Universities typically emerge as gatekeepers of the professions, by wresting control over the training and certification that is required. The process generally begins outside academe—with apprenticeships and voluntary associations—and evolves toward a new norm of academic credit and degrees. Faculty then become the experts who determine the body of knowledge budding professionals need to know in a field—as they develop scholarship that supports that profession. Research-oriented faculty trained in doctoral programs emerge to lead in this process. These academics then determine admissions standards and curricular hurdles so that the profession’s leadership is confident that individuals have been sorted and screened for the best to surface as future representatives of that profession.

An academic discipline and a profession eventually converge through the relationship, division of labor and trust between universities and professional associations—and their mutual respect for the authority and the respective roles of one another. Sometimes, professional associations evaluate academic programs or even provide an examination at the end of the education process. But the growing portfolio of academic programs over the past century is the direct result of more and more professions coming under the purview of the academy.

One exception has been the actuarial field. Few of us know much about this occupation, nor appreciate the pivotal role that actuaries play in our lives. An actuary analyzes the financial consequence of insurable risk, and then, for example, sets premiums for insurance companies or evaluates whether pension plans are adequately funded. An actuary determines if a young driver of a powerful sports car should pay more for auto insurance than an aging professor who drives a 20-year old jalopy. An actuary determines our health insurance costs. No one gets out of this world alive—the actuary handles the hard part of forecasting the when and the how. These are the quants in the back office, invisible yet indispensable to the public. They play moneyball with matters far more important than professional sports.

The actuary applies sophisticated mathematics and statistics to the dilemma of risk: how best to quantify the unknowable and assess probabilities so that an uncertain outcome can be somehow anticipated. Their work might be hidden to the public, but their impact on everyday life is nonetheless significant. They have been called the bookies of the insurance industry. The trust that consumers have in their insurance companies when they hand over large premium payments today for benefits that might need to be paid out decades later results from the integrity and intelligence of actuarial professionals. Even with a mega-catastrophe such as Hurricane Katrina, the insurance companies were prepared to honor all legitimate claims.

Actuaries calibrate what becomes the necessary equilibrium between the self-interest of the individual and that of a corporation—so each can have the security necessary to transact a long-term relationship for an otherwise unknowable future.

Remarkably, only a minority of the 28,000 actuaries studied the discipline of Actuarial Science in college. The true gatekeepers for this profession are the Society of Actuaries (SOA), founded in 1949 (but with roots more than a century old) and the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS), established in 1914. Collectively, they determine and test the knowledge and skills of those seeking to enter this highly selective field. Although open to all, this lengthy series of rigorous exams serves as a sieve that limits the number of candidates who successfully complete the gauntlet.  Standards have been established with about a 50-50 chance of success on just the first two of the several examinations. The content of these exams is written by committed volunteers in the SOA/CAS. This sequence of examinations is much more than comparable to the rigor of most university master’s degree programs both in the hours of study required and in the difficulty of the material. There are few independent professional associations with this much authority and autonomy over the credentialing of their members.

This is now one of the best-compensated fields for entry-level jobs, paying an average of $50-$60,000 to start. Some schools have undergraduate majors in Actuarial Science, for those who choose this seemingly dry field as teenagers. Given how invisible this is to most young people, the more prevalent path is a solid undergraduate mathematics or statistics major, followed by self-study toward the initial SOA exams. A shadow industry of test prep tools—study guides, videos, classes and online programs—has emerged to aid those on this path.

Yet another, now more common pathway into the profession is through a master’s degree programs in Actuarial Science. These programs are very appealing to talented students in their 20s and beyond who did not consider the profession initially as undergraduates, but would now like to seek a professional direction for themselves or perhaps change careers. For someone holding a full-time job, or otherwise away from the classroom for a couple of years, fearful of self-study, looking for a practical degree that builds on their more abstract undergraduate major, the draw of the Actuarial Science as a post-baccalaureate endeavor is powerful.

Typically, these programs are taught by a blend of academic faculty from mathematics and statistics departments and practitioners—generally current or retired Fellows of the Societies—who teach courses in their unique area of specialization. Given SOA’s and CAS’s selectivity, those with this credential often have the capability to teach complex material such as pension mathematics or survival models. The curriculum is typically aligned with the SOA and CAS examinations—and when the exam content changes, course content follows. The best programs go further, introducing students to the various corporate sectors that employ actuaries—life insurance, health care, predictive modeling, property insurance, or pension practice—so their graduates will have a more complete understanding of the profession they are about to enter.

These academic programs are seeing burgeoning enrollments—even though an academic degree is not necessary to become an actuary. The national focus on health care insurance, publicity on how the profession ranks in starting salaries and job satisfaction, and the growing need for actuaries in the fast-growing economies in China and India—have made advanced degrees in Actuarial Science more appealing.

Rarely does an established profession in a field as sophisticated, intricate and quantitative as actuarial science thrive outside the realm of academe, depend so much on a voluntary association of professionals, and yet not even require a college degree for entry. Even when higher education offers a degree in Actuarial Science, this field might be the major example of where academe humbly defers to the wisdom and hegemony of a profession.

Jay A. Halfond is dean of Metropolitan College at Boston University. Lois K. Horwitz is associate professor of the Practice and Chair of Actuarial Science at Metropolitan College.

When it comes to creating an international campus, America’s universities are far better at welcoming faculty and students from abroad—and sending students to study abroad—than in truly elevating global consciousness. Simply having foreign individuals on campus doesn’t make global citizens of the rest of us. Exposure is hardly sufficient. Like wallflowers at a dance, there is sadly too little meaningful interchange.

Barely one in eight undergraduates participates in study abroad, and, when they do, it is most often in Western Europe or Australia, and even then in an American enclave or among English-language speakers. Integration in a foreign country is rare. A semester abroad certainly can create a memorable experience and maturation, but does a few months in one country truly generate an appreciation of the wider world?

Americans are largely monolingual—and now expect the educated worldwide to speak English. In fact, linguistic atrophy is more characteristic of student life than foreign language competency. Only 8% feel their abilities in a second language improved in college.

The curriculum likewise doesn’t present much reassurance. Harvard’s former president, Derek Bok, noted that: “Only a small minority of students appear to take any coursework that would prepare them as citizens to understand America’s role in the world and the global problems that confront it.”

We give lip service to the importance of global consciousness, but do little to promote it. I offer a few suggestions and observations to redress this:

• Avoid tokenism. Don’t create a singular curricular hurdle or opportunity and declare victory. Instead, generate a limitless menu of possibilities for students and faculty.

• Avoid cultural relativism in the classroom. Too often foreign students are treated differently because of alleged cultural differences. They don’t speak up in classes in their home countries, so perhaps we should expect less contribution to class discussion. Academic dishonesty is more rampant abroad, goes the myth, so we shouldn’t hold foreign students to the same standards or repercussions. By submitting to cultural biases, even under the guise of sensitivity, we compromise the quality of the academic experience for all students.

• Take advantage of immersion opportunities, even in our own backyard. We host so many immigrant communities, which might expose a more representative view of the world than the elite stratum able to afford American tuition pricing. Be on the lookout for teachable moments and experiences locally through community service or participant-observation. We are often surrounded by unfolding case studies in our own environs and through them connected to world events.

• Take advantage of communication technology to create ongoing academic interchange. The logistics of being in the same place at the same time are daunting for faculty to teach abroad or students to enroll abroad. Blended or distance learning can allow faculty and students to co-mingle without co-locating. We now have the capability to create virtual academic community for those who can’t commit to moving.

• Don’t limit the cultivation of global citizenship only to those below age 22. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw: like youth, global opportunities are often wasted on the young. We shouldn’t try to forcefeed or cram too much into the undergraduate years. Graduate and professional education—and programs for older students, often studying part-time—extends the opportunities to integrate international efforts. Create graduate study abroad—short, intensive destination courses for student cohorts.

• Seek out study-abroad-in-reverse, and build institutional alliances that create a dynamic two-way flow of students studying abroad for a single semester or year. Establish dual-degree agreements that promote this bilateral exchange. Create distance learning exchanges so that online courses might become melting pots for students from various institutions and cultures.

• Be cautious of major overseas commitments, but bullish on partnerships. Beware of the urge to create bricks-and-mortar, standalone branch campuses: These are often beyond the core mission of the institution, limited in any deeper benefits to the main campus and fraught with risks and the poorly anticipated.  Alliances, however, provide the ease of starting and exiting, the benefit of in-country expertise and existing overhead, often a truer opportunity for global interchange, and perhaps even a baby step toward more extensive involvement.

• Embrace the conversation as much as the outcome. So often, I have heard from faculty and administrators that simply the opportunity to explore new overseas opportunities brought colleagues together on a project, which became a valuable learning experience in itself.

• Balance the intensive with the extensive. The core dilemma for developing global awareness and commitment is whether to focus concertedly on one place or more broadly across many continents. Too focused becomes binational rather than global, but too broad becomes both superficial and unrealistic. Rotate the focus of attention.

Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss once offered the helpful concept of the diachronic and synchronic—that is, a comparative perspective across both time and space. This, for me, encapsulates the mind-opening purpose of the university: to take someone out of the comfort of one’s own place and era, with the means to understand other cultures and, as a consequence, to gain perspective on being a contemporary American. At their best America’s higher educators provide a foundation for global awareness that produces lifelong curiosity and sensitivity—and, if possible, a deeper understanding of the connections between the local and the global, the past and our future.

Jay A. Halfond is dean of Metropolitan College and Extended Education at Boston University.

Related Posts: Trends & Indicators: International Enrollment; Forum on Internationalization (pdf)

To listen as many of us incessantly complain, one would think academe is chronically resistant to change, new ideas and innovative programs. We often hear the smaller the stakes, the greater the petty battles—no opportunity is too minute to stall and impede. Before tenure, junior faculty need to be protected while they build their publications dossier; after tenure, they no longer need to care or demonstrate any institutional commitment or loyalty. Professional schools lag behind their professions rather than provide cutting-edge wisdom for their next generation, as faculty rely on their reservoir of dated materials and perspectives.

Or so we often hear.

I believe we don’t give ourselves enough credit for innovation and creative thinking within higher education. The soap operas of entrenched faculty, factions divided over trivia, professors protecting their sub-disciplines, lengthy and convoluted approval processes, and ongoing acrimony and melodrama all overshadow progress made without fanfare. The longer view of the history of the American college and university clearly demonstrates the responsiveness to changing societal needs and opportunities—with faculty often at the forefront of that change.

If a growing creative class, to use Richard Florida’s term, is the catalyst for our dynamic society, then the university is its temple. Cruise control is anathema to the academic temperament. Academics’ very psyche draws them to tinker rather than stagnate. Faculty are innately restless. Even when they devote their entire adult life to one institution, faculty often reinvent themselves several times over the course of their careers. This is one of the undervalued appeals of the academic life and the malleability of the academic enterprise. Professional lives can change even when titles do not. Faculty can move in and out of various roles. Universities, consequently, have been remarkably adaptable and even protean institutions over the centuries—and very capable of reinvention and delivering new knowledge and value to their expanding constituents. While the list of top corporations changed dramatically over the course of the past century, America’s leading universities have not: far more because of their resilience than their resistance to change.

David Riesman, sympathetic to the impediments that leaders face in higher education, coined the term “faculty veto group” to characterize the negative force faculty play in moving their institutions forward. Faculty block but rarely facilitate; micromanage and second-guess, rather than support their institution’s leadership. Though there is no denying the inherent intransigence in this stereotype, just as often faculty quietly innovate. We look for evidence of blockbuster changes when modest, incremental change is far more common, less detectable, and perhaps much more desirable. By focusing on the challenge of introducing major transformations or innovations, it is easy to overlook the march forward from ideas far more discreet, minute and local, though cumulatively perhaps even more impactful.

I would distinguish between micro- and macro-innovation—one a baby step and the other a major leap, one whispers and the other screams, the first overlooked and the latter overrated. Micro doesn’t mean mini; introducing innovations in the classroom, reinventing course content, developing interesting scholarly projects each pave the way for even larger breakthrough events. We tend to elevate and romanticize vision and self-proclaimed paradigm shifts, as if these are frequent and planned. “If you are having visions,” former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt once said, “you should see a doctor.” Beware the prophet, but study the plodder. What is micro today can lead to macro tomorrow—with the foundation, reassurance and wisdom that help to ensure success. Lasting innovation benefits as much by slow cooking as stir-frying. So, let’s give a cheer or two to the academics we too often berate for their inertia.

Forecasting the future of various possible actions—or inactions—has inherent false negatives (thinking something looks safe, and it isn’t) and false positives (fearing something bad will occur, and it doesn’t). Potential risk should never paralyze an organization, but there are ways to mitigate that risk: seize concrete opportunities, take trial-and-error steps that minimize large investments or lingering commitments, select options that permit a variety of alternative paths, and avoid dependency on any set outcome. Academic innovators find ways for their institutions to be nimble rather than calcified, and avoid public megafailures. There are few institutions as unforgiving and intolerant of failure as academe.

In my experience, the most successful innovations occurred through steps that wouldn’t have been catastrophic if aborted, and worked out in ways, frankly, no one even predicted or planned. I would modify the popular business cliché “disruptive technology” to suggest that academe benefits most by its disruptive pedagogy. Trying new things causes old habits and assumptions to be revisited. While I am coining new jargon, I would also introduce the phrase “planned serendipity.” Strong academic leaders place themselves in the path of potentially good ideas and capitalize on them.

Chocolatier Willie Wonka morphed Thomas Edison’s famous edict (invention is 99% percent perspiration and 1% inspiration) into a slightly different, more mathematically-challenged formula: “Invention, my dear friends, is ninety-three percent perspiration, six percent electricity, four percent evaporation, and two percent butterscotch ripple.”

Effective academic leaders cleverly bring the butterscotch to the party.

Jay A. Halfond is dean of Metropolitan College and Extended Education at Boston University.