A thoughtful and persuasive article by Michael D. Smith in The Chronicle of Higher Education makes the case for higher ed to reconsider its collective stance on new technologies in the classroom and throughout the campus and institution, forging needed connections with today’s learners as well as to the broader world.
Smith starts by throwing shade on all academics, administrators, and leaders who have “shrugged off the looming threat,” offering many more excuses than solutions to the publics’ loss of confidence, changing inclinations to pursue post-secondary education, questions about the value and return on investment, the student-debt crisis, inherent and recurring bias in admissions policies and practices, and more. He correctly points to higher ed’s longstanding resistance to real change, with all the irony due our institutions of higher learning (and their proclaimed commitment to access, affordability, and inclusion and centrality in our nation’s social, cultural, and economic progress), and urges that “we stop reflexively protecting our deeply flawed system.”
Smith suggests embracing three fundamental principles, drawing on his expertise in information technology and marketing and his experience as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, one of our nation’s leading STEM-focused research universities.
1. Digitization WILL change higher education. Where MOOCs failed to be disruptive (they created abundance in access and instruction but didn’t create abundance in outcomes), the strategies focused on earning microcredentials and promoted by third-part companies like Google, Amazon, and LinkedIn appear poised to be both disruptive and threatening to traditional (or at least slow-to-change) higher ed institutions.
2. We should WANT to embrace this change. Higher ed’s systems are broken and the excuses being offered by many within their ranks and their institutions are incongruent with their professed commitments to social mobility, equity and justice, and both advancing both the state of knowledge and society. While Smith doesn’t attempt to explain or even understand this cognitive dissonance (can’t blame him, I certainly wouldn’t), he does make clear his belief that the solutions cannot be found from within a broken system and that low-cost, high-quality alternatives are needed to both show the way and lead the way.
3. We have a WAY to embrace this change. Smith points to the music recording industry (major labels and studios) as an example of initial opposition can and must give way to needed innovation. That industry that shifted entirely away from the “shiny plastic discs” that had made them billions of dollars to the new digital media did so because they realized/understood that their model was different from their mission. If the mission is true and enduring, models can and must adapt to achieve at greater levels, at lower cost, with greater reach, or greater impact. The music recording industry “realized that new technologies supported their mission, even if they threatened their old model.” Smith argues that online education has the potential to respond/adapt/evolve – to advance their mission – similarly. He points to SNHU, ASU, Georgia Tech, and others as examples of disruptors in mission-driven transformation of educational models.
The author concludes: “We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a more open, flexible, inclusive, and lower-priced system that can scale to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of capable students who are being left behind. If we embrace that opportunity, just think how much value we might create for those students – and how much value those students, in turn, might create for society.”
I don’t agree with all of Dr. Smith’s points about counterarguments higher ed proffers to what is happening to our industry. I believe that external drivers (e.g., federal and state policies and investments, demographic shifts, failure to effectively communicate both the cost and the value of higher education) ARE just that – forces that are contributing to if not causing, exacerbating if not accelerating, the challenges we are facing. However, I do agree with the author that higher ed faculty, leaders, and administrators often hide behind these and other flimsy excuses to avoid facing the hard facts, making the difficult decisions, and transforming themselves from within – for the good and their mission.
Read the full article here