Higher Ed is in the Crosshairs, Again.
Is #highered too slow to change? Are institutions adapting sufficiently and responding appropriately to students’ needs and economic realities?
Like many of my peers who have worked for decades in higher education, I’ve thought a lot about these questions. In fact, I wrote?a blog?for The Tambellini Group on why change is often difficult in our industry.??
That same blog caught the attention of?Jon Marcus?at?Hechinger Report?and?Jon Reed?at?NPR’s?KUER, who included my perspective on these issues in their recent incisive coverage of how #faculty and #administrators at one Utah #university are navigating the especially difficult tensions between accountability and academic freedom. I hope you’ll check out the?NPR article?and?Hechinger Report story?from these thoughtful journalists.?
It’s a privilege to contribute to this debate on a national level, and I’m especially grateful because the opportunity led me to reflect yet again on how the identity and purpose of higher education should evolve.?
Should institutions be run more like businesses, or do they exist as a public good to develop a well-educated populace? The answers aren’t black and white, and vary for different institutions, but here are some of my thoughts:?
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Is change happening fast enough, and is it radical enough? Probably not. But there has been notable progress occurring for decades, including significant modernization in business operations and the core activities of teaching and research.?
As a society, it’s important that we balance two contrasting priorities: preserving the inherent virtues of #highered that have driven remarkable exploration and invention for centuries while also responding to the urgent imperative to make changes aligned with the current realities of population demographics, technology, and the economic and policy landscapes.?
I hope we can do the hard work of reconciling these divergent forces to continue to move higher education forward.?
What do you think? I’m curious to hear your thoughts!
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1 年Great article, Dave! Just like Becky Frieden I've thought about these tensions a lot - it's quite the perennial existential debate. I also find it interesting that despite the slow pace of change, the vast majority of institutions continue to endure. And a significant chunk of them have managed to survive much longer than many of the largest marquee corporations in the U.S -- the definitive lists of the biggest companies (Fortune 50, etc.) has seen a lot more exits and acquisitions than the lists of the biggest universities. Derek Newton wrote a great article for Forbes awhile back doing a deep dive into how many institutions had actually closed and found that despite so many doomsday predictions over the years, numbers haven't really changed. It will indeed be interesting to see what the next 10-20 years bring in terms of how #highered evolves.
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1 年Insightful piece Dave. I’ve struggled with this dichotomy myself for years - we need ‘skills’ in the modern workforce, and yet what we really need to do is train future workforces to think critically so that they drive and adapt to changing times. More reason to acknowledge that college doesn’t need to be one size fits all. Vocational training has as much place as liberal arts.