Doug Lederman has covered higher education for 40 years, first at The Chronicle of Higher Education and then at Inside Higher Ed. He recently wrote about why we still don’t measure college-wide learning through courses and academic programs. His argument is a clear four-part call: define the learning clearly, help every willing learner build the capabilities, figure out how to measure that learning, and use the measurement to keep improving. This is exactly what the curricular approach does for learning beyond the classroom.
Years ago, in a previous role, I spoke at summer orientation to groups of parents, hundreds at a time. I’d ask how many of them had gone to college themselves. Usually about two-thirds raised their hands. Then I’d ask them to think of the most valuable thing they learned in college. The thing that still sticks with them. The thing they still use. After giving them a moment, I’d ask them to raise their hand if they learned that thing in a classroom. Across multiple sessions, multiple summers, hundreds of parents each time, I think about five hands went up in total.
We already know students spend most of their time in college outside of class. They join clubs and end up leading them. They argue about economic theory over breakfast and again at midnight. They fight with roommates about space, light, noise, and boundaries. They wrestle with who they are and who they’re becoming. They fall in love and out of it. They keep old passions going, find new ones, and try things they never expected to try. As we fret about the right major, an AI-proof career, and the things that really matter, these lessons beyond the classroom are valuable for students and prepare them for life ahead as employees, employers, parents, citizens, and more
As student affairs educators, we can’t leave that learning to chance. We must help facilitate it for a variety of students through a variety of experiences. We can inform it, shape it, nudge it, and build more chances for it to happen well, so students have more tools to learn, navigate, and apply.
That’s what a curricular approach offers: clear aspirations, aligned actions, and real assessment, so we can keep improving instead of just hoping. We use “curricular approach” as a name for this systematic approach to learning beyond the classroom because we want to bring the same intentionality we expect from a well-built academic major or a well-planned course to everything else that shapes a student’s education.
If this is on your mind, a few ways to go deeper:
Join us at ACPA’s Institute on the Curricular Approach in Southern California this October.
Pick up The Curricular Approach to Student Affairs for the fuller model.
Or if your campus is considering or ready to launch your curricular approach and you want to think out loud about what that could look like, I’d enjoy that conversation. Just reach out.
