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8 Overcoming Challenges College Essay Examples

The purpose of the Overcoming Challenges essay is for schools to see how you might handle the difficulties of college. They want to know how you grow, evolve, and learn when you face adversity. For this topic, there are many clichés , such as getting a bad grade or losing a sports game, so be sure to steer clear of those and focus on a topic that’s unique to you. (See our full guide on the Overcoming Challenges Essay for more tips).

These overcoming challenges essay examples were all written by real students. Read through them to get a sense of what makes a strong essay. At the end, we’ll present the revision process for the first essay and share some resources for improving your essay.

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized. 

Essay 1: Becoming a Coach

“Advanced females ages 13 to 14 please proceed to staging with your coaches at this time.” Skittering around the room, eyes wide and pleading, I frantically explained my situation to nearby coaches. The seconds ticked away in my head; every polite refusal increased my desperation.

Despair weighed me down. I sank to my knees as a stream of competitors, coaches, and officials flowed around me. My dojang had no coach, and the tournament rules prohibited me from competing without one.

Although I wanted to remain strong, doubts began to cloud my mind. I could not help wondering: what was the point of perfecting my skills if I would never even compete? The other members of my team, who had found coaches minutes earlier, attempted to comfort me, but I barely heard their words. They couldn’t understand my despair at being left on the outside, and I never wanted them to understand.

Since my first lesson 12 years ago, the members of my dojang have become family. I have watched them grow up, finding my own happiness in theirs. Together, we have honed our kicks, blocks, and strikes. We have pushed one another to aim higher and become better martial artists. Although my dojang had searched for a reliable coach for years, we had not found one. When we attended competitions in the past, my teammates and I had always gotten lucky and found a sympathetic coach. Now, I knew this practice was unsustainable. It would devastate me to see the other members of my dojang in my situation, unable to compete and losing hope as a result. My dojang needed a coach, and I decided it was up to me to find one.

I first approached the adults in the dojang – both instructors and members’ parents. However, these attempts only reacquainted me with polite refusals. Everyone I asked told me they couldn’t devote multiple weekends per year to competitions. I soon realized that I would have become the coach myself.

At first, the inner workings of tournaments were a mystery to me. To prepare myself for success as a coach, I spent the next year as an official and took coaching classes on the side. I learned everything from motivational strategies to technical, behind-the-scenes components of Taekwondo competitions. Though I emerged with new knowledge and confidence in my capabilities, others did not share this faith.

Parents threw me disbelieving looks when they learned that their children’s coach was only a child herself. My self-confidence was my armor, deflecting their surly glances. Every armor is penetrable, however, and as the relentless barrage of doubts pounded my resilience, it began to wear down. I grew unsure of my own abilities.

Despite the attack, I refused to give up. When I saw the shining eyes of the youngest students preparing for their first competition, I knew I couldn’t let them down. To quit would be to set them up to be barred from competing like I was. The knowledge that I could solve my dojang’s longtime problem motivated me to overcome my apprehension.

Now that my dojang flourishes at competitions, the attacks on me have weakened, but not ended. I may never win the approval of every parent; at times, I am still tormented by doubts, but I find solace in the fact that members of my dojang now only worry about competing to the best of their abilities.

Now, as I arrive at a tournament with my students, I close my eyes and remember the past. I visualize the frantic search for a coach and the chaos amongst my teammates as we competed with one another to find coaches before the staging calls for our respective divisions. I open my eyes to the exact opposite scene. Lacking a coach hurt my ability to compete, but I am proud to know that no member of my dojang will have to face that problem again.

This essay begins with an in-the-moment narrative that really illustrates the chaos of looking for a coach last-minute. We feel the writer’s emotions, particularly their dejectedness, at not being able to compete.

Through this essay, we can see how gutsy and determined the student is in deciding to become a coach themselves. The writer shows us these characteristics through their actions, rather than explicitly telling us: To prepare myself for success as a coach, I spent the next year as an official and took coaching classes on the side.

One area of improvement of this essay would be the “attack” wording. The author likely uses this word as a metaphor for martial arts, but it feels too strong to describe the adults’ doubt of the student’s abilities as a coach, and can even be confusing at first.

Still, we see the student’s resilience as they are able to move past the disbelieving looks to help their team. The essay is kept real and vulnerable, however, as the writer admits having doubts: Every armor is penetrable, however, and as the relentless barrage of doubts pounded my resilience, it began to wear down. I grew unsure of my own abilities.

The essay comes full circle as the author recalls the frantic situations in seeking out a coach, but this is no longer a concern for them and their team. Overall, this essay is extremely effective in painting this student as mature, bold, and compassionate.

Essay 2: Starting a Fire

Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the garb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears. As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire. 

Furiously I rubbed the twigs together—rubbed and rubbed until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers. No smoke. The twigs were too young, too sticky-green; I tossed them away with a shower of curses, and began tearing through the underbrush in search of a more flammable collection. My efforts were fruitless. Livid, I bit a rejected twig, determined to prove that the forest had spurned me, offering only young, wet bones that would never burn. But the wood cracked like carrots between my teeth—old, brittle, and bitter. Roaring and nursing my aching palms, I retreated to the tent, where I sulked and awaited the jeers of my family. 

Rattling their empty worm cans and reeking of fat fish, my brother and cousins swaggered into the campsite. Immediately, they noticed the minor stick massacre by the fire pit and called to me, their deep voices already sharp with contempt. 

“Where’s the fire, Princess Clara?” they taunted. “Having some trouble?” They prodded me with the ends of the chewed branches and, with a few effortless scrapes of wood on rock, sparked a red and roaring flame. My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame. 

In the tent, I pondered my failure. Was I so dainty? Was I that incapable? I thought of my hands, how calloused and capable they had been, how tender and smooth they had become. It had been years since I’d kneaded mud between my fingers; instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano, my hands softening into those of a musician—fleshy and sensitive. And I’d gotten glasses, having grown horrifically nearsighted; long nights of dim lighting and thick books had done this. I couldn’t remember the last time I had lain down on a hill, barefaced, and seen the stars without having to squint. Crawling along the edge of the tent, a spider confirmed my transformation—he disgusted me, and I felt an overwhelming urge to squash him. 

Yet, I realized I hadn’t really changed—I had only shifted perspective. I still eagerly explored new worlds, but through poems and prose rather than pastures and puddles. I’d grown to prefer the boom of a bass over that of a bullfrog, learned to coax a different kind of fire from wood, having developed a burn for writing rhymes and scrawling hypotheses. 

That night, I stayed up late with my journal and wrote about the spider I had decided not to kill. I had tolerated him just barely, only shrieking when he jumped—it helped to watch him decorate the corners of the tent with his delicate webs, knowing that he couldn’t start fires, either. When the night grew cold and the embers died, my words still smoked—my hands burned from all that scrawling—and even when I fell asleep, the ideas kept sparking—I was on fire, always on fire.

This essay is an excellent example because the writer turns an everyday challenge—starting a fire—into an exploration of her identity. The writer was once “a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes,” but has since traded her love of the outdoors for a love of music, writing, and reading. 

The story begins in media res , or in the middle of the action, allowing readers to feel as if we’re there with the writer. One of the essay’s biggest strengths is its use of imagery. We can easily visualize the writer’s childhood and the present day. For instance, she states that she “rubbed and rubbed [the twigs] until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers.”

The writing has an extremely literary quality, particularly with its wordplay. The writer reappropriates words and meanings, and even appeals to the senses: “My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame.” She later uses a parallelism to cleverly juxtapose her changed interests: “instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano.”

One of the essay’s main areas of improvement is its overemphasis on the “story” and lack of emphasis on the reflection. The second to last paragraph about changing perspective is crucial to the essay, as it ties the anecdote to larger lessons in the writer’s life. She states that she hasn’t changed, but has only shifted perspective. Yet, we don’t get a good sense of where this realization comes from and how it impacts her life going forward. 

The end of the essay offers a satisfying return to the fire imagery, and highlights the writer’s passion—the one thing that has remained constant in her life.

Essay 3: Last-Minute Switch

The morning of the Model United Nation conference, I walked into Committee feeling confident about my research. We were simulating the Nuremberg Trials – a series of post-World War II proceedings for war crimes – and my portfolio was of the Soviet Judge Major General Iona Nikitchenko. Until that day, the infamous Nazi regime had only been a chapter in my history textbook; however, the conference’s unveiling of each defendant’s crimes brought those horrors to life. The previous night, I had organized my research, proofread my position paper and gone over Judge Nikitchenko’s pertinent statements. I aimed to find the perfect balance between his stance and my own.

As I walked into committee anticipating a battle of wits, my director abruptly called out to me. “I’m afraid we’ve received a late confirmation from another delegate who will be representing Judge Nikitchenko. You, on the other hand, are now the defense attorney, Otto Stahmer.” Everyone around me buzzed around the room in excitement, coordinating with their allies and developing strategies against their enemies, oblivious to the bomb that had just dropped on me. I felt frozen in my tracks, and it seemed that only rage against the careless delegate who had confirmed her presence so late could pull me out of my trance. After having spent a month painstakingly crafting my verdicts and gathering evidence against the Nazis, I now needed to reverse my stance only three hours before the first session.

Gradually, anger gave way to utter panic. My research was fundamental to my performance, and without it, I knew I could add little to the Trials. But confident in my ability, my director optimistically recommended constructing an impromptu defense. Nervously, I began my research anew. Despite feeling hopeless, as I read through the prosecution’s arguments, I uncovered substantial loopholes. I noticed a lack of conclusive evidence against the defendants and certain inconsistencies in testimonies. My discovery energized me, inspiring me to revisit the historical overview in my conference “Background Guide” and to search the web for other relevant articles. Some Nazi prisoners had been treated as “guilty” before their court dates. While I had brushed this information under the carpet while developing my position as a judge, i t now became the focus of my defense. I began scratching out a new argument, centered on the premise that the allied countries had violated the fundamental rule that, a defendant was “not guilty” until proven otherwise.

At the end of the three hours, I felt better prepared. The first session began, and with bravado, I raised my placard to speak. Microphone in hand, I turned to face my audience. “Greetings delegates. I, Otto Stahmer would like to…….” I suddenly blanked. Utter dread permeated my body as I tried to recall my thoughts in vain. “Defence Attorney, Stahmer we’ll come back to you,” my Committee Director broke the silence as I tottered back to my seat, flushed with embarrassment. Despite my shame, I was undeterred. I needed to vindicate my director’s faith in me. I pulled out my notes, refocused, and began outlining my arguments in a more clear and direct manner. Thereafter, I spoke articulately, confidently putting forth my points. I was overjoyed when Secretariat members congratulated me on my fine performance.

Going into the conference, I believed that preparation was the key to success. I wouldn’t say I disagree with that statement now, but I believe adaptability is equally important. My ability to problem-solve in the face of an unforeseen challenge proved advantageous in the art of diplomacy. Not only did this experience transform me into a confident and eloquent delegate at that conference, but it also helped me become a more flexible and creative thinker in a variety of other capacities. Now that I know I can adapt under pressure, I look forward to engaging in activities that will push me to be even quicker on my feet.

This essay is an excellent example because it focuses on a unique challenge and is highly engaging. The writer details their experience reversing their stance in a Model UN trial with only a few hours notice, after having researched and prepared to argue the opposite perspective for a month. 

Their essay is written in media res , or in the middle of the action, allowing readers to feel as if we’re there with the writer. The student openly shares their internal thoughts with us — we feel their anger and panic upon the reversal of roles. We empathize with their emotions of “utter dread” and embarrassment when they’re unable to speak. 

From the essay, we learn that the student believes in thorough preparation, but can also adapt to unforeseen obstacles. They’re able to rise to the challenge and put together an impromptu argument, think critically under pressure, and recover after their initial inability to speak. 

Essay 4: Music as a Coping Mechanism

CW: This essay mentions self-harm.

Sobbing uncontrollably, I parked around the corner from my best friend’s house. As I sat in the driver’s seat, I whispered the most earnest prayer I had ever offered.

Minutes before, I had driven to Colin’s house to pick up a prop for our upcoming spring musical. When I got there, his older brother, Tom, came to the door and informed me that no one else was home. “No,” I corrected, “Colin is here. He’s got a migraine.” Tom shook his head and gently told me where Colin actually was: the psychiatric unit of the local hospital. I felt a weight on my chest as I connected the dots; the terrifying picture rocked my safe little world. Tom’s words blurred as he explained Colin’s self-harm, but all I could think of was whether I could have stopped him. Those cuts on his arms had never been accidents. Colin had lied, very convincingly, many times. How could I have ignored the signs in front of me? Somehow, I managed to ask Tom whether I could see him, but he told me that visiting hours for non-family members were over for the day. I would have to move on with my afternoon.

Once my tears had subsided a little, I drove to the theater, trying to pull myself together and warm up to sing. How would I rehearse? I couldn’t sing three notes without bursting into tears. “I can’t do this,” I thought. But then I realized that the question wasn’t whether I could do it. I knew Colin would want me to push through, and something deep inside told me that music was the best way for me to process my grief. I needed to sing.

I practiced the lyrics throughout my whole drive. The first few times, I broke down in sobs. By the time I reached the theater, however, the music had calmed me. While Colin would never be far from my mind, I had to focus on the task ahead: recording vocals and then producing the video trailer that would be shown to my high school classmates. I fought to channel my worry into my recording. If my voice shook during the particularly heartfelt moments, it only added emotion and depth to my performance. I felt Colin’s absence next to me, but even before I listened to that first take, I knew it was a keeper.

With one of my hurdles behind me, I steeled myself again and prepared for the musical’s trailer. In a floor-length black cape and purple dress, I swept regally down the steps to my director, who waited outside. Under a gloomy sky that threatened to turn stormy, I boldly strode across the street, tossed a dainty yellow bouquet, and flashed confident grins at all those staring. My grief lurched inside, but I felt powerful. Despite my sadness, I could still make art.

To my own surprise, I successfully took back the day. I had felt pain, but I had not let it drown me – making music was a productive way to express my feelings than worrying. Since then, I have been learning to take better care of myself in difficult situations. That day before rehearsal, I found myself in the most troubling circumstances of my life thus far, but they did not sink me because I refused to sink. When my aunt developed cancer several months later, I knew that resolution would not come quickly, but that I could rely on music to cope with the agony, even when it would be easier to fall apart. Thankfully, Colin recovered from his injuries and was home within days. The next week, we stood together on stage at our show’s opening night. As our eyes met and our voices joined in song, I knew that music would always be our greatest mechanism for transforming pain into strength.

This essay is well-written, as we can feel the writer’s emotions through the thoughts they share, and visualize the night of the performance through their rich descriptions. Their varied sentence length also makes the essay more engaging.

That said, this essay is not a great example because of the framing of the topic. The writer can come off as insensitive since they make their friend’s struggle about themself and their emotions (and this is only worsened by the mention of their aunt’s cancer and how it was tough on them ). The essay would’ve been stronger if it focused on their guilt of not recognizing their friend’s struggles and spanned a longer period of time to demonstrate gradual relationship building and reflection. Still, this would’ve been difficult to do well.

In general, you should try to choose a challenge that is undeniably your own, and you should get at least one or two people to read your essay to give you candid feedback.

Essay 5: Dedicating a Track

“Getting beat is one thing – it’s part of competing – but I want no part in losing.” Coach Rob Stark’s motto never fails to remind me of his encouragement on early-morning bus rides to track meets around the state. I’ve always appreciated the phrase, but an experience last June helped me understand its more profound, universal meaning.

Stark, as we affectionately call him, has coached track at my high school for 25 years. His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running. When I learned a neighboring high school had dedicated their track to a longtime coach, I felt that Stark deserved similar honors.

Our school district’s board of education indicated they would only dedicate our track to Stark if I could demonstrate that he was extraordinary. I took charge and mobilized my teammates to distribute petitions, reach out to alumni, and compile statistics on the many team and individual champions Stark had coached over the years. We received astounding support, collecting almost 3,000 signatures and pages of endorsements from across the community. With help from my teammates, I presented this evidence to the board.

They didn’t bite. 

Most members argued that dedicating the track was a low priority. Knowing that we had to act quickly to convince them of its importance, I called a team meeting where we drafted a rebuttal for the next board meeting. To my surprise, they chose me to deliver it. I was far from the best public speaker in the group, and I felt nervous about going before the unsympathetic board again. However, at that second meeting, I discovered that I enjoy articulating and arguing for something that I’m passionate about.

Public speaking resembles a cross country race. Walking to the starting line, you have to trust your training and quell your last minute doubts. When the gun fires, you can’t think too hard about anything; your performance has to be instinctual, natural, even relaxed. At the next board meeting, the podium was my starting line. As I walked up to it, familiar butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Instead of the track stretching out in front of me, I faced the vast audience of teachers, board members, and my teammates. I felt my adrenaline build, and reassured myself: I’ve put in the work, my argument is powerful and sound. As the board president told me to introduce myself, I heard, “runners set” in the back of my mind. She finished speaking, and Bang! The brief silence was the gunshot for me to begin. 

The next few minutes blurred together, but when the dust settled, I knew from the board members’ expressions and the audience’s thunderous approval that I had run quite a race. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough; the board voted down our proposal. I was disappointed, but proud of myself, my team, and our collaboration off the track. We stood up for a cause we believed in, and I overcame my worries about being a leader. Although I discovered that changing the status quo through an elected body can be a painstakingly difficult process and requires perseverance, I learned that I enjoy the challenges this effort offers. Last month, one of the school board members joked that I had become a “regular” – I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Just as Stark taught me, I worked passionately to achieve my goal. I may have been beaten when I appealed to the board, but I certainly didn’t lose, and that would have made Stark proud.

While the writer didn’t succeed in getting the track dedicated to Coach Stark, their essay is certainly successful in showing their willingness to push themselves and take initiative.

The essay opens with a quote from Coach Stark that later comes full circle at the end of the essay. We learn about Stark’s impact and the motivation for trying to get the track dedicated to him.

One of the biggest areas of improvement in the intro, however, is how the essay tells us Stark’s impact rather than showing us: His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The writer could’ve helped us feel a stronger emotional connection to Stark if they had included examples of Stark’s qualities, rather than explicitly stating them. For example, they could’ve written something like: Stark was the kind of person who would give you gas money if you told him your parents couldn’t afford to pick you up from practice. And he actually did that—several times. At track meets, alumni regularly would come talk to him and tell him how he’d changed their lives. Before Stark, I was ambivalent about running and was on the JV team, but his encouragement motivated me to run longer and harder and eventually make varsity. Because of him, I approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The essay goes on to explain how the writer overcame their apprehension of public speaking, and likens the process of submitting an appeal to the school board to running a race. This metaphor makes the writing more engaging and allows us to feel the student’s emotions.

While the student didn’t ultimately succeed in getting the track dedicated, we learn about their resilience and initiative: I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Overall, this essay is well-done. It demonstrates growth despite failing to meet a goal, which is a unique essay structure. The running metaphor and full-circle intro/ending also elevate the writing in this essay.

Essay 6: Body Image

CW: This essay mentions eating disorders.

I press the “discover” button on my Instagram app, hoping to find enticing pictures to satisfy my boredom. Scrolling through, I see funny videos and mouth-watering pictures of food. However, one image stops me immediately. A fit teenage girl with a “perfect body” relaxes in a bikini on a beach. Beneath it, I see a slew of flattering comments. I shake with disapproval over the image’s unrealistic quality. However, part of me still wants to have a body like hers so that others will make similar comments to me.

I would like to resolve a silent issue that harms many teenagers and adults: negative self image and low self-esteem in a world where social media shapes how people view each other. When people see the façades others wear to create an “ideal” image, they can develop poor thought patterns rooted in negative self-talk. The constant comparisons to “perfect” others make people feel small. In this new digital age, it is hard to distinguish authentic from artificial representations.

When I was 11, I developed anorexia nervosa. Though I was already thin, I wanted to be skinny like the models that I saw on the magazine covers on the grocery store stands. Little did I know that those models probably also suffered from disorders, and that photoshop erased their flaws. I preferred being underweight to being healthy. No matter how little I ate or how thin I was, I always thought that I was too fat. I became obsessed with the number on the scale and would try to eat the least that I could without my parents urging me to take more. Fortunately, I stopped engaging in anorexic behaviors before middle school. However, my underlying mental habits did not change. The images that had provoked my disorder in the first place were still a constant presence in my life.

By age 15, I was in recovery from anorexia, but suffered from depression. While I used to only compare myself to models, the growth of social media meant I also compared myself to my friends and acquaintances. I felt left out when I saw my friends’ excitement about lake trips they had taken without me. As I scrolled past endless photos of my flawless, thin classmates with hundreds of likes and affirming comments, I felt my jealousy spiral. I wanted to be admired and loved by other people too. However, I felt that I could never be enough. I began to hate the way that I looked, and felt nothing in my life was good enough. I wanted to be called “perfect” and “body goals,” so I tried to only post at certain times of day to maximize my “likes.” When that didn’t work, I started to feel too anxious to post anything at all.  

Body image insecurities and social media comparisons affect thousands of people – men, women, children, and adults – every day. I am lucky – after a few months of my destructive social media habits, I came across a video that pointed out the illusory nature of social media; many Instagram posts only show off good things while people hide their flaws. I began going to therapy, and recovered from my depression. To address the problem of self-image and social media, we can all focus on what matters on the inside and not what is on the surface. As an effort to become healthy internally, I started a club at my school to promote clean eating and radiating beauty from within. It has helped me grow in my confidence, and today I’m not afraid to show others my struggles by sharing my experience with eating disorders. Someday, I hope to make this club a national organization to help teenagers and adults across the country. I support the idea of body positivity and embracing difference, not “perfection.” After all, how can we be ourselves if we all look the same?

This essay covers the difficult topics of eating disorders and mental health. If you’re thinking about covering similar topics in your essay, we recommend reading our post Should You Talk About Mental Health in College Essays?

The short answer is that, yes, you can talk about mental health, but it can be risky. If you do go that route, it’s important to focus on what you learned from the experience.

We can see that the writer of this essay has been through a lot, and a strength of their essay is their vulnerability, in excerpts such as this: I wanted to be admired and loved by other people too. However, I felt that I could never be enough. I began to hate the way that I looked, and felt nothing in my life was good enough. I wanted to be called “perfect” and “body goals,” so I tried to only post at certain times of day to maximize my “likes.”

The student goes on to share how they recovered from their depression through an eye-opening video and therapy sessions, and they’re now helping others find their self-worth as well. It’s great that this essay looks towards the future and shares the writer’s goals of making their club a national organization; we can see their ambition and compassion.

The main weakness of this essay is that it doesn’t focus enough on their recovery process, which is arguably the most important part. They could’ve told us more about the video they watched or the process of starting their club and the interactions they’ve had with other members.

Still, this essay shows us that this student is honest, self-aware, and caring, which are all qualities admissions officer are looking for.

Essay 7: Health Crisis

Tears streamed down my face and my mind was paralyzed with fear. Sirens blared, but the silent panic in my own head was deafening. I was muted by shock. A few hours earlier, I had anticipated a vacation in Washington, D.C., but unexpectedly, I was rushing to the hospital behind an ambulance carrying my mother. As a fourteen-year-old from a single mother household, without a driver’s license, and seven hours from home, I was distraught over the prospect of losing the only parent I had. My fear turned into action as I made some of the bravest decisions of my life. 

Three blood transfusions later, my mother’s condition was stable, but we were still states away from home, so I coordinated with my mother’s doctors in North Carolina to schedule the emergency operation that would save her life. Throughout her surgery, I anxiously awaited any word from her surgeon, but each time I asked, I was told that there had been another complication or delay. Relying on my faith and positive attitude, I remained optimistic that my mother would survive and that I could embrace new responsibilities.

My mother had been a source of strength for me, and now I would be strong for her through her long recovery ahead. As I started high school, everyone thought the crisis was over, but it had really just started to impact my life. My mother was often fatigued, so I assumed more responsibility, juggling family duties, school, athletics, and work. I made countless trips to the neighborhood pharmacy, cooked dinner, biked to the grocery store, supported my concerned sister, and provided the loving care my mother needed to recover. I didn’t know I was capable of such maturity and resourcefulness until it was called upon. Each day was a stage in my gradual transformation from dependence to relative independence.

Throughout my mother’s health crisis, I matured by learning to put others’ needs before my own. As I worried about my mother’s health, I took nothing for granted, cherished what I had, and used my daily activities as motivation to move forward. I now take ownership over small decisions such as scheduling daily appointments and managing my time but also over major decisions involving my future, including the college admissions process. Although I have become more independent, my mother and I are inseparably close, and the realization that I almost lost her affects me daily. Each morning, I wake up ten minutes early simply to eat breakfast with my mother and spend time with her before our busy days begin. I am aware of how quickly life can change. My mother remains a guiding force in my life, but the feeling of empowerment I discovered within myself is the ultimate form of my independence. Though I thought the summer before my freshman year would be a transition from middle school to high school, it was a transformation from childhood to adulthood.

This essay feels real and tells readers a lot about the writer. To start at the beginning, the intro is 10/10. It has drama, it has emotions, and it has the reader wanting more.

And, when you keep going, you get to learn a lot about a very resilient and mature student. Through sentences like “I made countless trips to the neighborhood pharmacy, cooked dinner, biked to the grocery store, supported my concerned sister, and provided the loving care my mother needed to recover” and “Relying on my faith and positive attitude, I remained optimistic that my mother would survive and that I could embrace new responsibilities,” the reader shows us that they are aware of their resilience and maturity, but are not arrogant about it. It is simply a fact that they have proven through their actions!

This essay makes us want to cheer for the writer, and they certainly seem like someone who would thrive in a more independent college environment.

Essay 8: Turned Tables

“You ruined my life!” After months of quiet anger, my brother finally confronted me. To my shame, I had been appallingly ignorant of his pain.

Despite being twins, Max and I are profoundly different. Having intellectual interests from a young age that, well, interested very few of my peers, I often felt out of step in comparison with my highly-social brother. Everything appeared to come effortlessly for Max and, while we share an extremely tight bond, his frequent time away with friends left me feeling more and more alone as we grew older.

When my parents learned about The Green Academy, we hoped it would be an opportunity for me to find not only an academically challenging environment, but also – perhaps more importantly – a community. This meant transferring the family from Drumfield to Kingston. And while there was concern about Max, we all believed that given his sociable nature, moving would be far less impactful on him than staying put might be on me.

As it turned out, Green Academy was everything I’d hoped for. I was ecstatic to discover a group of students with whom I shared interests and could truly engage. Preoccupied with new friends and a rigorous course load, I failed to notice that the tables had turned. Max, lost in the fray and grappling with how to make connections in his enormous new high school, had become withdrawn and lonely. It took me until Christmas time – and a massive argument – to recognize how difficult the transition had been for my brother, let alone that he blamed me for it.

Through my own journey of searching for academic peers, in addition to coming out as gay when I was 12, I had developed deep empathy for those who had trouble fitting in. It was a pain I knew well and could easily relate to. Yet after Max’s outburst, my first response was to protest that our parents – not I – had chosen to move us here. In my heart, though, I knew that regardless of who had made the decision, we ended up in Kingston for my benefit. I was ashamed that, while I saw myself as genuinely compassionate, I had been oblivious to the heartache of the person closest to me. I could no longer ignore it – and I didn’t want to.

We stayed up half the night talking, and the conversation took an unexpected turn. Max opened up and shared that it wasn’t just about the move. He told me how challenging school had always been for him, due to his dyslexia, and that the ever-present comparison to me had only deepened his pain.

We had been in parallel battles the whole time and, yet, I only saw that Max was in distress once he experienced problems with which I directly identified. I’d long thought Max had it so easy – all because he had friends. The truth was, he didn’t need to experience my personal brand of sorrow in order for me to relate – he had felt plenty of his own.

My failure to recognize Max’s suffering brought home for me the profound universality and diversity of personal struggle; everyone has insecurities, everyone has woes, and everyone – most certainly – has pain. I am acutely grateful for the conversations he and I shared around all of this, because I believe our relationship has been fundamentally strengthened by a deeper understanding of one another. Further, this experience has reinforced the value of constantly striving for deeper sensitivity to the hidden struggles of those around me. I won’t make the mistake again of assuming that the surface of someone’s life reflects their underlying story.

Here you can find a prime example that you don’t have to have fabulous imagery or flowery prose to write a successful essay. You just have to be clear and say something that matters. This essay is simple and beautiful. It almost feels like having a conversation with a friend and learning that they are an even better person than you already thought they were.

Through this narrative, readers learn a lot about the writer—where they’re from, what their family life is like, what their challenges were as a kid, and even their sexuality. We also learn a lot about their values—notably, the value they place on awareness, improvement, and consideration of others. Though they never explicitly state it (which is great because it is still crystal clear!), this student’s ending of “I won’t make the mistake again of assuming that the surface of someone’s life reflects their underlying story” shows that they are constantly striving for improvement and finding lessons anywhere they can get them in life.

Where to Get Your Overcoming Challenges Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your Overcoming Challenges essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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Higher education in a changing and challenging world

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More students, more providers, more study options – these are a few of the ways higher education has evolved in recent decades. The upcoming World Higher Education Conference (WHEC2022), from 18-20 May, will bring some of the latest trends and challenges in focus to design a roadmap for the future. For this occasion, we look back to identify some megatrends, starting from the first World Conference on Higher Education in 1998 and continuing through the years.

Over the past two decades, higher education has grown – and transformed – in many ways. By 2020, worldwide participation in higher education reached 228 million students, up from 82 million in 1995 . In the Global North, student numbers have stagnated in recent years. For example, in 2006, the Global South went from having a little over half of global enrolments, to reaching three-quarters in 2018.

But, despite this history of growth, major inequalities persist throughout the world. Only 1% of the poorest students aged 25-29 complete four years of higher education compared with 20% of the wealthiest, according to a 2017 survey of 76 countries . The proportion of youth enrolled also ranges from less than 10% in sub-Saharan Africa to almost 80% in Europe and North America.

New opportunities, new challenges

Rapid progress in information and communication technology has also greatly shaped opportunities in higher education. Continuous advances in digital technologies, social media, and mobile devices, are giving learners better access to knowledge and educational content. More recently, artificial intelligence for teaching and learning, virtual augmented reality, simulations, and serious games have further widened the opportunities arising from technology-enabled learning. New interactive pedagogies based on e-learning have also proven their effectiveness.

However, the digital divide has come into sharp focus once again, as COVID-19 disrupted higher education in unprecedented ways. As face-to-face learning stopped in more than 190 countries, many institutions were able to rapidly shift to online learning. However, the limitations were quickly revealed in low-income countries, home to 96% of the 2.9 billion people who have never used the internet. For many disadvantaged students, the move to online learning has diminished prospects for accessing higher education.

Yet, these challenges are occurring in tandem with higher education rising on international development agendas over the past 25 years. In the 1990s, under the Education for All movement, the international community was focused on basic education, and then during the 2000s attention shifted to primary education under the Millennium Development Goals. In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), brought higher education back to the international education agenda, recognizing its importance for all SDGs, and in particular its contribution to SDG-4 on equitable and quality education systems.

UNESCO’s World Higher Education Conference: Equitable access is a growing priority

UNESCO, being the only United Nations’ agency that has a mandate for higher education, convened two world conferences for the sector in 1998 and 2009. The first conference called upon Member States to respond to emerging challenges in higher education and by undertaking vast reforms to address them with urgency and relevance. A decade later, in 2009, the second World Conference demonstrated a commitment by all stakeholders to recognize higher education as a public good to advance research, innovation, and creativity, and as a major force in building inclusive and diverse knowledge societies.

The forthcoming WHEC 2022 to be held in Barcelona from 18 to 20 May 2022 is entitled Reinventing Higher Education for a Sustainable Future . It will highlight the importance of higher education to respond to present global challenges, such as climate change, social inequalities, and conflict, while advocating that higher education opens further to a larger and more diverse student body, including disadvantaged groups.

The WHEC2022 will help to define and prepare a roadmap that is framed by the 2030 Agenda and that is responsive to the challenges faced by humanity and the planet.  The conference calls for ‘breaking away from the traditional models of higher education and opening doors to new, innovative, creative, and visionary conceptions that not only serve current agendas for sustainable development, but also pave the way for future learning communities that overcome barriers, speak to all and are inclusive of all lifelong learners.’

IIEP will be sharing knowledge at the WHEC

For the 2022 edition, IIEP-UNESCO will organize a roundtable to discuss findings from its recent research on flexible learning pathways (FLPs). This type of policy allows higher education systems to adapt to the needs of more diverse learners, offering increased learner choice and eliminating barriers to their access and progression through the system.

Drawing on the experiences of countries that have participated in this collaborative research, the research shows how FLPs are key to achieving the Education 2030 Agenda, which calls for articulated education systems with multiple entry and exit pathways, through the recognition of formal, non-formal and informal learning. The topic is therefore highly relevant for the present and future context of higher education .

IIEP will also participate in a roundtable on data and knowledge production and launch a joint Policy Paper with the UN Refugee Agency on refugees’ access to host countries higher education, bringing into focus policy directions to support the super-disadvantaged and remove barriers to learning.

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Improving the Quality of Education

By  Derek Bok

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Increasing graduation rates and levels of educational attainment will accomplish little if students do not learn something of lasting value. Yet federal efforts over the last several years have focused much more on increasing the number of Americans who go to college than on improving the education they receive once they get there.

By concentrating so heavily on graduation rates and attainment levels, policy makers are ignoring danger signs that the amount that students learn in college may have declined over the past few decades and could well continue to do so in the years to come. The reasons for concern include:

• College students today seem to be spending much less time on their course work than their predecessors did 50 years ago, and evidence of their abilities suggests that they are probably learning less than students once did and quite possibly less than their counterparts in many other advanced industrial countries.
• Employers complain that many graduates they hire are deficient in basic skills such as writing, problem solving and critical thinking that college leaders and their faculties consistently rank among the most important goals of an undergraduate education.
• Most of the millions of additional students needed to increase educational attainment levels will come to campus poorly prepared for college work, creating a danger that higher graduation rates will be achievable only by lowering academic standards.
• More than two-thirds of college instructors today are not on the tenure track but are lecturers serving on year-to-year contracts. Many of them are hired without undergoing the vetting commonly used in appointing tenure-track professors. Studies indicate that extensive use of such instructors may contribute to higher dropout rates and to grade inflation.
• States have made substantial cuts in support per student over the past 30 years for public colleges and community colleges. Research suggests that failing to increase appropriations to keep pace with enrollment growth tends to reduce learning and even lower graduation rates.

While some college leaders are making serious efforts to improve the quality of teaching, many others seem content with their existing programs. Although they recognize the existence of problems affecting higher education as a whole, such as grade inflation or a decline in the rigor of academic standards, few seem to believe that these difficulties exist on their own campus, or they tend to attribute most of the difficulty to the poor preparation of students before they enroll.

Some Immediate Improvements

Many colleges provide a formidable array of courses, majors and extracurricular opportunities, but firsthand accounts indicate that many undergraduates do not feel that the material conveyed in their readings and lectures has much relevance to their lives. Such sentiments suggest either that the courses do not in fact contribute much to the ultimate goals that colleges claim to value or that instructors are not taking sufficient care to explain the larger aims of their courses and why they should matter.

Other studies suggest that many instructors do not teach their courses in ways best calculated to achieve the ends that faculties themselves consider important. For example, one investigator studied samples of the examinations given at elite liberal arts colleges and research universities. Although 99 percent of professors consider critical thinking an “essential” or “very important” goal of a college education, fewer than 20 percent of the exam questions actually tested for this skill.

Now that most faculties have defined the learning objectives of their college and its various departments and programs, it should be possible to review recent examinations to determine whether individual professors, programs and departments are actually designing their courses to achieve those goals. College administrators could also modify their student evaluation forms to ask students whether they believe the stated goals were emphasized in the courses they took.

In addition, the average time students devote to studying varies widely among different colleges, and many campuses could require more of their students. Those lacking evidence about the study habits of their undergraduates could inform themselves through confidential surveys that faculties could review and consider steps to encourage greater student effort and improve learning.

The vast difference between how well seniors think they can perform and their actual proficiencies (according to tests of basic skills and employer evaluations) suggests that many colleges are failing to give students an adequate account of their progress. Grade inflation may also contribute to excessive confidence, suggesting a need to work to restore appropriate standards, although that alone is unlikely to solve the problem. Better feedback on student papers and exams will be even more important in order to give undergraduates a more accurate sense of how much progress they’ve made and what more they need to accomplish before they graduate.

More Substantial Reforms

More fundamental changes will take longer to achieve but could eventually yield even greater gains in the quality of undergraduate education. They include:

Improving graduate education. Colleges and universities need to reconfigure graduate programs to better prepare aspiring professors for teaching. As late as two or three generations ago, majorities of new Ph.D.s, at least in the better graduate programs, found positions where research was primary, either in major universities, industry or government. Today, however, many Ph.D.s find employment in colleges that are chiefly devoted to teaching or work as adjunct instructors and are not expected to do research.

Aspiring college instructors also need to know much more now in order to teach effectively. A large and increasing body of useful knowledge has accumulated about learning and pedagogy, as well as the design and effectiveness of alternative methods of instruction. Meanwhile, the advent of new technologies has given rise to methods of teaching that require special training. As evidence accumulates about promising ways of engaging students actively, identifying difficulties they are having in learning the material and adjusting teaching methods accordingly, the current gaps in the preparation most graduate students receive become more and more of a handicap.

Universities have already begun to prepare graduate students to teach by giving them opportunities to assist professors in large lecture courses and by creating centers where they can get help to become better instructors. More departments are starting to provide or even require a limited amount of instruction in how to teach. Nevertheless, simply allowing grad students to serve as largely unsupervised teaching assistants, or creating centers where they can receive a brief orientation or a few voluntary sessions on teaching, will not adequately equip them for a career in the classroom.

A more substantial preparation is required and will become ever more necessary as the body of relevant knowledge continues to grow. With all the talk in graduate school circles about preparing doctoral students for jobs outside academe, one has to wonder why departments spend time readying Ph.D. candidates for entirely different careers before they have developed adequate programs for the academic posts that graduate schools are supposed to serve, and that most of their students continue to occupy.

Many departments may fail to provide such instruction because they lack faculty with necessary knowledge, but provosts and deans could enlist competent teachers for such instruction from elsewhere in the university, although they may hesitate to do so, given than graduate education has always been the exclusive domain of the departments. Enterprising donors might consider giving grants to graduate schools or departments willing to make the necessary reforms. If even a few leading universities responded to such an invitation, others would probably follow suit.

Creating a teaching faculty. The seeds of such a change already exist through the proliferation of instructors who are not on the tenure track but are hired on a year-to- year basis or a somewhat longer term to teach basic undergraduate courses. Those adjunct instructors now constitute as much as 70 percent of all college instructors.

The multiplication of such instructors has largely been an ad hoc response to the need to cut costs in order to cope with severe financial pressures resulting from reductions in state support and larger student enrollments. But researchers are discovering that relying on casually hired, part-time teachers can have adverse effects on graduation rates and the quality of instruction. Sooner or later, the present practices seem bound to give way to more satisfactory arrangements.

One plausible outcome would be to create a carefully selected, full-time teaching faculty, the members of which would lack tenure but receive appointments for a significant term of years with enforceable guarantees of academic freedom and adequate notice if their contracts are not renewed. Such instructors would receive opportunities for professional development to become more knowledgeable and proficient as teachers, and they would teach more hours per week than the tenured faculty. In return, they would receive adequate salaries, benefits and facilities and would share in deliberations over educational policy, though not in matters involving research and the appointment and promotion of tenure-track professors.

These faculty members would be better trained in teaching and learning than the current research-oriented faculty, although tenured professors who wish to teach introductory or general education courses would, of course, be welcome to do so. Being chiefly engaged in teaching, they might also be more inclined to experiment with new and better methods of instruction if they were encouraged to do so.

A reform of this sort would undoubtedly cost more than most universities currently pay their non-tenure-track instructors (though less than having tenured faculty teach the lower-level courses). Even so, the shabby treatment of many part-time instructors is hard to justify, and higher costs seem inevitable once adjunct faculties become more organized and use their collective strength to bargain for better terms.

Progress may have to come gradually as finances permit. But instead of today’s legions of casually hired, underpaid and insecure adjunct instructors, a substantial segment of the college faculty would possess the time, training and job security to participate in a continuing effort to develop more effective methods of instruction to engage their students and help them derive more lasting value from their classes.

Rethinking the undergraduate curriculum. The familiar division into fields of concentration, electives and general education leaves too little room for students to pursue all of the objectives that professors themselves deem important for a well-rounded college education. This tripartite structure, with its emphasis on the major and its embrace of distribution requirements and extensive electives, was introduced by research universities and designed more to satisfy the interests of a tenured, research-oriented faculty than to achieve the various aims of a good undergraduate education. The existing structure is unlikely to change so long as decisions about the curriculum remain under the exclusive control of the tenure-track professors who benefit from the status quo.

By now, the standard curriculum has become so firmly rooted that during the periodic reviews conducted in most universities, the faculty rarely pause to examine the tripartite division and its effect upon the established goals of undergraduate education. Instead, the practice of reserving up to half of the required number of credits for the major is simply taken for granted along with maintaining a distribution requirement and preserving an ample segment of the curriculum for electives.

The obvious remedy is to include the non-tenure-track instructors who currently make up a majority of the teaching faculty in curricular reviews so that all those who play a substantial part in trying to achieve the goals of undergraduate education can participate in the process. It is anomalous to allow the tenure-track faculty to enjoy exclusive power over the curriculum when they provide such a limited share of the teaching. Such a reform might be difficult under current conditions in many colleges where most undergraduate instructors serve part-time, are often chosen haphazardly and frequently lack either the time or the interest to participate fully in a review of its undergraduate program. If adjunct instructors achieve the status previously described, however, their prominent role in teaching undergraduates should entitle them to a seat at the table to discuss the educational program, including its current structure. Such a move could at least increase the likelihood of a serious discussion of the existing curricular structure to determine whether it truly serves the multiple aims of undergraduate education.

Colleges should also consider allowing some meaningful participation by members of the administrative staff who are prominently involved in college life, such as deans of student affairs and directors of admission. The current division between formal instruction and the extracurriculum is arbitrary, since many goals of undergraduate education, such as moral development and preparation for citizenship, are influenced significantly by the policies for admitting students, the administration of rules for student behavior, the advising of undergraduates, the nature of residential life and the extracurricular activities in which many students participate. Representatives from all groups responsible for the policies and practices that affect these goals should have something to contribute to reviews of undergraduate education.

The Need for Research

Finally, there is an urgent need for more and better research both to improve the quality of undergraduate education and to increase the number of students who complete their studies. Among the many questions deserving further exploration, four lines of inquiry seem especially important.

• How can remedial education be improved? At present, low rates of completion in remedial courses are a major impediment to raising levels of educational attainment. The use of computer-aided instruction in remedial math provides one promising example of the type of improvement that could yield substantial benefits, and there are doubtless other possibilities.
• Far too little is known about the kinds of courses or other undergraduate experiences that contribute to such noneconomic benefits in later life as better health, greater civic participation and lower incidence of substance abuse and other forms of self-destructive behavior. Better understanding of those connections could help educators increase the lasting value of a college education while providing a stronger empirical basis for the sweeping claims frequently made about the lifelong benefits of a liberal education. Such understanding would also reduce the risk of inadvertently eliminating valuable aspects of a college education in the rush to find quicker, cheaper ways of preparing students to obtain good jobs of immediate value to economic growth.
• Existing research suggests that better advising and other forms of student support may substantially enhance the effect of increased financial aid in boosting the numbers of students who complete their studies. With billions of dollars already being spent on student grants and loans, it would clearly be helpful to know more about how to maximize the effects of such subsidies on graduation rates.
• More work is needed to develop better ways for colleges to measure student learning, not only for critical thinking and writing but also for other purposes of undergraduate education.

The importance of this last point can scarcely be overestimated. Without reliable measures of learning, competition for students can do little to improve the quality of instruction, since applicants have no way of knowing which college offers them the best teaching. Provosts, deans and departments will have difficulty identifying weaknesses in their academic programs in need of corrective action. Academic leaders will be handicapped in trying to persuade their professors to change the way they teach if they cannot offer convincing evidence that alternative methods will bring improved results. Faculty members will do less to improve their teaching if they continue to lack adequate ways to discover how much their students are learning.

All these reforms could do a lot to improve the quality of undergraduate education -- as well as increase levels of attainment. With more research and experimentation, other useful ideas will doubtless continue to appear.

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Challenges to Higher Education’s Most Essential Purposes

“[Higher education’s most essential purposes] include educating students broadly so that they may lead productive lives in a civilized society; serving as engines of opportunity and social mobility; creating new knowledge of every kind, including work that either has no immediate market value or may even threaten some commercial end; encouraging and protecting the thoughtful critic and the dissenting voice; and defending cultural, moral, and intellectual values that no one can “price” very well.”

–William G. Bowen, Romanes Lecture, October 17, 2000

In his 2000 Romanes Lecture, entitled “At a Slight Angle to the Universe, the University in a Digitized, Commercialized Age,” William Bowen anticipated many of the challenges higher education faces today. His incisive summary of the most important purposes of higher education offers a useful framework for assessing how higher education is fulfilling its uniquely important role supporting a vibrant democratic society. Those responsible for higher education’s well-being, including presidents, administrators, trustees, faculty, and government policy makers, would do well to hold close these important values as they carry out their complementary roles leading the sector.

As we consider the challenges facing them in that endeavor, it is useful to remember that higher education is not a monolith. It is made up of many independent and diverse institutional types all operating to support and sustain internal organizational self-interest even as they serve broader societal objectives. Higher education also serves a wide array of students with differing needs, resources and capacities. Problems and opportunities appear quite different from these various perspectives, and actions and interventions can yield different outcomes across different groups of institutions or across different types of students or faculty. Nevertheless, there are certain core principles that all of these institutions share, and there are certain aspects of their experience that are common.

One undeniable common factor is the changing information and media environment. Bowen anticipated this growing specter, and he highlighted it in his consideration of digitization and its impact on the sector. But even he likely did not foresee the impact and nature of the next generation of technological innovations lining up to dwarf the impacts of the past. This next powerful wave of change emanates from the trillions of sensors capturing data of every imaginable kind, the rapidly accelerating and exponential increases in computing power to process those data, and the potential for artificial intelligence and machine learning to operate in ways that fundamentally change many of the ways we work, learn, and interact; in short, the way we live our lives.

The impact of this new wave of forces will be greater than the Industrial Revolution in the way it will transform our world. Paraphrasing from Joseph Aoun in his book about artificial intelligence: in the Industrial Revolution man learned to use machines as a substitute for physical labor, in this era we are learning to use machines as a substitute for intellectual labor. [1] Just as the shift to machines for physical labor transformed many aspects of society, so too will the continuing transition to the use of machines to support more fully our intellectual work.

The ultimate impact of the migration to artificial and machine-assisted intelligence is in many ways unforeseeable, but it is certain to be fundamental. The revolution to come will play out over decades, but because of the accelerating nature of technology and the rapid spread of information in today’s world, we must begin now to prepare for its impact and indeed to help shape it to positive ends for society.

With this broad context, we outline a set of challenges and opportunities facing higher education, using the five purposes highlighted in Bowen’s quote, along with reflections on the broader issues of financial, and in some cases perhaps even existential, threats to the future sustainability of colleges and universities.

Educating Students to Lead Productive Lives

The demand for and value of post-secondary education is greater than ever, and will continue to increase as machines take on more physical and basic intellectual tasks. The challenges to meeting those needs fall into a number of categories:

• Unsustainable cost of traditional methods of instruction . Methods of instruction that rely on small classes with an instructor are effective, but the effects of the notorious Baumol/Bowen cost disease have made that methodology too expensive for all but the wealthiest institutions and is therefore not scale-able. How are colleges and universities going to find ways to “bend the cost curve” and increase the productivity of the education process?
• A changing population . Not only do higher education institutions need to be able to effectively educate more students of color, more students of modest financial means, and first-generation students in response to changing demographics, they also need to be able to educate students at different stages of their careers. This presents a variety of challenges at every stage of the education process, from admission through awarding a degree and on to meeting the needs of those who have to return periodically for additional education throughout the course of a career.
• Educational technologies . Developments in technology point to the possibility of new forms of learning relying on machines as “tutors” that use data tracking student progress to recursively improve the quality of the knowledge and assistance provided to students. There is evidence that new teaching techniques facilitated by these technologies, such as flipped classrooms and engaged learning, offer promise, but demand that the roles of students and faculty in the learning process change in fundamental ways. Such change is very difficult to enable and support.
• Balancing the curriculum . Institutions need to respond to demand for new skills, such as computer programming or data science, even as they maintain and make the case for important education in humanistic fields that are essential to dealing with ethical and values- based questions being raised by societal changes.
• Unbundling and rebundling . A number of information-based industries have been threatened and altered because new entrants provide a specialized service that disaggregates a bundled offering. There are many components to the higher education bundle, and of course what makes up the bundle varies by type and even individual institutions, but three broad categories might be worth considering as we contemplate future pressures on the sector: 1) education, and by that we specifically refer to the change in understanding and knowledge acquired over a period of time; 2) credentialing, and by that we mean the validation that a person has a particular skill or competence; and 3) selection, which refers to the process by which higher education institutions identify and assemble a group of talented people, an outcome that has proven to be very valuable to those who want to find talent, either for jobs or for further education. Higher education provides a talent matching role that makes the process of finding excellent people more efficient.
• The Arms Race. There is an additional component that applies primarily to residential colleges, and drives up costs for institutions competing to attract students, and that is the need to provide a comfortable, safe, and sometimes almost luxurious environment for young men and women to transition to adulthood. Some refer to this as a student “arms race,” as schools compete on quality of life related issues like beautiful technology-enabled dorms and campuses, great food, athletics facilities, etc.

Conducting Research and Creating New Knowledge

The development of networked technologies has had a dramatic impact on scholarly communications and the research process. The first phase of that change–digitized information distributed via the network–has led to much wider dissemination of scholarly content around the world. The second phase of that evolution, enabled by the fact that the marginal cost of delivering content is nearly zero, has been downward pressure on the willingness to pay for content, leading to the emergence of the open access movement. There is increasing expectation that content should be delivered without charge to support its widest possible access and dissemination.

In response to these changes, larger scale publishers and aggregators of scholarly content have been shifting their business models to rely less on subscriptions to content and more on fees for services. They are moving “upstream” in the research process and assembling or building a variety of tools and services focused not only on the publication process, but also on helping scholars compile and manage data, collaborate with other researchers, and manage their work profiles. They are also building tools that help institutions evaluate, showcase and generate financial support for their faculty’s work. Increasingly, the largest scientific publisher, Elsevier, offers a case in point. Elsevier is moving to offer an integrated set of services designed to deepen and broaden the level of engagement between and among Elsevier, scholars and academic institutions. Yet even as Elsevier makes progress executing this strategy, it is not clear that it can transition its business rapidly enough to maintain its profitability as the library market uses its leverage to withdraw from subscriptions, as new platforms and services emerge, and as the value proposition for research and publishing is transformed.

Publishers’ strategies illustrate the opportunities to deliver new tools for supporting the research and publication process, but a more fundamental change to research may be associated with the growing importance of data analytics and machine learning. As highlighted in the introduction, entirely new areas and types of research are being created by the ability to capture, store, and analyze massive amounts of data. Computer science is being integrated into many traditional disciplines to create new interdisciplinary fields of research. Problems that were once intractable can now be pursued using raw computing power aimed at processing enormous amounts of data. Like access to great research libraries in the 20th century or access to the transcribed texts of the monks in the 6th century, access to massive amounts of data is essential to conducting cutting edge research in an increasing number of fields. Challenges facing colleges and universities as they are surrounded by “Big Data” include:

• The largest datasets are not controlled by universities. Unfortunately, the largest datasets are often not available in the public domain or accessible by universities; they are held by corporations like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. It has been said that Google’s effort to re-enter China is driven largely not by a desire for advertising revenue, but by a need to gain access to more data. With the insatiable need for data to feed the machine learning algorithms and to pursue answers to challenging problems in new ways, universities are finding themselves struggling to gain access to the raw materials for creating knowledge.
• Attracting top talent . Even the largest research universities are finding themselves at a disadvantage when trying to recruit top research talent. Professors are leaving the academy for jobs in industry, not only because of the potential to earn more money, but also to have access to the resources and data necessary to work on the most interesting intellectual problems.
• Potential to collaborate . Increasingly colleges and universities are positioning themselves to engage collaboratively not only with other universities, but also with private enterprise in order to get access to more data and compete to be at the cutting edge of research and discovery.

One consequence of these developments is that a smaller number of universities have the scale to compete in this domain, a trend that is increasing the gap between a small number of elite universities at the top, and all other colleges and universities far behind.

Serving as Engines of Opportunity and Social Mobility

If there is a risk of bifurcation in the research enterprise, it is perhaps even more pronounced on the education side of the college/university mission. In the post-WWII era, in large measure due to the GI Bill and support for the returning military, higher education became an engine of opportunity that opened the door to the middle class for millions of Americans. Although the return on investment from a post- secondary degree has continued to be a great value, the cost of higher education, and the tuitions charged for earning a degree, have grown at a rate higher than that of all but the highest family incomes, making it increasingly difficult for people from middle- and lower-income backgrounds to afford a post-secondary education. A series of challenges have emerged to confront higher education as it attempts to maintain its place as a positive defender and facilitator of social and economic opportunity:

• Undermatching . Many students choose not to go to the school that will challenge them more or that is beyond their local geographical region, a decision that often leads them to choose a school with lower levels of degree completion. And for colleges and universities, it is costly to reach students from all backgrounds and they don’t always have an incentive to do so.
• Low levels of public support for institutions that serve the most students. Community colleges and regional public universities, which are the starting point for many of the most economically challenged students, are severely underfunded on a per-student basis, leading to low graduation rates and fewer resources for students trying to complete their educations.
• Changing demographics . Colleges and universities have to educate a more diverse set of students from a wider range of backgrounds.
• Increasing numbers of less-prepared students . More students coming out of high school aspire to attend college but unfortunately a larger share of them are not sufficiently prepared. More students are arriving at college needing more support to complete their educations and earn their degrees. Educating these students is costlier for colleges at a time when tuition needs to be held in check.
• Changing legal and policy environment . Approaches that support diversity and access to higher education for students of all backgrounds are losing government support and are being attacked in the courts.
• Students have lives . The majority of students have other commitments and face pressures outside their academic work; they are not in a position to make education their exclusive, or even a top priority. Colleges must continue to develop different ways to educate students who have to work or raise a family or meet other obligations while pursuing their education.

One dystopian potential outcome would be that, despite the best efforts of many institutions of all kinds, we could see a devolution back to a distinctly two-tiered system like what existed in 19th Century Britain. In this negative projection one can envision a very small number of well-endowed institutions that cater to the wealthy, well-prepared class as well as a small number of carefully picked representatives from various groups. These students would receive a world-class education, while most students would be at risk of receiving a much lower quality education that is overly-reliant on poorly built computerized teaching systems or online learning courseware that does not provide the kind of encouragement and motivation that is required to help students through the many challenges encountered when learning. Following this path could well lead to a self-perpetuating system across generations where a small elite group benefits from a compounding level of social capital, while most students are left out, leading to a widening of social, political, cultural, and financial gulfs.

Protecting and Supporting Diverse Points of View

Higher education institutions hold sacred the ideal that their communities protect everyone’s ability to make their arguments; that the pursuit of knowledge requires a free exchange of knowledge and perspective, and that the use of evidence, scientific inquiry and vigorous debate are essential pillars of a democratic society and social and technological progress. There are a number of factors that are threatening higher education’s ability to continue to serve that role for all perspectives:

• What are facts? The very assumption that there are facts and that truth can be pursued and realized through scientific inquiry is being questioned. Sometimes this skepticism about the concept of “truth” stems from politics or ideology, sometimes it is rooted in beliefs about different forms of knowledge and “ways of knowing.”
• Controversial speakers are unwelcome. Demonstrations and the threat of violence associated with providing a platform for controversial speakers threaten the ability of higher education institutions to serve as the host for important conversations and to serve as defenders of free speech.
• Social media demands a response at a furious rate. The enormous power of social media to stir controversy and to move opinion and emotion operates at a pace that intellectual arguments cannot match. This results in leaders having to react rather than reason when faced with political challenges.
• The academy leans left. Through a process of self-selection over a matter of decades, a super- majority of the professoriate and administration in the academy have political views that are left-of-center. This is helping to create a perception that higher education is not a welcoming environment for all perspectives. As Lawrence Bacow said at his installation address at Harvard University, “more people than we would like to admit believe that universities are not nearly as open to ideas from across the political spectrum as we should be.” [2]
• There is less room for nuance . The increasing stridency of debate and dialogue in the political sphere, driven aggressively by ideology and partisanship, undermines the making of arguments based on careful and nuanced intellectual reasoning.

Higher education needs to combat the perception as well as the reality that it is no longer a place where ideas can be truly and freely shared without fear of repercussions.

Defending Important Values

In addition to nurturing multiple points of view, colleges and universities are long-lived institutions that have stood for timeless values such as the disinterested pursuit of learning, the freedom to conduct research on important questions of every kind, and the importance of enlightened reason. Yet, these institutions are threatened from multiple directions, and many, if not all, of the problems framed here threaten these institutions’ ability to protect these values. For example, the increase in the need to support computer science and data science majors at the same time that the number of humanities majors is falling dramatically is a direct response to “the market” for students and by the needs of students. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it steers these institutions toward the practical and away from the philosophical. It also raises the question of whether higher education institutions are motivated by their values, or if they have become more akin to corporations driven by meeting the needs of consumers and responding to challenges to their financial sustainability rather than by their values and mission. This shift is occurring at a time when a rich understanding of the humanities is arguably more important than ever. Our increasing reliance on machines to support and even replace some of our intellectual work is going to raise ethical and philosophical questions that only an understanding of the humanities will help us to address.

Sources and Sustainability of Financial Support

Over the last 30 years, and at an accelerating rate since the Great Recession, higher education has been receiving a decreasing share of the public purse. James Duderstadt, former president of the University of Michigan, in his 2009 address Dies Ademicus, said:

Actually, this decline in public support was nothing new for my university, located in the Rust Belt close to Detroit and the collapsing American automobile industry. Over the past 30 years we had seen our public support decline from 70% of our operating budget to less than 6% (more specifically, state support of $322 million/year compares to the total University of Michigan budget of $5.5 billion/year). As university president I used to explain that during this period we had evolved from a state-supported to a state-assisted to a state-related to a state-located university. In fact, with Michigan campuses now located in Europe and Asia, we remain only a state-molested institution. [3]

More generally, in academic year 2005-2006, state governments covered 36 percent of public 4-year doctoral institutions’ budgets. By 2010-2011, that was down to 29 percent, and it has continued to fall, to 27 percent in 2015-2016. [4] There are a number of reasons for this diminishing public financial support:

• Other costs, such as for health care and pensions, are crowding out resources that might be available for education.
• There is a general reduction in investment in public programs and institutions as governments have moved to the right of the political spectrum.
• Support for higher education is increasingly becoming a partisan issue. In June 2017, a Pew Research survey showed that 58 percent of Republicans say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the way things are going in the country. [5] Similarly, just published Gallup poll found that higher education suffered the greatest drop in confidence among a variety of public institutions between 2015 and 2018, falling from 56 percent to 48 percent. The drop in confidence was largest among Republicans, falling 17 percent from 56 percent to 39 percent in that three-year period. [6]
• Many colleges and universities have been forced to raise tuition in order to close the gaps caused by reduced public funding, creating something of a vicious cycle as increasing tuition leads to increased dissatisfaction or frustration with the institutions. It has also contributed to rising levels of student debt, which has become its own political challenge for higher education.
• Many other colleges and universities have reduced core educational expenditures and cut other services in response to the decline in public funding, which has had an impact on the likelihood that students will complete their degree and certificate programs, in addition to further alienating multiple constituencies.

The problems facing higher education are coming at the sector fast and furious, and from all angles. Multiple books would be needed (and have been published) that attempt to address some or all of these challenges. This brief paper aims neither to be comprehensive nor to suggest solutions to these vexing challenges; rather, its only goal is to offer a simple framework that might help leaders simplify, focus, and assess the challenges in their own contexts. Ultimately, we need for our rich diverse ecosystem of colleges and universities, public policy makers, and the organizations that support and partner in their work, to be positioned to defend, protect and sustain higher education’s extremely important role as a trusted source of knowledge, education, and freedom of inquiry.

• Joseph E. Aoun, Robot Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017). ↑
• Lawrence S. Bacow, “Installation Address,” Harvard University, October 5, 2018, https://www.harvard.edu/president/speech/2018/installation-address-by-lawrence-s-bacow . ↑
• James J. Duderstadt , “Current Global Trends in Higher Education and Research: Their Impact on Europe,” Dies Academicus 2009 Address, March 12, 2009, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/3146623.pdf . ↑
• “Institutional Revenues per Student at Public Institutions over Time,” College Board , https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/institutional-revenues-student-public-institutions- over-time . ↑
• Hannah Fingerhut, “Republicans Skeptical of Colleges’ Impact on U.S., but Most See Benefits for Workforce Preparation,” Pew Research Center , July 20, 2017, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/20/republicans-skeptical-of-colleges-impact-on-u-s-but-most-see-benefits-for-workforce-preparation/ . ↑
• Jeffrey M. Jones, “Confidence in Higher Education Down Since 2015,” Gallup Blog , October 9, 2018, https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/242441/confidence-higher-education-down-2015.aspx . ↑