Project Description
Who has better insight into what new majority learners need and seek from higher education institutions to thrive than students themselves?
Today’s majority learners bring a diverse and different array of experiences, needs, and ambitions. However, in many regards, the system of higher education is not designed to holistically support these learners due to deeply embedded forces that drive structural inequities. Evidence of such is demonstrated by the persistence of disparities in student success outcomes across race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, immigration status, and other aspects of social identity.
To disrupt the root causes of evolving inequities that disproportionately burden and harm new majority learners, many of the systems and institutions of higher education are embarking on an equity-centered transformational change journey. While this action is necessary to achieve a future of higher education where students’ race, ethnicity, income, and other dimensions of their identity are not predictors of educational success and opportunity, we must ask whether the approaches taken to engage equity-centered transformational change encourage, or allow, collaboration between new majority learners and higher education professionals?
To realize higher education’s claim as the great mobilizer and make good on its social promise, intermediaries from across the country have joined a call to commit to a new approach to equity-centered transformational change that centers power with and for today’s new majority learners. A model that:
- Views new majority learners as the experts on their lived experiences.
- Recognizes students’ intimate understanding of structural flaws that fuel disparities.
- Welcomes the fresh, inventive, fearless mindsets students possess.
Designed with sponsoring organization Tides, partnering organization Designing for Equity, members of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Intermediaries for Scale, and 63 students from across the country, the Shift Power. Share Power. framework helps higher education professionals respond to the realities of learners’ lived experiences in a holistic and equity-centered manner.
Download this powerful new tool for creating transformational change with and for today’s new majority learners today.
Shift Power. Share Power. Executive Summary
Shift Power. Share Power. Engagement Framework
