|
THE STONE AGE UNIVERSITY
Pat Latham
CONTENTS:
Educational Innovation and Competition
Some Challenges Facing Conventional Universities
The Disappearance of the Stone Age University
"The Dim Future of the University"?
In 1995 Professor Eli Noam of Columbia University wrote an article called "Electronics and the Dim Future of the University" predicting "a bleak scenario for the future of the university." He also suggested that "the ultimate providers of an electronic curriculum will not be universities becoming televersities (they will merely break the ice) but rather commercial firms."
Much has changed in two years. How well are his predictions holding up?
Universities are certainly beginning to "break the ice" but, in some cases, commercial firms are not just hot on their heels but already well ahead. Conventional universities need to move much faster if they are to survive. Are they capable of such speed? Some maybe, but many are still clinging to a leisurely pace. In the age of the "virtual" this is suicidal.
Electronic media can be used to deliver educational courses that are freed from time and space restrictions, and this is especially relevant to distance education. Commercial companies are well placed to seize this opportunity in an area of educational market growth – in the training and re-training field of adult education.
One quick glance at advertisements in the subway or on buses will confirm that assertion. Companies with names that contain "school" or "academy" or "future" or "skills" abound in this area. They are using new technology to occupy educational niche markets that universities and even community colleges are not able or willing to countenance. These niche markets have great growth potential and there is already a race to fill and expand them. At the head of the pack are the computer hardware and software giants and the telecoms.
In determining how universities are faring in this race to market, it is useful to look at some real life models of delivering technology-enhanced education that are being, or could be, used to provide distance education. Our investigations have revealed seven main models for bringing technology-enhanced education to learners and less than half of these involve the conventional university!
Further examination reveals that most models, including those involving conventional universities, are moving in the direction of more commercialization.
 Top
Models of Technology-Enhanced Educational Delivery
"The Enterprising Professor"
In this model a teacher, who is intrigued by the possibilities of new technologies, experiments with delivering his/her courses in new ways, such as putting course material on the web. This may act as a catalyst for involving other members of a department, and a more systematic use of new technology in the educational institution as a whole. Given the interest in education being shown by the computer industry, if their universities show no interest, these innovative professors could end up working for Microsoft!
Examples (just two of many):
Tom Creed of St. John’s University who uses technology to enhance his courses, including "Principles of Learning and Behaviour"
Rik Scarce, who teaches at a Montana University, and uses email discussion groups to teach his sociology students.
"The Enterprising Institution"
While no university has, as yet, totally converted to a distanced mode of delivery, several are experimenting in distanced, electronically delivered courses. While this is a heartening development, it seems to be occurring in a fragmented fashion that is not conducive to an optimal use of resources. Given that technology-enhanced and distance courses may be more expensive to develop than conventional courses (see later discussion), this could stretch individual universities to breaking point.
Examples (just a few of many):
University of Colorado at Denver, US, is a world leader in technology-enhanced and distance education and has online campuses
Massey University, New Zealand has a Centre for University Extramural Study, which uses distance education techniques
Central Queensland University, Australia, has a distance education department
Queen’s University, Canada is experimenting with an Executive MBA, based on videoconferencing and privatization! www.execmba.com Note the .com!
"The External Catalyst"
Some universities are enticed into experimenting with new technologies by the injection of government funding and/or are energized into doing so by the intervention of a commercial company. It is not surprising that these are often computer hardware or software companies, such as IBM, Apple or Microsoft, who donate hard and software to the educational enterprise.
Example:
One such organization is the TeleLearning Network, whose administration is based at Simon Fraser University. This network of universities across Canada receives support from "sustaining members" who include a host of corporations and some government departments. Some of this funding is used to develop educational products that will transfer into the commercial marketplace. www.telelearn.ca. Note that "edu" is not contained in the web address!
"The Purpose Built Distance University"
This type of university is rare compared to its more conventional brethren, but examples are beginning to multiply. One of the earliest, and the most commercially successful, is the UK’s Open University, which delivers distance courses to a vast number of students annually. www.open.ac.uk. Many examples in other countries are based on this university.
Other examples:
Athabasca University is Canada’s "first fully accredited open university" … "offering university education to more than 12,500 students across North America each year."
The Open University of Israel has a campus in Raanana and involves 100 centres and colleges
The Open University of India has as a major objective "Promoting the concept of distance learning"
The Open University of Sri Lanka where "students are able to pursue further education through distance learning techniques"
"The Professional Association"
Many professional associations are organizing their own technology-enhanced or electronically delivered or distance courses and, of most importance, are providing their own accreditation. Because these are tied directly to employment in the specific profession, these courses are attractive to many students.
Example:
The Canadian Institute of Financial Planning is listed in the yellow pages under "Schools, colleges and universities" and offers correspondence and community college courses. It boasts "Canada’s longest established educational program leading to CFP TM certification."
"Corporate Outgrowth"
Many companies, especially those in the computer field, have discovered that courses originally developed for in-house use provide the additional benefit of being marketable in a wider arena, usually starting with their own customers. Not only have these companies developed an expertise in new methods of delivery but also in teaching with the new media.
In some cases these companies invite the collaboration of educational institutions, but they are really developing a market for their products and using the universities and colleges as their delivery mechanism. Many corporations regard educational institutions as a growth market for their products and services but some already see education as a market in itself.
Some Examples:
The Centre for Excellence in Distance Learning – This is an AT&T initiative through Lucent Technologies. It creates, for example, training seminars, courseware, and videotapes.
The 21st century Campus – This is Microsoft’s vision of the future for higher education. "Microsoft and the American higher education community will build the 21st Century Campus in the The Connected Learning Community."
The Global Campus –This is IBM’s version. "Through IBM Global Campus, colleges and universities can build a distributed learning system that suits their specific recruiting, strategic, and business objectives." [Our italics]
Novell has what it calls "Education Academic Partners" and obviously views details of this as commercially valuable because it protects access to this information with user name and password requirements.
"Education Inc"
There are a host of companies that offer a wide number of specialist courses on any number of topics. Many use new technologies to achieve two main goals. One is to reach the most students at the least cost, and the other is to provide training in the use of new technology itself, which is seen by many students as a means to employment in the information or knowledge economy.
These companies do not necessarily offer courses online, but often use computers for course delivery, and some of them have highly organized web sites, so that online delivery would be relatively easy to develop. While some of these companies could be categorized as fly-by-night, many are providing a worthwhile and valuable service.
Many are specialized into niche market areas but, increasingly, the information technology giants are entering this business arena; sometimes offering "accreditation", sometimes offering "accredited instructors", and sometimes as a de facto corporate "university.
Some (Reputable) Examples:
Canadian Business School offers a range of "computer certificate courses and other programs." It has "Microsoft certified professional instructors." The ubiquitous Microsoft again!
DeVry Institute of Technology. Well known for its TV ads, this organization has a mission to "provide high quality career-oriented higher education programs in business and technology to a diverse student population."
Motorola University . This is the "strategic learning organization of the [Motorola] corporation", providing for their clients "the best value in leading edge training and educational solutions and systems to be their preferred partner in developing a Best in Class work force."
Top
Educational Innovation and Competition
A closer inspection of these models reveals that only one (The Enterprising Institution) shows any real, proactive commitment to innovation on the part of the conventional university itself. In two models the university may react to stimulus from inside (The Enterprising Professor) or from outside (The External Catalyst). Universities need to be more proactive.
The last four models demonstrate the considerable competition that conventional universities face in the educational marketplace. What currently gives them an edge is their near monopoly of accreditation. But this is a very weak straw for them to clutch. This monopoly is under stress. Part of the problem for universities is that they are being asked to serve two distinctly different educational goals, based on two distinctly different views of education:
- experiential and
- market driven
In the first instance they are being asked to expose students to the experience of exploring knowledge for its own sake, and to produce graduates armed with a whole set of generalized educational skills, such as critical thinking.
In the second they are being asked to expose students to a focussed experience of ideas, concepts and facts, and to produce graduates who are trained for specific sets of occupations in the economy.
While conventional universities may be able to retain the power of accreditation for experiential learning, they are already beginning to lose the battle to do so for market driven learning.
Whether technology is forcing or simply enabling the change, there is increasing pressure for all the delivery models to move nearer to the last (i.e. the full commercialization of education). In fact several observers have suggested that the new mega multinational of the next millenium will be an "Education Inc". This would make sense, following a logical multinational progression from a focus on hardware (Big Blue IBM), through software (Mega Microsoft), and now on content and delivery, thus "Education Inc".
If anyone should doubt this, consider the following. In September 1997 there was a "Canadian Education Industry Summit" in Toronto sponsored by Smith Barney, Nesbitt Burns, KPMG, the Bank of Montreal, Heenan Blaikie and the Financial Post. Among the main topics for discussion were:
"The Education-for-Profit Industry"
"The Opportunities in the Marketplace"
"Education and Demand – Why is there a Growing Education Industry"
"Standardizing an Approach for Evaluating Education Companies"
"Canadian Universities – A Trend Toward Privatizing Tuition"
"The Wave is Building" – "Why the Shift from Public to Private Agents Will Continue"
Among those invited to attend were "investment fund managers requiring information about this growth industry" and "merchant bankers seeking new strategic acquisitions and market opportunities." When the financial industry becomes involved in this way you can be sure the competitive pressure is on.
Can conventional universities survive such pressure?
Only if they are willing to undergo massive change. And in doing so they face several challenges
Top
Some Challenges Facing Conventional Universities
The Questionable Value of Experiential Learning
While the public pays a certain lip service to the value of academic freedom, an emphasis on the importance of employment and the preparation of young people for the workforce has served to diminish its current worth. It is all very well for minds to wander freely in academic space but at the end of the day those minds must be informed enough to enable a person to hold down a job. In the words of Bill Gates:
"The higher education community must continue to find innovative ways to use technology to deliver instruction and prepare students for careers."
Can the universities persuade the public and its governments that money should be allocated to protect academic freedom in action? There are certain compelling arguments for this position. No nation should be totally reliant on its commercial organizations (or those of other countries!) to decide what is or is not worth investigating (the research role), or what knowledge shall or shall not be disseminated (the teaching role).
The danger of relying on this argument alone is that universities might then be relegated to the arena of experiential learning. This may not be a totally bad thing – experiential learning is marketable in its own right. If they are content with this role, and can live with the risk that it will ultimately disappear, so be it. There are already indications of support for this position. Professor Porteous of the University of Victoria (Canada), writing recently in the Globe and Mail, advocates eliminating courses or departments that have "little to do with the selfless search for discovery or devotion to learning which we traditionally expect of universities."
If this is not a generally held opinion, and there are counter arguments that posit an essential role for public education in the creation and dissemination of more applied knowledge, then universities will need to make a conscious decision to enter the more rough and tumble educational marketplace. The problem here is that, while education may be a growth industry, the market is becoming increasingly fractured because new technology is offering a variety of delivery options.
The Focus on Basic, One-time Education
While universities do have Schools or Departments of Continuing Education, their main focus has traditionally been on undergraduates, masters and doctoral students who are viewed as "trained" for their various professions when they leave the university. Universities have been less concerned with professional re-retraining. This is now becoming big business, as ever faster changing technology necessitates continual and frequent re-training. If universities are serious about getting into the educational marketplace, they will need to shift focus and redirect considerably more resources into the adult, continuing education field, and this means getting into the whole area of distance education delivery. One good reason for them to do so is that it will also enable them to deliver undergraduate courses at a distance. This may be necessary not only to satisfy and even stimulate student demand (distance education can also be cheaper for the student) but also to reduce supply costs. Then again, costs are another whole problem!
The Problem of Costs
In a time of government cutbacks in many areas, education has not generally escaped the squeeze. As a result, many institutions have looked to technology to see if it can help reduce the costs of delivering education. Too often this correlation between the use of technology and a reduction in costs is taken on faith. It is still too early to evaluate this with any precision. While there are indications that technology-enhanced courses may cost more to develop but have lower marginal costs, the methods used to calculate such findings are often based on highly questionable assumptions.
Meanwhile, conventional universities are stuck with several cost-related problems. While they still service a mainly undergraduate market, they cannot afford to reduce costs by downloading them onto students (e.g. by requiring students to purchase computers and software). They also have the problem of real estate costs as they attempt to operate in real AND virtual space. This puts them at a distinct disadvantage compared to purpose built distance universities.
Universities also have the problem that they cannot concentrate their activities in the way commercial operations can. While universities often build their reputations on a specific area of expertise, they still offer a wide range of courses. Ironically, technological colleges and polytechnics, on becoming universities, typically extend the range of their courses away from the focus on technology! Servicing these wide academic ranges is costly and denies economies of scale.
In fact one would expect the experience of universities, as they adopt more and more technology-enhanced learning, to mirror that of the typical office in the `80s, when the increased use of computers reduced rather than increased productivity. It was not until the massive downsizing of white-collar workers in the `90s that the expected rise in productivity finally happened. This is an ominous comparison for university personnel!
Entrenched Structures and Attitudes
Even though tenured positions are now harder to acquire, universities are still hampered by a lack of labour mobility that most commercial companies no longer suffer. Neither is job security of the faculty in conventional universities generally reliant on keeping up with new technology, as it is for many jobs in the commercial world. In fact, we have heard of one faculty that has successfully contracted with its university that only its younger members will be required to use new technology! These factors can seriously hamper attempts to innovate in the area of distance or technology-enhanced education. Anyone who still needs convincing should look at the structural changes that are required by this type of innovation:
- New learning unit structures
- New course development structures
- New course delivery structures
- New course administrative structures
- New student services structures
- New assessment structures
- New validation structures
Take just one obvious example. In a conventional university one professor would teach one class at a time and the class size would be limited by the size of the classroom. This would also limit the amount of marking that would be required. But if one professor, with a team of computer and media specialists produces a distance course, where student enrollment is limited only by the ability of the university to market its product, then an exponential increase in marking can result. This will require an increase in the manpower devoted to assessment. It will also require some form of validation of marking standards to ensure consistency across all the students on the course. This validation of marking, as well as the new course team concept, will threaten the academic freedom of the faculty as it is now defined in many institutions. Universities will be forced to consider new definitions of academic freedom!
Outdated Curricula
One of the main roles of a university, as noted by Eli Noam, is to create knowledge. In the face of ever-faster changing technology, this role has been transferring to the corporate world. While some universities are still on the cutting edge of discovery, faculty members in many institutions are having a hard time keeping up with new knowledge acquisition let alone creation.
We have listened to many a student commenting on the useless, outdated curricula they are forced to endure. While some of this criticism can be legitimately dismissed as naiive, some is well-founded. Take for instance the charge that in 1997 students on an accountancy course are still being instructed on computerized accounting packages that operate in DOS (because the professor wrote the book), with no exposure to a Windows version! Similarly we hear complaints about tuition in outdated computer languages, some developed at specific universities, which are never used anywhere outside them, and never will be!
The real problem with outdated curricula is that students have already begun to rebel, as student grants give way to loans, and educational costs to the student become more transparent. This means universities will increasingly have to pay more attention to "customer satisfaction" in a way similar to commercial enterprises. In related fashion, the trend to more distanced, work-relevant education that is more cost-effective is advancing.
With many universities unable to keep up with the new technology, it is not surprising to find so many corporate enterprises lodged in the computer training business. What is surprising is that few of them, as yet, are using distance education techniques to reach their students. This is likely to change dramatically as more of the population acquires home or work access to the Internet. This provides conventional universities with an opportunity to get ahead in the distance education field, (which is probably why they are being so assiduously courted by the infotech multinationals) BUT ONLY IF THEY CAN MOVE FAST!
Top
The Disappearance of the Stone Age University
Conventional universities face an uphill battle in their struggle to survive in the educational marketplace. The above mentioned problem areas are only some of the main ones. What is now painfully clear is that the status quo is NOT an option. This leaves conventional universities with several choices:
They can concentrate their efforts on capturing the market for experiential learning, and securing its funding as a public good – this may seem a natural evolution but it carries the risk that conventional universities will come to be seem as peripheral rather than central to education; a "frill" that will be threatened every time an economic downturn occurs in the business cycle; They can collaborate with commercial enterprises in an effort to share the marketplace on friendly terms – this is attractive on the surface, but it may require more of a change in values than is acceptable to many academics, yet still not enough for the corporate world. In this type of partnership a single university is an unequal partner for a multinational corporation and would soon be engulfed; They can retreat into a pure research role and surrender their teaching role to commercial ventures – this would be the biggest risk, as many multinationals have much better research resources than any public institution, and the option most likely to promote the early demise of universities; They can decide to embrace change and take on the commercial world – this is still risky but also exciting. They would have to use their bricks and mortar for very different purposes, as their current activities began to take place at a distance. This would also allow experiential learning a better chance of survival, and its value to be demonstrated in leading-edge, creative and relevant courses, alongside those with a more market driven focus. If universities embrace change, governments should consider some related support for such initiatives. This is appropriate because universities are important cultural repositories for national identities.
One way to reduce risk and increase the chance of success would be to collaborate with other universities to leverage the use of resources. Instead they may be heading in the opposite direction, as a recent article "Universities strive for brand recognition" by Jennifer Lewington in the Globe and Mail indicates. Competing with each other is not the best way to go. In fact "co-optition" rather than competition is the least risky option over the longer term, BUT TIME IS A LUXURY THAT IS DISAPPEARING!
It is not that universities are going to disappear overnight. Far from it. They are more likely to die a long, slow, painful death, as their resources become overstretched, their students disappear to other educational providers, and the value of their human and capital assets diminishes.
NEVERTHELESS THE TIME ELEMENT CANNOT BE STRESSED ENOUGH. Universities need to commit to change and "re-engineer" NOW. Bill Gates and his cohorts are not sitting on their hands waiting for universities to make up their minds. Nor should they. They have shareholders and customers to satisfy.
It is up to universities themselves to respond to new imperatives, and respond quickly. Just as the use of bronze brought the stone age to a close, silicon is now "virtualizing" the stone walls (or red brick) of the conventional university, but it is doing so faster than you can say "Mergers and Acquisitions!"
© Sims Latham Associates Dec 8, 1997
Top
|
