What if colleges and universities assessed student flourishing on par with traditional metrics like graduation rates and grade point averages? If they did, would they work to improve the conditions under which students report finding meaning, purpose, and wisdom? Would students and families consider these measures in their choice of college?

A new research initiative from the Human Flourishing Project at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science is providing both the means and the encouragement for these scenarios. The Academic Flourishing Initiative launches this month with an invitation to schools across the country to join a research learning community focused on examining how well their institutions promote conditions that lead to flourishing in college and in life.    

Project leaders argue that, as part of the assessment efforts institutions use to benchmark and improve, colleges and universities should understand how university life is helping students grow in wisdom and judgement and whether they are prepared for leadership, citizenship, and problem-solving in an increasingly complex world.

“Our conventional college assessments are all critical and should not be neglected, but we should also broaden our focus,” said Tyler VanderWeele, director of the Human Flourishing Project and the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We should consider flourishing both academically and in life more generally. What we measure shapes what we discuss, what we know, and what we aim for.”  

"What we measure shapes what we discuss, what we know, and what we aim for."

VanderWeele and his team at Harvard define “academic flourishing” as “the relative attainment of a state in which all aspects of an academic community’s life are good,” including the degree to which institutions help students grow as human beings. It is a focus within the Human Flourishing Program’s longstanding assessment work involving six dimensions of flourishing: happiness, health, meaning, relationships, character, and financial security. It also includes a community flourishing component, which considers, “What does it mean for an academic community to flourish as a community?” This takes into account conditions such as good relationships in the community, proficient leadership, healthy structures and practices, and a shared mission. 

The aim of the Academic Flourishing Initiative is to form a network of schools that participate in assessment and data collection campus-wide, reflect on the data, and learn what institutions can do to more intentionally infuse flourishing into their practices. The heart of the Academic Flourishing Initiative is focused on the individual flourishing of students along with students’ assessment of whether or not their college is contributing to their own formation and flourishing.

Among the assessments available to the institutions is a 24-question student formation survey divided into four themes: knowledge and critical thinking, character formation, citizenship and leadership, and meaning and growth.  VanderWeele said the real innovation within this work is the students’ perception of the contribution of student life not only to their development, growth, knowledge, and critical thinking, but also to their moral foundation, character development, and their capacities for leadership and citizenship.

In acknowledging that assessing institutions’ capacities in these areas holds them accountable for outcomes that many might view as outside their purview, VanderWeele pointed to the mission statements of countless colleges that profess otherwise. A commitment to human-centered education is not only foundational in many institutions but, one might argue, necessary to accomplish more traditional academic outcomes. 

“Even institutions that don’t embrace character formation as part of their mission would arguably find it a necessary part of achieving their cognitive and epistemic goals,” said VanderWeele. “You need a certain level of perseverance to work through difficulties and to push one’s mind. You need a certain level of courage to work through controversial or challenging questions. And you need honesty in test-taking and research practices.” 

As an indication of the widening appeal of this work, four of the questions within the survey were embedded in the Wall Street Journal’s annual college rankings. These four were growth in wisdom, justice, contributing to society, and positively changing the world. While the information won’t be released until the fall, early results show meaningful differences among schools on individual questions within the survey.

VanderWeele was pleased the Wall Street Journal included student formation among the many, more heavily weighted factors in its analysis but said the Academic Flourishing Initiative is more interested in shared learning than competitive benchmarking. Still, the inclusion of formation and flourishing within a widely publicized measure on the comparative value of college says something about what student and families may be yearning for.

To learn more about the Academic Flourishing Initiative, see the Initiative brochure, join a webinar on August 20, or contact Associate Director for Research Brendan Case at brendan_case@fas.harvard.edu or Associate Director for Impact Reece Brown at reece_brown@fas.harvard.edu. 

You can reach LearningWell Editor Marjorie Malpiede at mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.