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Technology innovation questioned. (Donald Walker)

Link: [] = Clarion Call The Handwriting on the Web=

Those who decry the lack of innovation in higher education may be looking in the wrong places. By Jane S. Shaw
June 16, 2010

A fundamental debate is developing between those who think that universities can’t change and those who think that change is inevitable. That debate shaped the June 3 symposium in Washington, D.C., “Reinventing the American University,” sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute.

The design of the conference appears to have favored the pessimistic side—the idea that universities, which have resisted innovation in the past, will continue to do so. But the actual conference, in my view, was more optimistic.

The first paper, which set the stage for the conference, was titled “Barriers to Innovation in U.S. Higher Education.” The authors are Dominic J. Brewer and William G. Tierney of the University of Southern California. In his presentation, Brewer, a labor economist at USC’s Rossier School of Education, pointed out that many other sectors of society are adopting cost-saving and quality-enhancing innovations, but such innovations occur only at the “margins” of higher education. For the most part, colleges and universities follow just two age-old methods of imparting information, “the seminar model” and the “lecture model” with its “sage on a stage.”

A second presenter, Jon Marcus, a writer for the United Kingdom’s //Times Higher Education// magazine, bolstered the claim of minimal innovation with a paper on the history of U. S. higher education, “Old School: Four Hundred Years of Resistance to Change.” He said that postsecondary education in the United States changed only when one of three conditions occurred: 1) change was in the self-interest of the institutions, 2) there was pressure from outside, or 3) completely new educational entities were created.

Marcus’s statement may be right, but nothing about it is unique to higher education. Nearly all major historical changes are due to those three forces: self-interest, pressure from outside, or the creation of completely new entities. Innovation is disruptive and rarely popular. Yet innovation does occur, even in higher education, as Marcus himself outlined.

Once the fact that change does occur was acknowledged, the door to the other side of the debate was opened—the idea that those forces are transforming higher education right now, or are about to do so. Change may be happening, or, if not, may be imminent.

One speaker, Peter Stokes, chief researcher for consulting firm Eduventures, Inc., raised that possibility in his presentation on “What Online Education Can Teach Us about Higher Education.” He invoked the ideas of Clayton Christensen, author of //The Innovator’s Dilemma// and coauthor of //Disrupting Class.// Stokes seems to think that online education will become a “disruptive technology” (Christensen’s term) if it continues to progress at the pace it has so far.

According to Christensen, disruptive technologies start out as crude innovations that are minimally profitable and totally unsuitable for an established industry. Like Sony’s transistor radio and Apple’s personal computer, the products incorporating such technologies develop outside the standard industries (vacuum-tube radios, minicomputers). But the technology improves and over time destroys the old companies, at least as they used to be. (I’ve discussed Christensen’s concept previously [|here.])

To draw the parallel: Today’s traditional universities are serving middle-class students, mostly aged 18-22, who can afford (often with loans and grants) to attend four-year residential colleges. In contrast, for-profit schools, using the (possibly) disruptive technology of online education, have discovered new markets composed of older, working, and often low-income students (the “underserved”). Right now, their clientele is limited, but these schools are in a position to develop online technology in ways that will destroy (or forever change) existing institutions.

One of Christensen’s unique insights is that game-changing technology may be under development in an industry even while the industry’s leadership is largely ignorant (or even contemptuous) of it.Is online education a disruptive technology? While Stokes didn’t definitively answer that question, he hinted at how the disruption might occur. Today, he said, education is mostly an integrated whole consisting of “faculty, curricula, and credentials.” But this “value chain” is being “refashioned" within higher education. At the margins, there are signs of disaggregation of education into separate pieces such as online tutoring, open courseware, and competency-based credentialing, said Stokes. Indeed, once credentialing splits off (for example, by an independent entity that warrants that a job candidate has achieved the equivalent of a college education), it seems as though colleges as we know them could be in serious trouble.

A related idea, which came up in a question by Paul Edwards, provost of Southern Virginia University, is that accreditation may become less of a barrier to entry. Right now, most four-year schools are accredited by a single organization that accredits all the colleges in its region. The accreditors have been accused (and were again at the meeting) of smothering innovation and restricting new entrants. But Edwards said that a slight change in federal regulations could allow a regional accreditor to evaluate schools in other regions, creating the potential for competitive accreditation, which would be more likely to reward innovation.

The one-day meeting, which also ranged into such subjects as the decline of tenure and the competition between community colleges and for-profits, was a showcase for a book project on innovation, still in the editorial process. The organizers were Ben Wildavsky, senior fellow in research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation; Kevin Carey, policy director at Education Sector; and Andrew P. Kelly, research fellow with the American Enterprise Institute. They had a stellar cast of presenters and discussants, including such figures as economist Ronald Ehrenberg of Cornell University; William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland; Suzanne Walsh, formerly of the Lumina Foundation; and Andrew Rosen, CEO of Kaplan, Inc.

As I see it, the debate’s optimistic side (that is, optimistic about innovation, but not necessarily what institutions of higher education would like to see) has the edge. To support the contention that more ferment may be going on than some realize, I will close with a list of innovative organizations in the higher education field—all of which were mentioned at the conference. Here’s the list: If these institutions are as good as advertised, they are likely to be models when the time comes. Now, will that time come? You decide.
 * [|Frank M. Olin Engineering School]. Created in Needham, Massachusetts, in 1999, this school aims at revitalizing engineering education by incorporating business, entrepreneurship, creativity, and social awareness. Its faculty do not have tenure.
 * [|Harrisburg University of Science and Technology]. Founded in 2005 to bring economic growth to central Pennsylvania, the private school (which gets financial support from the legislature) does not have tenure or separate academic departments.
 * [|National Center for Academic Transformation.] This project, funded by the Pew Charitable Trust and located at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, redesigns college courses, incorporating new technology and peer instruction to make them more effective and less expensive.
 * [|Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon]. Supported by a number of foundations, the Open Learning Initiative uses cognitive psychology and knowledge about human-computer interaction to design online courses that provide continual feedback to learners.
 * [|University of Minnesota at Rochester]. The newest campus of the University of Minnesota, the school was designed “from the ground up” to incorporate new knowledge about learning. Its faculty includes a small number of tenure-track professors and large numbers of student-centered specialists.
 * [|Straighterline.] This private company provides basic online courses such as introductory algebra, college algebra, developmental writing, and English composition for a price that can be as low as $99 a month (or $399 per course).
 * [|2tor, Inc.] Created by John Katzman, former head of Princeton Review, 2tor brings online education to established institutions. It currently provides courseware for the University of Southern California’s Master of Arts in Teaching program.
 * [|University of the People.] This new international, online university, not yet accredited, is providing education tuition-free.
 * [|Western Governors University]. Created by the governors of 19 states (most of them western), this online university, which began taking students in 1999, allows accelerated completion of college, using both competency-based tests and specific courses.