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

Register for SCUP–45 by Friday, April 30, to save $$. 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.

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SCUP Link

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

Learning Space 3.0 When Real and Virtual Space Collide

A number of SCUPers have been doing solid work examining and predicting the interaction between physical and virtual space. None have been more outspoken and forward-thinking as SCUP-45 plenary speaker Mark S. Valenti of The Sextant Group. It's a good thing to be looking forward to his presentation in Minneapolis. You can get something of a sneak peek at the kinds of things he'll bring you up to date about by viewing this slide show from his presentation at the September 2008 EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative meeting. (We especially like the image of an 1879 class at Ohio State University, where students are viewing glass slides projected by a kerosene-fired lantern.)

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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 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• 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"

Dancing with History: A Cautionary Tale

This is yet another, and very interesting take, on college and university trends - Technology, Demographics, Private-Sector Competition - with the author's exposition of consequences in areas like Research and Scholarship, Teaching and Learning, Community/Civic Engagement, and Management and Investment. It's by Brenda Gourley in EDUCAUSE Review. Near her conclusion she writes:

When I titled this article "Dancing with History," I was thinking of Louis Gerstner's book Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? In telling the story of IBM's "historic turnaround" in the 1990s, Gerstner recounts how a very large and hierarchical organization — staffed with highly intelligent people who basically thought that they knew more than their customers did about what those customers needed — almost ran aground.8 I see many parallels with universities — and many lessons. I subtitled this article "A Cautionary Tale" because I think universities are not paying sufficient attention to the massive trends and changes in their environment. I am not alone in thinking that the changes I have described have profound consequences for the role and function, and indeed the business model, of all universities, wherever they may be — consequences that will evidence themselves in some places more quickly than in others, for obvious reasons. I am also not alone in believing that embracing these unprecedented educational trends and changes, along with the opportunities they offer, is vital to addressing the complex issues that face us individually and collectively in the 21st century.

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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

Significant Campus Trends, from College Planning & Management

Amy Milstein describes several trends in higher education that planners may want to know about. It begins with SCUPer George Mathey on what is going to get built, what is not; a trend to optimize existing space, esp. in high profile spaces such as libraries; and the increasing importance of community colleges. Other topical areas covered include: online learning, mergers and acquisitions; carbon planning; then e-books, handhelds, and mobiles:

“The real expansion has been in the public institutions,” reported George Mathey, principal, Dober Lidsky Mathey. “Some specialized privates — like faith-based colleges — have seen some growth, but that is a small slice of the overall picture.”

Schools may do some planning, but Mathey doesn’t anticipate any major construction projects coming up in the next two to three years. Instead, institutions will attempt to make the most of what they have now by optimizing and enhancing existing spaces. “The environment is still being used to recruit and retain students,” he continued. “So construction won’t come to a complete halt.”

SCUP's Trends to Watch in Higher Education is published twice a year. The current issue is available only to members of the society, but archived issues can be downloaded by anyone.

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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

AASCU: Top 10 Higher Education State Policy Issues for 2010

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities provides an annual report each year on the top 10 issues relating to policies of the states and higher education. The introduction this year notes what it calls "two contradictory movements" in 2009, in that at the same time as President Obama moved higher education near the top of his federal agenda, most of the policy and budget action was on coping with the effects of some pretty serious funding cuts.

Number 1 on AASCU's list is the financial crisis of the states. Number 2 is the federal American Graduation Initiative. Number 3 is tuition policy and prices. Number 4 is enrollment capacity. Numbers 6 through 10 include: State student aid programs, Federal focus on community colleges, Statewide expansion of data systems and new reporting metrics, Veterans' issues, college readiness, and Teacher effectiveness.

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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

The Future of Learning: 12 Views on Emerging Trends in Higher Education

Writing in SCUP's journal, Planning for Higher Education, William J. Flynn and Jeff Vredevoogd examine emerging trends SCUPers need to be alert to. The descriptive blurb for this article reads: "On behalf of our campuses, we need to seek out change; to be more flexible, more thoughtful, and more open to student decision making; and to build outcomes measurement feedback into integrated planning."

Read the article online here.

Citation: William J. Flynn and Jeff Vredevoogd. 2010. The Future of Learning: 12 Views on Emerging Trends in Higher Education. Planning for Higher Education. 38(2): 5–10.

Abstract: In 2009, Herman Miller, Inc., a Zeeland, Michigan-based furniture manufacturer, convened a leadership roundtable intended to identify trends that would affect higher education in the year 2015. Representatives from research universities, state colleges, community colleges, private institutions, and architectural and design firms participated in the roundtable discussion and, from a series of exercises, determined a list of 12 future trends. Among those trends, the roundtable concluded that globalization will influence and shape all aspects of teaching and learning. Plus, advancements in technology will drive ongoing changes throughout college and university life and offer new opportunities to enhance and broaden learning experiences. Students will take greater control of their own learning as proactive producers and managers of their own learning solutions, materials, and portfolios. Roundtable participants also concluded that the competition for students and resources will force colleges and universities to sharpen their brands and identities and to distinguish themselves in new ways. Lastly, accountability and assessment tools will continue to become common in defining institutional effectiveness. In conclusion, it is important for colleges and universities to be aware of future trends in higher education so that they can provide students and faculty with a strong, resilient, and vibrant academy for generations to come.

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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

Boomers and Technology: An Extended Conversation

Sometimes it's lonely on campus, being a planner. Start planning now to attend higher education's premier planning conference for 2010, SCUP–45, July 10–14 in Minneapolis, where you can network and converse with more than 1,000 of your peers and colleagues.

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What happens when "creative clutter" meets transparency in a new, elegant building? Robert Campbell reviews the new MIT Media Lab building at MIT.

Frank Moss, the Media Lab’s director, puts it this way: “It will take time to regain the sense of mess and to repopulate with junk.’’

It’s the classic marriage of form and content. The new building is Snow White and the Media Lab is Mad Max. Time will reveal how well the marriage works.

That said, viewed simply and purely as a work of architecture, this is a wonderful building. You can think of it as an exercise in transparency. The Media Lab has long been famous for hiding itself in a building by I.M. Pei that was a nearly windowless box. The new building, which joins the Pei at one edge, is exactly the opposite. From outside, you can look all the way through it from one end to the other. It’s sheathed in shimmering glass and metal screens that allow about half the sunlight through to the interior. You feel that the building is temptingly veiled, not blanketed.

AARP and Microsoft held series of extended focus group-like sessions with a bunch of Baby Boomers in May 2009. The focus was on technology use and adoption. The results are the white paper, Boomers and Technology: An Extended Conversation. They'll be of interest to many SCUPers not only because many SCUPers are Boomers, but because of what they reveal about a continuing education market for Boomers as they continue to learn as they age:

Boomers are ready for more technology. They’re actually more likely than those 18-49 — by a margin of 59 percent to 55 percent4 — to agree with the statement “Technology will help me live a fuller life.” And indeed, boomers’ ideas for new technology center around health, communications and the home. Said one Phoenix participant: “How about a phone that has a feedback device to tell you if you’re out of line: like you’re drinking too much, or you’re a little overweight, you’d better cut this out. It keeps reminding you, and when you finally straighten out it gives some positive feedback.” Another participant immediately added: “Or the insurance company gives you the cell phone and it lowers your rates if you behave.”

Teacherless Classrooms: Can We?

"Today the dream has returned, [we have] systems through which chunks of teaching can be 'scaled up' and beamed to hundreds of thousands worldwide.” in Campus Technology magazine, Trant Batson calls this "the FedEx or UPS view of learning; knowledge disconnected from the knower; knowledge with no social or cultural context; knowledge ripped from the conversation, its conversational threads torn and dangling; knowledge as a commodity. How far adrift have we gone that the idea of beaming 'chunks of teaching' to hundreds of thousands worldwide could be called a 'dream? I thought we tried that with television, didn’t we?" Then he makes this twist: A large lecture hall is not the answer, nor is sending lectures out through iTunes, or other media channels. Knowledge is not a commodity. And learning is not performance. Learning is conversation. So, then, the question becomes: How do we extend the conversation to more people and how can that conversation be authentic and lead to active and experiential learning?"

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.

Trends in Global Higher Education: Tracking an Academic Revolution

This report (PDF) was prepared by Phillip G. Altbach, Liz Reisberg, and Laura Rumbley for the UNESCO 2009 World Conference on Higher Education, July 2009. It's a 250-page monster of a PDF, downloadable for free. We urge you to consider the Executive Summary a must-read document for a great analytical background on global higher education trends.

Much of this report is concerned with the ways in which higher education has responded to the challenge of massification. The "logic" of massification is inevitable and includes greater social mobility for a growing segment of the population, new patterns of funding higher education, increasingly diversified higher education systems in most countries, generally an overall lowering of academic standards, and other tendencies. Like many of the trends addressed in this report, while massification is not a new phase, at this "deeper stage" of ongoing revolution in higher education it must be considered in different ways. At the first stage, higher education systems struggled just to cope with demand, the need for expanded infrastructure and a larger teaching corps. During the past decade systems have begun to wrestle with the implications of diversity and to consider which subgroups are still not being included and appropriately served.

The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009—Key Findings

ECAR studies are proprietary, but the executive summaries are often (as is this one) useful on their own. If you are at a subscribing institution (Check, you might be surprised.) then you may be able to download this entire report.

Like the clothes in their suitcases, the technologies students bring to campus change every year. Occasionally, the change can be dramatic. It’s hard to believe, but when the college seniors we surveyed for this year’s study began their education four years ago, netbooks, iPhones, and the Nintendo Wii had yet to hit the market. When they went home for the holidays during their freshman year, some returned with a brand new game called Guitar Hero for the PlayStation 2, and some may have been lucky enough to score a $250 4-GB iPod nano or an ultrathin digital camera. Today’s freshmen have mobile phones that hold more songs than that 4-GB nano, and they can use them to take digital photos and videos of the same quality as the $400 camera today’s seniors got for their high school graduation.

The same forces of change apply to what college students are doing with their technology. Their written language has adapted to the technology of text messages and 140-character “tweets,” and Andy Warhol’s famous prediction about everyone eventually having 15 minutes of fame is being proved by the proliferation of social networking and YouTube. In fact, the pervasive uploading of content to blogs, video sites, wikis, and personal Facebook and MySpace pages suggests that “15 megabytes of fame” may be a more appropriate prophecy.

Missions, Values, and 'Flying Monkeys': Critical Issues for Community Colleges Today and in 2019

This very interesting article is from The Community College Journal of Research and Practice. The abstract is sufficient description:

A focus group (N=36) consisting of board of trustee members, community college presidents, senior administrators, administrators, and faculty members from community colleges around the United States developed the top six critical issues faced with respect to instructional planning and services; planning, governance, and finance; and workforce development. Thereafter, the delegation of more than 100 voted on various aspects of these issues. The findings detail a shift away from pragmatic problems or opportunities of today, such as K–20 alignment, retention, and sustainability, to more life-long learning, globalization, and focus upon innovation and partnerships.

How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write

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Related, A concurrent session at SCUP–44, July 18–22: Building a New Campus... In Second Life!

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This is the most interesting and comprehensive thing we've recently read about online digital resources. Its focus is on books, and the concept of books as the Internet's "Dark Matter" is very thought-provoking, but it's a good overall sense of the publishing world's current possible vectors:

In our always-connected, everything-linked world, we sometimes forget that books are the dark matter of the information universe. While we now possess terabytes of data at our fingertips, we have nonetheless drifted further and further away from mankind's most valuable archive of knowledge: the tens of millions of books that have been published since Gutenberg's day.

That's because the modern infosphere is both organized and navigated through hyperlinked pages of digital text, with the most-linked pages rising to the top of Google Inc.'s all-powerful search-results page. This has led us toward some traditional forms of information, such as newspapers and magazines, as well as toward new forms, such as blogs and Wikipedia. But because books have largely been excluded from Google's index -- distant planets of unlinked analog text -- that vast trove of knowledge can't compete with its hyperlinked rivals.

But there is good reason to believe that this strange imbalance will prove to be a momentary blip, and that the blip's moment may be just about over.

Need a College Loan? Ask Your Friends Online.

Somehow, we expect that to some people, using your social networks to get money for college might sound like, well, socialism. Hmm. This article specifically examines GreenNote's business model and use by students, as well as CollegeDegreeFund, CharityforDebt, and GradeFund. We've been using Kiva.org to make microloans in developing countries and this sort of feels the same.

As higher-education costs rise and families feel the squeeze on traditional sources for college funding, students are on the hunt for innovative ways to pay their bills. In addition to loan websites like GreenNote, other sites are cropping up where students can raise donations for college.

Easy money? What's the catch? Some of the gifts come in exchange for earning good grades or for performing nonprofit volunteer work. And so far, the aura of potential on these sites is much greater than the actual money flow. In the near-term, at least, it appears unlikely that enough donors or lenders will come forward to meet even a fraction of the clamor for cash.

In fact, traffic to peer-lending sites may be driven, in part, by a lack of information about resources available to students and parents, financial-aid experts say.

How the Crash Will Reshape America

Richard Florida takes a 30,000-foot view of large-scale changes in the US due to the financial crisis. "The crash of 2008 continues to reverberate loudly nationwide—destroying jobs, bankrupting businesses, and displacing homeowners. But already, it has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America’s economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?":

If there is one constant in the history of capitalist development, it is the ever-more-intensive use of space. Today, we need to begin making smarter use of both our urban spaces and the suburban rings that surround them—packing in more people, more affordably, while at the same time improving their quality of life. That means liberal zoning and building codes within cities to allow more residential development, more mixed-use development in suburbs and cities alike, the in-filling of suburban cores near rail links, new investment in rail, and congestion pricing for travel on our roads. Not everyone wants to live in city centers, and the suburbs are not about to disappear. But we can do a much better job of connecting suburbs to cities and to each other, and allowing regions to grow bigger and denser without losing their velocity.

Finally, we need to be clear that ultimately, we can’t stop the decline of some places, and that we would be foolish to try. Places like Pittsburgh have shown that a city can stay vibrant as it shrinks, by redeveloping its core to attract young professionals and creative types, and by cultivating high-growth services and industries. And in limited ways, we can help faltering cities to manage their decline better, and to sustain better lives for the people who stay in them.

But different eras favor different places, along with the industries and lifestyles those places embody. Band-Aids and bailouts cannot change that. Neither auto-company rescue packages nor policies designed to artificially prop up housing prices will position the country for renewed growth, at least not of the sustainable variety. We need to let demand for the key products and lifestyles of the old order fall, and begin building a new economy, based on a new geography.

What will this geography look like? It will likely be sparser in the Midwest and also, ultimately, in those parts of the Southeast that are dependent on manufacturing. Its suburbs will be thinner and its houses, perhaps, smaller. Some of its southwestern cities will grow less quickly. Its great mega-regions will rise farther upward and extend farther outward. It will feature a lower rate of homeownership, and a more mobile population of renters. In short, it will be a more concentrated geography, one that allows more people to mix more freely and interact more efficiently in a discrete number of dense, innovative mega-regions and creative cities. Serendipitously, it will be a landscape suited to a world in which petroleum is no longer cheap by any measure. But most of all, it will be a landscape that can accommodate and accelerate invention, innovation, and creation—the activities in which the U.S. still holds a big competitive advantage.

Internationalization: Unintended Consequences?

Most articles in International Higher Education are brief, and this is no exception, but it covers a lot of territory, examining: The Rankings Race; Double and Joint Degrees; The Brain Train; Diploma, Accreditation, and Visa Mills; For-profit Internationalization Equals Commercialization; Increased Access: Equality of Elitism; Cultural Diversity or Homogenization?

As we progress into the 21st century, the international dimension of higher education is becoming increasingly important and complex. Headlines from recent higher education newspapers paint a colorful picture: “China could be vulnerable to ‘education dumping’ by overseas universities seeking to exploit the rapid expansion of higher education in the country.” “European Higher Education Fairs ‘conquer’ Vietnam.” “Ten universities in the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia begin sharing education content on iTunes U.”

These new developments and unintended consequences illustrate that nothing unfolds entirely as planned. It is necessary to stay alert to unexpected twists and turns along the road to internationalization. With innovation come new opportunities, successes, as well as threats. It is imperative that the international, intercultural, and global dimensions of higher education continue to be proactive and innovative, while keeping a close watch on unanticipated spin-offs and implications. As internationalization matures through its ages and stages of growth, a critical eye and strong will are needed to monitor intended and unintended results—for today and 25 years hence.

Trends to Watch: State by State

This website is a nifty addition to anyone's collection of environmental scanning tools:I

t’s no surprise to anyone that the world is changing. But the facts of just how the world is changing still have the power to startle—and elude us.

This is why the Pew Center on the States offers Trends to Watch, which seeks to help state policy makers, the media, and the general public follow the major trends that determine if states thrive—or not—and track where the 50 states stand relative to each trend.

The site will be updated continuously, and new data and analyses will be added as they become available and as new trends emerge across a wide range of public policy concerns, including economic competitiveness, education, the environment, the democratic process and government performance.

Changing the Game: The Federal Role in Supporting 21st Century Educational Innovation

This item comes from our favorite email newsletter (PDF), the Scout Report:

The Brookings Institution has had a long-standing interest in the American system of education, and this thoughtful 73-page report takes a close look at how the federal government might best intervene in this particular area of American society. The report was released in October 2008, and it was authored by Sara Mead and Andrew J. Rotherham. In their report, the authors suggest that the federal government should create a new federal Office of Educational Entrepreneurship and Innovation within the Department of Education. The general premise behind such a policy idea is that such an office would "expand the boundaries of public education by scaling up successful education entrepreneurs, seeding transformative educational innovations, and building a stronger culture to support these activities throughout the public sector." The report contains eight chapters, an executive summary, and a set of conclusions. [KMG]

Copyright 2009 Internet Scout Project - http://scout.wisc.edu

The University in the Networked Economy and Society: Challenges and Opportunities

This book chapter is from The Tower and the Cloud by Richard N. Katz. The chapter itself is by Yochai Benkler, the Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Harvard Law School and is Faculty Co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society:

Throughout the period of the industrial information economy, the university maintained a stance apart from much of the rest of that economy. As we move to a networked information economy, the distinct values of the university—its relative freedom from the pressures of the market, polity, and popular fashion—are a major source of strength. Universities can become an even more significant force in the knowledge production system, one that distinctly pulls in the direction of professional values. Universities can provide an anchor “against” commercial incentives and build a strong complementary system with the amateur commons–based peer production system, as we have indeed seen in areas such as free and open source software.

University networks and technical platforms will have to focus on managing the increasingly permeable boundaries among universities, and between universities and the world outside them. University platform design should be focused on ensuring that faculty and students have the greatest degree possible of authority and capacity to act freely, innovate internally, and participate externally. And university systems should be attuned to the need to build platforms for cooperation, as the new practices of cooperation and sharing become more prevalent and more based in a broader shift from an image of hierarchical or market-oriented systems to systems based on individuals collaborating with each other in loose networks.

Pressure Points: Emerging Forces That Require Action Now

In this Business Officer article, representatives from Datatel, TIAA-CREF, Higher One, and PricewaterhouseCoopers share some important trends they think are external forces higher education planners need to pay attention to. According to the author, Sandra R. Sabo, people you can expect to:

Rethink financial models. "Financial forecasts and scenarios will need to be refined because of the broad impact of current economic conditions as well as the rising cost of financial aid and how it will be funded," says Mattie. "Tuition-dependent institutions, in particular, may not have the financial flexibility to increase payouts from their endowments, yet will need to address how to fund increasing levels of financial aid going forward."

Expand matriculation agreements. Undergraduates, especially those with fewer financial resources, don't always stay at the same institution to complete a four-year degree. Bert Scott speculates that this dynamic will increase among families of first-generation college students. "Based on student mobility patterns," he notes, "institutions will need to determine the requirements that would allow students to complete their educations, but not necessarily in one place."

Respond to calls for increased accountability. The public's demand for financial transparency and good fiduciary conduct may intensify over the next 12 to 24 months, predicts Mattie. "In addition, government officials, federal agencies, and donors all want to know that institutions are operating responsibly, both fiscally and operationally. They will continue to hold business officers and others to a higher standard of reporting and compliance responsibility."

Mattie stops short of predicting that educational institutions will need to meet the rigid control regulations that now apply to public companies. Still, he foresees that standard setters and regulators will continue to focus on financial-reporting transparency and control and compliance accountability.

Reassess strategic approaches. What has worked in the past may no longer apply in an environment of increased costs and competition coupled with decreased financial aid and staffing.