Scholars, Scholarship, and the Scholarly Enterprise in the Digital Age

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The following SCUP Link, in our opinion, may be the best-ever piece from Richard Katz. We are challenged to describe its scope, so what follows is a little longer than the usual SCUP Link. If you read Kamenetz' book, Norris' review of it - which places it squarely in the context of the 15-year discussion of "transforming" higher education that began for SCUPers with the publication by SCUP of Dolence & Norris' Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century in 1995 - and then peruse Katz' "Scholars, Scholarship, and the Scholarly Enterprise in the Digital Age," (described below) then you are likely to be left with a sense of wonder at where we are.

And, where else in your life will you get a chance this year to discuss these ideas and concept - in hallways, elevators, session rooms, receptions, campus tours, and the like? At SCUP-45, of course, with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues from around North American at the world at higher education's premier planning conference.

Scholars, Scholarship, and the Scholarly Enterprise in the Digital Age

In this seminal article from Richard Katz, EDUCAUSE Vice President and Director of the EDUCAUSE Center for App[lied Research (ECAR), Katz argues that higher education may be in a second phase of "transformation" (not his word). He posits that for the past half a century, higher education has used information technology tools as instruments of perception, progress, and implementation. Now, he says:

More recently, I would suggest, we have entered a more problematic, second phase. This is a phase that often follows an innovative shock or disturbance. In such a phase, some people cease to use the innovation as a tool in support of historically defined approaches and begin to reconsider the approaches themselves. In this phase, the inexorable logic of the disruptive innovation becomes too compelling for some to resist. Social conventions begin to crack, groan, and give way, and established institutions — held together by earlier technology, social convention, and history — stake out a niche, or evolve, or die. During the Industrial Revolution, this was the phase when the vertical logic of factories powered by wind or water gave way to horizontal manufacturing methods made possible by the introduction of the steam engine. It was the phase when scribes and scriptorium monks were supplemented and ultimately marginalized and replaced by printing presses — an innovation that had the unintended consequences of spreading literacy in the West and liberating European learning from the Catholic Church. In this second phase, technologies cease being instruments that extend the virtues of the current order and instead become the harbingers and engines of a new order. During these times, our glass is particularly dark because, as Marshall McLuhan once observed, the past is dissolved before the future resolves.

What is unique in this essay is its entry point to the discussion: Scholars, Scholarship, and the Scholarly Enterprise." Katz gets around to discussion everything you might expect but he does so through the lens of scholarship. For example, if life as a scholar really is so much better now than it was when we were in graduate school, as described below, how unfortunate to have missed it:

Perhaps the greatest boon provided to scholars and scholarship by digital technologies is the last: the propensity of networked people and scholarly resources to negate the "busy-ness" of scholarship. The Internet has freed the scholar from much of the tyranny and expense of finding, acquiring, sorting, verifying, annotating, collating, validating, and classifying information. Before the Internet, fledgling historians, for example, spent considerably less time in the thrall of disputation with mentors and fellow students than they did in the tasks of looking endlessly through search aids, waiting for the machinery of interlibrary exchanges of materials to issue forth, acquiring bona fides and letters of introduction to outside scholars, archivists, and other authorities, and awaiting permissions or refusals to gain access to collections. Only after collections were identified, grants were banked, bona fides were accepted, and travel visas were issued did the apprentice scholar earn the right to delight in finally gaining access to rolls of nearly unreadable microfilm. The tools of search only twenty years ago included a flashlight, and datasets were filed carefully in shoeboxes. Although there may be something to be said for the "slow roasting" required to perfect future scholars, this pre-Internet busy-ness likely detracted from the quality and/or quantity of the discovery undertaken, experienced, or realized, and it likely diminished the capacity of past graduate students and accredited scholars to put isolated facts into perspective (i.e., to engage in the scholarship of integration).

In the context of books like DIY U, the consideration that "higher education" and "higher education institutions" are not necessarily the same thing could cause a sense of unmooring:

Despite Kerr's observation, noted earlier, that higher education is "ever more central" to society, it is not clear that colleges and universities themselves occupy central positions. The Oxford University debate over contract mandates on classroom attendance by students (see below) constitutes just one piece of evidence of how the Internet is empowering individuals at the expense of institutions.14 Today expertise, moral authority, and opinion are just a click away. Scholars are no longer bound to an institution, and some have come to view the institution as merely a platform for the promotion of their global, multi-institutional academic goals and reputation building. When Boyer described the erosion of the campus community and the increasing isolation of the campus from its local community, the year was 1990, before the widespread adoption of the Internet. Since that time, U.S. society has witnessed the emergence of hyper-partisanship and other forms of academic and social fragmentation alongside the breathtaking creation of virtual organizations that are nearly always global in makeup.

Many on the scholarly side shudder at marketing terms like "branding," yet Katz' look at higher education from the scholarly lens suggests that for individual higher education institutions to survive, branding is essential:

For higher education institutions to succeed in the Digital Age, their leaders must devise and communicate a value proposition whose accent is on the institution. To accomplish this, leaders must recognize that branding will be essential. Brands are metaphors that convey the essence of the student experience that is being promised. Some metaphors may accent Digital Age values such as openness, convenience, and comprehensiveness. Other metaphors may connote older values such as tradition, ivory towers, and personalized instruction. Whatever metaphor is chosen, institutional leaders must remember that even traditional values are not necessarily place-bound. If place is to remain central to an institution's competitive position, then that institution's investments and its messages must convey how place factors into the student experience. Institutions that do not or cannot compete on the quality or nature of their physical facilities must develop a different set of metaphors and messages and must learn to use the technologies of the Digital Age to extend their academic communities. Even though many of us associate significant learning experiences with traditional campus physical environments, information technology will allow others to create virtual environments that will emulate — and even surpass — these physical environments of the past.

Katz concludes by describing possible topography changes in higher education and learning and once more makes the point that our institutions may not survive, although he hopes they might prosper:

There is more, much more, to be done to secure the place of the traditional scholarly enterprise in the Digital Age. Some have said that the Internet is the most fundamental change since the invention of writing or since the invention of movable type by Gutenberg. As we participate in the breathtaking progress of science, medicine, and the arts and letters and as we watch the demise of centuries-old industries such as newspapers, I am convinced that some of the great expectations being heaped on the Digital Age are not hyperbolic. What is certain is that computing and communications technologies have empowered the individual and are unleashing a torrent of change. This torrent will reshape nearly all of our institutions, including colleges and universities. Equally certain is that unless we plan for the changes that we can reasonably forecast, the changes ahead will be accidental ones. Perhaps we will be left with waterfront property after the torrent passes through. Perhaps our campuses will have creeks meandering through them. Or perhaps the products of hundreds of years will be swept away completely, leaving institutions that are ill equipped for the competitive demands of the Digital Age.

We are the "lucky" ones: as our old world dissolves, at least we can participate in resolving the new one. If we can once again create a galvanizing metaphor, a general educational philosophy, a set of carefully constructed and widely accepted academic standards, a consensus on the nature of our footprint, a supporting and flexible delivery system, and a portfolio of global partners, then higher education and its institutions will prosper in the Digital Age"

We ARE the lucky ones, as we get to continue this discussion in Minneapolis. See you there!

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tempe, AZ - Step II and Step III

Is the Financial Crisis Enough to Spur Real Transformation?

Plesae scroll down to your SCUP Link, below this notice about SCUP–45.

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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This is a topical area we will return to soon, in "SCUP Email News" and on the SCUP Links Blog. Meanwhile, writing in Business Officer Margo Vanover Porter has spoken with some higher education leaders who think that the recession just might be creating a slippery slope to change. [T]the faltering economy has forced higher education to undergo a significant evolutionary shift, with numerous pockets of campus innovation and experimentation emerging. “The financial jolt of the credit crunch and recession, along with anticipated dramatic shifts in student demographics, is accelerating the pace at which institutions are exploring new financial and educational delivery models,” he says. “In the past year, we have seen a jump in three-year bachelor's degree programs, so-called no-frills satellite campuses, and academic partnerships between four-year private colleges and local community colleges. These efforts are being watched very closely by presidents and trustees across the nation" . . . Martin Van Der Werf, former director, Chronicle Research Services, Washington, D.C., agrees that the way in which education is delivered, what students learn, and how students experience college are all shifting. But, he believes the changes are too broad and too fundamental to attribute to current economic conditions . . . “There is a rethinking of the way education is being delivered,” he says, “but I don't know if the financial crisis could be isolated as a single factor producing these changes. The financial crisis is encouraging students and families to question what they were already questioning, such as the delivery model, the cost of college, and the difficulty in obtaining a degree. The recession is merely accentuating what people were already thinking.”

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tempe, AZ - Step II and Step III

Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education: Reviewed by Donald M. Norris

Fifteen years ago SCUP published the best-seller, Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century by Michael Dolence and Donald M. Norris. So, where else for SCUP's journal, Planning for Higher Education, to turn for a review of this new book about "Transformation of Higher Education" than to one of those authors, Donald M. Norris, who is also a recipient of SCUP's Distinguished Service Award. Norris' review places Kamenetz' book in the context of nearly two decades of thinking and analyzing the effects of information technology on higher learning:

Ms. Kamenetz’s latest book, DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education sets an even higher goal. Its purpose is to inspire people to think seriously about changing profoundly our approach to postsecondary education, personal learning, and employment. The American model for universal higher education is acclaimed around the world. It has even becomes a sort of “cargo cult” for developing countries. But the author finds our current version to be too expensive, too complex, and too bundled. Moreover, American higher education is based on physical campuses that have been participating in a form of competitive arms race of campus amenities, expanded services, and proliferating administrative functions and staffs.

In conclusion, this is a provocative, important book. It frames these important issues in a direct, journalistic style that is sure to attract a wider audience than insiders’ books on the subject. Ms. Kamenetz will surely be tempted soon to write the sequel (perhaps “Fixing DIY Disasters: How US Graduates Got Their Groove Back”?), either looking back from the future or looking to the future, maybe influenced by higher education futurists such as Paul Lefrere (9) and their projects on DIY universities for global audiences (like www.role-project.eu). Either way, I anticipate that she will be able to report on lots of failed experiments in the sustainability of free-to-consume courses, whether self-assembled (DIY) or not, and she will find a smaller but respectable number of viable, sustainable, fully transformed instances of higher learning, which deliver the success that the US needs and that enable learners to live their dreams, within their means. Meanwhile, the US continues to need globally-elite levels of excellence and innovation, sufficient to generate the surplus wealth that we need to invest in our futures. If Ms. Kamenetz’s readers can take us past the free-trumps-fee game of today, to the more thoughtful and globally-aware debates that can accompany the choices that people make in DIY learning, that will be all to the good.

New Book: Harnessing America's Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning

Please scroll down to your SCUP Link, below this notice about SCUP–45.

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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Peter P. Smith is Senior Vice President of Academic Strategies and Development, Kaplan Higher Education. On Monday, July 12 he will speak at SCUP–45 on "The New Ecology of Learning in the 21st Century." Smith's most recent book is Harnessing America's Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning. From a review of that book:

President Obama offered America and the world renewed hope for a better tomorrow. With decades of experience in alternative forms of higher education, Peter Smith grabs that optimistic spirit and seizes the moment to reveal to us the exciting age of Web-based teaching and learning, which is opening access to untold numbers of learners while harnessing the previously wasted talents of millions of people in America and billions around the world. Those seeking insights, a vision of the future, and a chance to join this educational revolution should look forward to Harnessing America's Wasted Talent."
—Curtis J. Bonk, professor, Indiana University, and author, The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tempe, AZ - Step II and Step III

The Role of Disruptive Technology in the Future of Higher Education

Plesae scroll down to your SCUP Link, below this notice about SCUP–45.

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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A particularly interesting read if you need a brush-up on your understanding of the impact of disruptive technologies, although this article from EDUCAUSE Quarterly by Katrina A. Meyer is focused on online learning.

So what does the theory of disruption — and the tools that disrupt existing models of teaching and learning — mean for the future of higher education? First, we will hear new software or tools labeled “disruptive technologies” as frequently as we do now. It is guaranteed that the future will see more disruptive technologies, since we seem to like the idea and find it in many forms. Second, simple faith in disruption is faith poorly placed. No tool, on its own, is likely to produce disruption. Disruption takes upsetting the status quo, focusing on student-centered learning, changing relationships, sharpening our insight, and designing instruction to increase learning and lower costs. Third, some tools will and some won’t be truly disruptive. Those that are will probably force a pause in our usual thinking, a reassessment of past procedures, a letting go of past assumptions, and an introduction of a new perspective that opens a new way for doing our work. Truly innovative disruption prompted by technology in higher education will force us to think in new ways, providing opportunities for the changes needed for higher education to survive and thrive.

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tuscon, AZ - Step II and Step III

Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time!

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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Is higher education more like health care or more like the publishing industry? Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams examine why, if higher ed is more like publishing, it hasn't resulted in what Peter Drucker predicted in 997, that "university campuses will be 'relics' within thirty years." Partly, they think it's because higher ed is more like health care.

As the model of pedagogy is challenged, inevitably the revenue model of universities will be too. If all that the large research universities have to offer to students are lectures that students can get online for free, from other professors, why should those students pay the tuition fees, especially if third-party testers will provide certificates, diplomas, and even degrees? If institutions want to survive the arrival of free, university-level education online, they need to change the way professors and students interact on campus.

Many will argue: "But what about credentials? As long as the universities can grant degrees, their supremacy will never be challenged." This is myopic thinking. The value of a credential and even the prestige of a university are rooted in its effectiveness as a learning institution. If these institutions are shown to be inferior to alternative learning environments, their capacity to credential will surely diminish. How much longer will, say, a Harvard undergraduate degree, taught mostly through lectures by teaching assistants in large classes, be able to compete in status with the small class size of liberal arts colleges or the superior delivery systems that harness the new models of learning?

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

'Guardians' of Higher Education Urged to Embrace More Change

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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Will "the guardians of existing institutions embrace transformation, or let history pass them by"? Anya Kamenetz, writing in Inside Higher Ed, poses this question in an interesting essay which begins with a different perspective on the "Original" higher education:

In a faraway colony, one in a thousand people -- mostly young, rich, white men -- are sent to live in isolated, rural Christian communes. Some are pious, learned, ambitious; others are unruly younger sons with no other prospects. The students spend hours every day in chapel; every few years, the entire community is seized by a several-days-long religious revival.

They also get into lots of trouble. In their meager barracks they drink, gamble, and duel. They brawl, sometimes exchanging bullets, with local residents, and bother local women. Occasionally they rebel and are expelled en masse or force administrators to resign. Overseen by low-paid clergymen too deaf or infirm to control a congregation, hazed by older students, whipped for infractions of the rules, they’re treated like young boys when their contemporaries might be married with children. And, oh yes, they spend a few hours a day in rote memorization of fewer than a dozen subjects.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

You Say You Want a Revolution?

Jeff Abernathy, vice president and dean of the college at Augustana College, in Illinois, writes about his work with The Teagle Foundation, which he says "tests the basic assumptions of a college education."

How many times have I read in the higher ed news of the coming revolution in classroom instruction, in the major, in the tenure system, in governance?
Google "higher education revolution" and you find radical reform rising in every direction. Many are sparked by the billions state systems are losing as our economy lurches out of the tank, others by the increasing commodification of the college degree. Some promise to "transform" the American university as they have transformed -- egad! -- the American newspaper. New models of for-profit education promise a revolution in the higher education business model that is already threatening the viability of traditional colleges across the country.
But I can't help wondering if we've spirited all our revolutionary rhetoric for another day at the office.
We tend to talk ourselves right past revolutions in higher education. Our burning impulse to revitalize learning often concludes with a return to the status quo: we end up arguing, say, over our respective roles in shared governance, or over the turf we'd have to give up for genuine improvement in learning.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Is a Virtual Revolution Brewing for Colleges?

This author posits a drastically changed higher education future, by analogizing to the recent history of newspapers.

When this happens -- be it in 10 years or 20 -- we will see a structural disintegration in the academy akin to that in newspapers now. The typical 2030 faculty will likely be a collection of adjuncts alone in their apartments, using recycled syllabuses and administering multiple-choice tests from afar.

Not all colleges will be similarly affected. Like the New York Times, the elite schools play a unique role in our society, and so they can probably persist with elements of their old revenue model longer than their lesser-known competitors. Schools with state funding will be as immune as their budgets. But within the next 40 years, the majority of brick-and-mortar universities will probably find partnerships with other kinds of services, or close their doors.

College for $99 a Month?

Kevin Carey, policy director of Education Sector, writes in the Washington Monthly about some new twists on for-profit higher ed and foresees our industry getting hit like the music industry has. He says we're lucky, in that we have more regulatory protection.

[A]n ad caught her eye: a company called StraighterLine was offering online courses in subjects like accounting, statistics, and math. This was hardly unusual—hundreds of institutions are online hawking degrees. But one thing about StraighterLine stood out: it offered as many courses as she wanted for a flat rate of $99 a month. “It sounds like a scam,” Solvig thought—she’d run into a lot of shady companies and hard-sell tactics on the Internet. But for $99, why not take a risk?

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Smith’s struggle to establish StraighterLine suggests that higher education still has some time before the Internet bomb explodes in its basement. The fuse was only a couple of years long for the music and travel industries; for newspapers it was ten. Colleges may have another decade or two, particularly given their regulatory protections.

How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education

Anya Kamenetz, writing in Fast Company magazine, examines the confluence of Web 2.0 and the Open Education movement in light of some entrepreneurs who think they can transform the business of higher education: 

Is a college education really like a string quartet? Back in 1966, that was the assertion of economists William Bowen, later president of Princeton, and William Baumol. In a seminal study, Bowen and Baumol used the analogy to show why universities can't easily improve efficiency. 

If you want to perform a proper string quartet, they noted, you can't cut out the cellist nor can you squeeze in more performances by playing the music faster. But that was then -- before MP3s and iPods proved just how freely music could flow. Before Google scanned and digitized 7 million books and Wikipedia users created the world's largest encyclopedia. Before YouTube Edu and iTunes U made video and audio lectures by the best professors in the country available for free, and before college students built Facebook into the world's largest social network, changing the way we all share information. Suddenly, it is possible to imagine a new model of education using online resources to serve more students, more cheaply than ever before.

Will Higher Education Ever Change as It Should?

Writing in the Chronicle, Robert Zemsky muses about the potential for radical transformation of American higher education. Could any group of appropriate actors ever get together and work out something, systemwide, that would effective change everything? He posits three potential "dislodging events" which might be the kind of things that would motivate enough stakeholders. One possibility: "A simple rule could differentiate the strictly commercial from the educational: All dividends, interest, rents, and realized capital gains would be taxed at current rates, but the money owed the IRS would be reduced by the amount of cash an institution withdrew from its endowment to support educational and research programs. In years when the money spent exceeded the growth in the value of the endowment, a credit would be awarded to offset future taxes."

The Next Big Thing: Crisis and Transformation in American Higher Education

On Inside Higher Ed's "Blog U," the latest post is titled The Next Big Thing: Crisis and Transformation in American Higher Education, which concludes: "It is good to attend crisis conferences, seminars, and meetings on the next big thing. We all need to worry about the global transformation of higher education, but it is even more important for each institution to stay closely focused on the performance that produces high quality and high productivity measured against a clear and precise understanding of the marketplace for its mission. . . . When the moment passes, the publicity dies down, and the pundits turn to other crises, the college and university winners will be those who paid attention to the fundamentals all along." We might add that the winners will be the institutions which have used integrated, comprehensive planning to align the campus with its mission and vision.

What then is the optimal behavior of institutions suffering through the peaks and valleys of these serial crises? Some common sense guidelines may be helpful. The primary imperative surprises none of us: Pay attention to the fundamentals, all of which speak to the competitive performance of institutions within their sector and subsector of the higher education industry.

a. Enroll students.

b. Graduate students.

c. Focus on revenue.

d. Track expenses precisely.

e. Measure faculty, staff, and student performance.

f. Understand the difference between core activity and enhancements.

g. Do the core activities first and do them well.

Another Religious Institution Going For-Profit

Elizabeth Redden has written a very nice summary of the current changes at Crichton College, as well as the further-down-the-road experiences of Grand Canyon Education, Inc. What happens when a faith-based institution decides to seek financial salvation by going commercial?

“They don’t want to go out of business, they want to find a way to be able to continue consistent with their mission…. I’m working with a number of institutions, some of which have a religious affiliation, some of which have a strong religious affiliation, some have none at all, but they all have missions. And a piece of the issue is how do they preserve them."

Read more here:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/03/christian

Time to Close the College?

Alice Waters reports on her analysis of how colleges make the transition to nonexistence:

"There is little doubt that an increasing number of colleges will close in the next few years, and there seem to be few resources that might help guide those considering closure."

Read on:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/06/26/brown

A 'Liquid Book': The Post-Corporate University

Want to help co-author a book about transforming the university? Join this virtual multi-authoring experience:

"The Post-Corporate University starts from an assumption that the University is in crisis and that this crisis has been caused by the social and economic characteristics of neoliberalism. Asking the question, Is Another University Possible?, it provides space for multiple answers and interventions."

Read more here:
http://liquidbooks.pbworks.com/The+Post-Corporate+University

Transforming America's Community Colleges: A Federal Policy Proposal to Expand Opportunity and Promote Economic Prosperity

This May 2009 policy brief from the Brookings Institution's Blueprint for American Prosperity series offers a few policy suggestions on how the federal government might reinvest in community colleges across the nation. Including the recommendation that the federal government should establish national post-secondary goals and also devote a significant portion of existing funding to improve and evaluate teaching practices in these institutions. (Paraphrased from the Internet Scout Report)

Read the full document here:
http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2009/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2009/0507_community_college_goldrick_rab/0507_community_college_brief.pdf

The Learning Paradigm College

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The Learning Paradigm College (JB - Anker) by John Tagg. "In The Learning Paradigm College, John Tagg champions the argument that because high school students have changed, undergraduate colleges— i.e., those colleges “both within and independent of universities, the institutions that prepare students for the baccalaureate degree”—must also transform their educational approach. He then sets out to explain how." Reviewed in Planning for Higher Education by Sandra L. Kortesoja.

Horns of the Dilemma for Faculty: Legacy Demands and Technology Expectations

Every knowledge-based profession is struggling with legacy demands and new technology expectations, and including higher education faculty. In Campus Technology magazine, Trent Batson writes about the dilemmas posed particularly by Web 2.0 technologies. The comments section is lively and entertaining.

"Amidst the Web 2.0 tsunami, life on campus goes on as normal. Faculty members are still expected to publish in traditional journals, still expected to meet their classes in rooms equipped with chalkboards and designed for lectures, and still expected by their students to tell them what they should know so they can write it on paper during a test. Where's the tsunami?"


"Granted, dorms have high-speed wireless, labs have StarTrek technologies, and the business side of the campus is run with software. But, then, oh yes, there are the classrooms that look the same and support the same activities as 100 years ago. The business side of campus had to be quick to change to stay competitive and to run the enterprise more efficiently and up to standards. But the actual main business of the campus, the educational culture and its various instantiations, is surprisingly atavistic."

The full article and commentary can be read here:
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/05/06/horns-of-the-dilemma-for-faculty.aspx

"As the Auto Industry Shrinks, a Community College Retools"

"Community colleges across the country are being asked to educate more students with less money, but the sudden collapse of the carmaking sector has compounded the stresses of the current economic slump on Macomb [Community College]."

Some say, however, that community colleges can "turn on a dime." How is Macomb making the most of this financial crisis? In this article, Karin Fischer analyzes the recent developments of Macomb Community College in response to the troubles facing the auto industry;

"As the Auto Industry Shrinks, a Community College Retools"
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i35/35a00102.htm

Economic-development experts say community colleges can be a pivotal partner in efforts to "recast" a local economy when a once-dominant employer falters. "They have the ability to help move a region in a different direction," says James F. McKenney, vice president for economic development at the American Association of Community Colleges. "But that doesn't mean it isn't painful."

"The beauty of community colleges is that we can turn on a dime," says H. Martin Lancaster, who recently retired as president of the North Carolina Community College system. "By the time a university gets a building built, we can train a work force."

Macomb officials also are trying to reach out to the roughly 70,000 working adults in the county who have some college experience. And they are building stronger partnerships with nearby four-year institutions, like Wayne State and Oakland Universities, to better align degree programs and to allow students to concurrently enroll.

Such efforts, Mr. Jacobs says, will be important to the region's long-term economic vitality. "The purpose of a community college is not just to get people jobs," he says, "but to get people careers."