Miami University

Marcia Baxter Magolda

Marcia Baxter Magolda (educational leadership), a faculty member at Miami since 1983, is the recipient of numerous national and university awards for her scholarly achievements. In the following q and a, she explains what her research reveals about preparing college students for adult responsibilities.

Tell us about the longitudinal study of college students that you’re so well known for nationally.
I started out with 101 Miami students when they entered college in 1986.  I talked with them annually and today, more than 20 years later, I remain in contact with 35 individuals from that original group.  

Why has this study gotten so much attention?
The study offers a picture of how young adults make the transition from authority dependence to self-authorship.  Self-authorship is the capacity to internally define what to believe, one’s identity, and one’s relationship with others. These are the expectations of adult life.  Contemporary society demands that people be self-authored and capable of making complex decisions in diverse contexts. 

Very few longitudinal studies have gone on as long as mine at Miami or been updated annually.

What is the single most important thing you have learned from this study?
Higher education has to change the educator/learner relationship into a learning partnership.  We need to move toward a relationship where the educator and the student work collaboratively and the student takes responsibility for the educational journey.

I like to use the tandem bicycle metaphor.  In the traditional model, the educator gets on the front, the student on the back.  At graduation, the educator gets off and the student is left to fend for herself or himself without knowing how to steer or brake. In a learning partnership the student is on the front at the beginning, it’s their journey, they’re responsible for it, and the educator is there to provide expertise and guidance.

The dilemma is that educators need to share authority with students in ways we’re not accustomed to and part of that is trusting students’ ability to take up that responsibility.

Has your work had an impact on actual practices at Miami or at other universities?
Yes. There are several programs at Miami organized around this model, including my own College Student Personnel master’s program. Residence life has asked me to work with them to organize their entire division around the model.

It’s also being used at a number of universities.  Virginia Tech adopted the model for a four-course series that meets their core curriculum requirement.  The University of Nevada at Las Vegas redid their entire student affairs organization using this model.  These are just a few examples.

Students respond favorably to this model.  We have evidence that young people can achieve self-authorship while still in college. 

Based on your study and your own experiences in the classroom, do you think today’s students are lagging behind those of other generations in this type of developmental growth?
I don’t think of self-authorship as a natural occurrence, but as socialization that occurs in schools and homes.  High schools socialize students to succeed on tests, to get good grades and scores so they can get into the right college.  This creates an external formula for success.  So students arrive on campus dependent on that formula and the people who provide it, whether they be teachers or parents. 

Now the problem is professors want critical thinking.  Critical thinking requires that the student begin to figure out what he or she believes in, who I’m going to be and how I’m going to relate to other people.  And today’s students are having more trouble, they’re more entrenched in the formula because letting go means moving away from the only way they know to be successful.

So this leads into parents doing the learning partner thing, too, and reframing their relationship from parent/child to adult/adult.  It’s the same story.  Parents have to trust that their kids will make good decisions if they get enough guidance.  And, yes the kids will make mistakes, but it will work out. 

If mom and dad take care of all the problems at college, then their child will leave with no skills to handle problems in adult work and their personal life.  So, the parents also need to get on the back of the bike.  They need to coach their children how to manage daily life instead of managing it for them.

Or what? What are the consequences of not having the internal capacity you’re talking about?
Too often college graduates have all kinds of skills, they’re very bright, they get great jobs, but then they struggle to meet adult challenges.  I saw this happen in my longitudinal study.  A boss would need a report by 5 p.m. and the young person would ask, “how do you want me to do this?” and the boss would say “I don’t care, just get it done.”  And the young person wasn’t prepared for this kind of autonomy.