hard classes.

In response to other sources, this source affirms that personal and outside factors have a huge influence on student enrollment and major choice, such as the ones talked about in Source 2. I agree with both of these sources equally because they both state that these factors are influential in higher education choices. However, I believe source 2 is more valid in regards to this topic because studies were directly held to show which factors and what level of influence and how influential they were in major choice. In addition, I can put this source in conversation with my previous two because it relates to the conversation I created about the seemingly increase of STEM majors, but the still relevant shortage in these individuals.

This source has led me to ask the new question of how does academic success relate to choice of major? Hopefully I will be able to find a source that discusses this topic because I believe it is not too broad of a question to answer. Now I have more answers regarding the functioning of higher education in regards to academic success and how that ultimately influence choice of major, which ties back to the personal factors previously talked about as well as the shortage of STEM professionals.