Device-free classrooms mooted in Yale plan to rebuild public trust

Universities must take responsibility for declining levels of public trust in higher education, according to Yale University’s president after a wide-ranging inquiry found the institution needs to look again at fees, admissions and teaching practices to regain popular support.

Results of a year-long probe into why many Americans have lost faith in universities published on 15 April put the decline down to three broad factors; soaring prices, perceived unfairness around admissions and “issues about what is said and taught on university campuses” including free speech and political bias concerns.

The committee of Yale academics tasked with the exercise has published 20 recommendations after its extensive investigation that involved in-depth consultation with the public and various stakeholders.

Among the most eye-catching is a call for a “device-free policy” to be the default across the university which means “no phones, laptops, or tablets…in classroom settings” although exceptions could be made for “pedagogical, research, or practical reasons”.

This is positioned as part of wider efforts to “re-center the classroom” with faculty, students and administrators urged to make teaching “more rigorous and rewarding, with the goal of cultivating sustained attention, intellectual curiosity, and disciplined habits of mind”.

Beverly Gage, the John Lewis Gaddis professor of history at Yale, who co-chaired the inquiry, told Times Higher Education there had been “really surprising levels of enthusiasm” for the idea among students and faculty and her own experience of teaching a device-free class this year had been “really positive”.

Other recommendations include:

• That, over time, Yale substantially raises its household income limit for students who don’t have to pay tuition fees
• That the institution does “everything possible to make the financial aid system more comprehensible, predictable, and fair”
• That the university introduces a minimum level of academic achievement in admissions either linked to SAT score or in the form of a Yale-specific entrance exam to ensure that the “top priority in admissions decisions should be academic achievement”
• That the university undertakes a “transparent review of its administrative structure” with a view to establishing a principle that it “should be hard to administratively expand, and easy to contract”
• That new principles of “academic freedom for the 21st century” are established and adopted by the institution

The recommendations are being seen as both concrete steps the Ivy League institution can take on its own campus but also ones that can inform work at other universities and colleges to support the collective goal of rebuilding trust.

Responding to the report in a letter to faculty, Yale president Maurie McInnis accepted many of the recommendations and tasked committees with investigating others further.

On the report’s call for universities to “take responsibility” for the situation, McInnis writes that she “accepts this judgment fully”.

“This decline did not come out of nowhere, nor did it happen overnight. And we were certainly more than mere bystanders. We must acknowledge how we have fallen short.”

Speaking to reporters, McInnis said there had been a “steady erosion” in trust that had stretched over decades, and it was important universities undertook such “extended examinations” and be willing to be “unflinching in thinking about ourselves”.

Gage said the goal of the report “was to take the long view and acknowledge that public scepticism and distrust is something that is built over time and will take some time to reverse”.

“We are very committed to the idea of self-scrutiny and…moving forward the strategy needs to be not just one of changed communications but one of real substantive action and self-critique.”

The university charged $69,900 (£50,000) a year in tuition this academic year with the full cost of attendance for the year put at $94,425 but many did not pay this sticker price due to discounting and scholarships.

The report says alongside offering more free places to more students, the university should also “provide a more accessible and reliable indication of the actual price that an undergraduate student will pay at the moment of enrollment and over the course of a four-year degree”.

Grade inflation is also flagged as an issue, compounded by the difficulties of comparing like-for-like across courses “since grading practices vary across departments and programs – with some awarding A-range grades to about half of students and others to virtually all – grades are not comparable in any meaningful sense across courses”.

The Yale registrar is therefore recommended to devise a mechanism that reflects the context for each grade, and include them on student transcripts, a step that could be taken “immediately”.

On admissions, the committee identified a central problem with Yale’s approach of informing “potential students that everything matters, leaving applicants scrambling to second-guess what the university wants”, leaving many of the 96 per cent of applicants who are rejected confused and disappointed.

The process would be made more “effective and less onerous for applicants by establishing and making public a minimum standard of academic achievement necessary for consideration”.