Comments on The 20th Century University Is Obsolete

• The Changing Face of Higher Education
• Posted by Jerry Pattengale , AVP for Scholarship and Grants at Indiana Wesleyan University on September 5, 2006 at 7:35am EDT

• Dear Rev. Monigue,

  Thank You for this summary of education's historical journey and trajectory. You note the monastic cocoon as the launching of the Academy—and early in its history scholars like yourself were noting the challenge to be relevant to society. In 1996 I delivered keynotes to the Modern Medievalism Conference (Kalamazoo College) on “The Chasm of Classical Studies” and to Michigan’s Classical Association (Calvin College) on “Petrarch’s Lessons for the Crisis of Classical Departments.” In short, Petrarch warned his fourteenth-century audiences that without relevance to societal needs the study of the Classics would become obsolete. While both of these fine conferences were polite and the following exchanges healthy—with neon clarity the challenge of being relevant was not a pleasant one. Perhaps a modern Petrarch would charge that to be relevant you must be read. To be read and studied—you need the help of the professional marketing force. Marketers need your knowledge, you need theirs. More importantly, the growing number of under-educated citizens needs and benefits from the growing collaboration between the professionals and academics. Thousands are discovering Plato’s Cave in hotel conference rooms or remote storefronts, or online—while tuition is paid by employers wanting knowledge workers.
  While my office is on a beautiful residential campus, I'm also one of nearly 1,000 employees contributing to the explosive educational growth you describe. Indiana Wesleyan University continues to be the fastest growing university in our region, mainly due to our 12 branch campuses for adult education (now with an enrollment of over 13,000). Two decades ago, the "cookie cutter" delivery system you describe saved our university--which ironically now realizes a "traditional" campus voted "Best Facilities" in a national magazine. Your article prompts the question--Was Indiana Wesleyan built by professionals or academics? Regardless of one's view of the convenience model manifest in most adult education programs, the quality issue almost always surfaces. However, there's another side to the discussion—the new class of "Educational Professionals." It appears that what happened here is occurring in other places—visionary academics who realized the need for professional assistance. While you're right that many market-driven colleges are driven by professionals, including curriculum, and that academic processes are bi-passed, that's not always the case, and I think will become less so as NCA and the HLC continue to adapt assessment models and assist the process of reaching the masses. Long before external pressures hit our colleges we were fighting amongst ourselves for core curriculum slots for humanities courses. For all colleges, Ernest Boyer’s model of scholarship is a link between the sometimes esoteric studies of academics and societal needs (see Braxton, Luckey and Helland, Institutionalizing a Broader View of Scholarship Through Boyer’s Four Domains, ASHE-ERIC, JB), and Geyer and Weeks, The Liberal Arts. Also, the brilliant little book by Arthur F. Holmes, The Idea of a Christian College (Eerdmans) contains two chapter (3 & 4) that help us all with questions on the role of the Liberal Arts. Thanks again for challenging us to understand better our educational surroundings. Like Petrarch’s challenge to his Classics colleagues, being proactive not only limits the necessity of being reactive, but as you imply, my sustain our ability to be active at all. JP

• Academic Libraries Are a Value Add
• Posted by steven bell , library director at philadelphia university on September 5, 2006 at 9:00am EDT

• This essay asks the question "Is the traditional library a value add or a costly overhead?" and it's a good one because in today's Internet information environment that feeds the get it fast, get it easy approach to research, the academic library is in danger of being marginalized. But my answer to the question is, the academic library is a value add. A recent study (see http://acrlblog.org/2006/05/30/making-the-case-for-high-quality-academic-library-buildings/) found the academic library building plays a significant role in the prospective student's college decision-making process. But it's not the building so much as the library staff that add value to the student's education. Through user education and support the library helps students achieve higher quality research. Of course, this may only matter if faculty make it a priority and encourage use of the library resources in their assignments. As far as "deserted libraries" go, that's a myth that was exposed years ago. My own library just experienced it's third straight year of a 9% increase in user traffic. Any institution that invests in better library resources is likely to see an immediate return on its investments with significant increases in traffic and use of the resources. As far as those for-profits go, many have beefed up their own library resources in order to meet accreditation standards, and minimize their own students' reliance on those traditional libraries that are supposedly of questionable value.

• 20th century university is obsolute?
• Posted by Peter Germroth on September 5, 2006 at 9:00am EDT

• The article focuses on the economic aspect of higher education. Though this argument has its merit, the author is obviously caught in the limited view of higher education as a means to an (economic) end - a typical American perspective. Traditional universities and the education they offer are still very competitive in countries where education in general is valued and desired and where higher education is funded by the state without much private interference -- in Europe, for example.
  In other continents, dinosaurs therefore still rule supreme. Which way the "selection" process goes will still have to be seen.

• The costs of the university
• Posted by Jeremy on September 5, 2006 at 9:10am EDT

• The increasing expense of higher education that is being passed on to students generally comes from two sources: increases in health insurance costs for employees and a decrease or leveling off of availability public funds.
  While some for-profit institutions have taken a large number of students from more traditional institutions, the traditional institutions have noticed and are making huge strides to get those students back.

• Amen...Brother!
• Posted by Edward Winslow , A "tired" retired usiness Professor on September 5, 2006 at 9:20am EDT

• Where to Start..? Rev. Minogue's reflection is severely accurate. Let's examine the context and offer some comments as the nations' of the world seek to maintain a competitive advantage in the 21st Century and beyond.

  First, all higher education institutions seek to maintain a level of "profit" to continue their existance. In the taxable company it is called "Profit" because it is supported by many investors. In non-taxable institiutions it is called "Reserves" and have in the past been supported by a few direction-controlling donors. Don't be naive in thinking they are different. In both cases, they must maintain more income than expenses to survive.

  As such, the non-taxables are moving to the resources (Tuition, non-tenure faculty, and the like) used by the for-profits to maintain their viability. The only difference in the removal of excessive overhead cost in patronage, neopotism, excessive physical plants and the like, that must be changed to continue to exist in the "evolution"

  For example, why is it necessary to "capture" unwary students in a six-sided box called a classrom and force them to listen to the brainwashing lectures of the likes of Ward Churchill, when the Google libraries and access to the world's learning is available on a 24/7 basis where they can learn more, faster and deeper with a faulty member who is willing to guide them in the learning process.

  What must happen is for the 1000 year old so-called "higher" educational delivery model "evolve" through high quality strategic planning and implementation that places everything, and I mean "everything", on the table that relates to the grooming of our children to compete and survive in the 21st century and beyond. Navel-gazing administrations who continue to feed the dinosaur will disappear. Comfortable, tenured, faculty who fail to continue to provide excellence in learning facilitation as their primary goal need to be eliminated, for example. If you don't deliver and support the strategic mission, you're gone.

  Efficient management must follow excellent goal-based strategic planning to build for the future. Above all, that means being aware of the external environment to be able to react and create anew throughout these evolutionary times as new species arrive and the old and unnecessary ones die out and become extinct.

  Are you ready for the change?

• Number of Higher Ed Seats in China
• Posted by Carl J. Weber , Adjunct in Liberal Arts at DeVry University, Addison Illinois on September 5, 2006 at 10:00am EDT

• Know everybody knew that... 20 million, not 2 million in China.

  ...Since 1998, when Jiang Zemin, then president of China, spoke on the 100th anniversary of top-ranked Peking University and issued his bracing call for change, overall college enrollment in China has roughly tripled. The country now outpaces leaders like the US, India, Russia, and Japan in numbers of students in colleges and universities. By 2010, Chinese officials estimate, at least 20 percent of high school grads will be enrolled in some form of higher education; that number is expected to rise to 50 percent by 2050. China currently has about 20 MILLION STUDENTS pursuing higher education. But the change is wrenching long-accepted practices...
  http://prayatna.typepad.com/education/higher_education/index.html

• Posted by Patrick Goold on September 5, 2006 at 10:00am EDT

• Perhaps one easy cost-cutting measure for universities to take would be to get rid of things like Centers for Higher Education and Organizational Change. They always seem to produce the same tired and tiring dreck lik this article.

  "Adapt, adapt, adapt!" is the cry of the mass man who fears being crushed by forces beyond his ken. It is odious to try to make this form of moral collapse look principled by conflating market forces with the forces of nature.

  An old-fashioned english major is the best protection against such metaphor-mongering. Evolution, indeed!

• Precedented alarm
• Posted by Margaret Klosko on September 5, 2006 at 12:00pm EDT

• About the author's millenarian view of the socially irrelevant university it might be useful to note the alarm of an earlier academic writer: In the 12th Century, John of Salisbury bemoaned the fate of the humanities in the universities of his day. He noted tragically that literary studies had just about disappeared.

• Diversity in Teaching and Learning
• Posted by Kit , Associate General Counsel at Louisiana-Pacific Corporation on September 5, 2006 at 3:01pm EDT

• Within the student population their is as much diversity as is represented by the diverse genetic and experiencial make-up of each student and each professor, not even bringing in the diversity between and within the current environments and schools.

  In agriculture we recognize the need to maintain the genetic diversity within national seed banks rather than eliminate diverse forms in favor of the perceived stronger varieties to ensure an ability to respond to changes in disease and other environmental factors.

  With students, each is a product of what they started with (genes) and what they acquired (environment) along the way. Part of that acquisition process is the institution and the delivery systems, but a great deal is the people, both faculty and students and others, they come in contact with.

  No, the institutions of higher learning should avoid failure in their pursuit of excellence by standing still. I would suggest that few are. Yes, there are huge budgetary constraints, and the ones who respond to those most efficiently have advantages. Some may respond so poorly that they do fail.

  But diversity in approach and delivery helps to support create many environments that will bring about diversity of experience, diversity of thought and tolerance and perhaps respect of many of such differences.

  That could help not only to preserve the robustness of experience, but also the potential for survival.

  Is this an argument for libraries? Not necessarily.

  Is it an argument for ignoring advances in technology? Certainly not.

  Is it an argument for inclusion of the past with the present and the future. Absolutely.

  Is it an argument against chasing one solution? Decidedly.

• REV. MINOGUE, THE ANTI-NEWMAN
• Posted by ClioSmith , Associate Professor at Trinity Bible College on September 5, 2006 at 7:20pm EDT

• Rev. Minogue's essay does a good job of expressing the disturbing assumptions liberal-arts educators are up against in their ongoing efforts to preserve their craft in an age when higher learning has become--in the minds even of leading educators--a "commodity."

  In his zest for explaining higher education via an evolutionary paradigm where change is the only constant and extinction ever the looming threat, Minogue seems to have adopted what I think is a somewhat myopic understanding of the history of his topic. "Higher education" has existed, in various forms, since at least the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, and it was certainly no stranger to the Greeks, Romans, and Islamic Arabs. The uniqueness of the Medieval European university lay largely in its guild-like characteristics. The term "universitas," in fact, originally referred to a guild, a system devised largely to mediate between the demands of the outside market and the needs of teachers and scholars.

  The university was a unique development in the thousands of years of higher education history because of its success in formalizing those relationships. Its success--and its enduring value--lay not in its eagerness to provide merchandise to every possible consumer, but to create a sacred space for learning. An artificial world, as it were, for deep profound questioning and contemplation apart from incessant demands of the market. It's true that this space could not have existed without the market. But it is also true that had the market dictated directly the procedures of the university, there could have been no university.

  Perhaps I am being hasty, but I can't help seeing Minogue's piece as a brief, not for the continued evolution of the university, but for its abolition. Universities are, he says "elegant life forms" that persevere "for reasons having nothing to do with innate capability to embrace change." Their undergraduate programs continue, he thinks, because of parents' "instinctual and perhaps irrational" desires for their children to have a liberal arts education. Nothing in Minogue's piece suggests belief that the public sees anything of intrinsic value in higher learning, or even in the reality of any such non-instrumental values. The world he describes seems to be able to function without tenured faculty or traditional academic processes. Commodification in this scenario reaches the level where teachers are dispensible, and ultimately nothing is real except the vagaries of the market, those who claim knowledge of its trends, and the technicians who deliver the "product."
  I'm out of time now, but I have much, much more to say on this topic. I hope the Chronicle will do some follow-ups that will help round out the discussion.

  Best,

• The Entrepreneurial University
• Posted by Jonathan Cohen on September 6, 2006 at 5:45am EDT

• DePaul University was driven by the desire for growth. Indeed, a basically market based approach enabled the school to double its size in a period of about twenty years, making it the largest Catholic University in the United States. The existing campuses were rebuilt and expanded and new campuses were created. New programs fueled enrollment growth and the increased tuition revenue, enhanced by increases at twice the rate of inflation, was invested in ever more growth. DePaul, the little school under the L, became the new American University, serving a growing population of both undergraduates and adult returning students.

  The decisions to build new campuses was made largely by administrators but the responsibility for the growth was placed on the faculty who had the job of filling the new venues with programs. Resources within the university were allocated on the basis of growth. New programs merited new hires and more dollars.

  The growth put pressure on faculty time as the university mission of growth took increasing precedence over the more traditional activities of classroom teaching, departmental service and scholarly research. Without serious faculty input, campuses were created in Naperville and Lake County and while individual colleges, particularly commerce and computer science worked hard to create programs on these campuses. While faculty were coping with the expansion in Naperville and Lake County, the university purchased Barat College in Lake Forest, a small Catholic liberal arts college with declining enrollments and inadequate outside funding.

  In 2003, the Executive Vice Presidents for academics and operations, the principle architects of the school's decade of growth, retired, leaving the burdensome responsibility for liquidating the remains of Barat College to their successors. Father Minogue retired the following year, completing the departure of the trio that had been in charge of the university for over a decade.

  While a great deal was accomplished in these years, (in particular the establishment of a large contingent of residential students, the construction of a new library, the renovation of the downtown campus, and a variety of new buildings on the main campus), it put a considerable burden on faculty. Among administrators, an attitude arose in which faculty were looked upon as selfish scholars, inclined to pursue their own scholarly agendas unless they were forced to do otherwise by the more farsighted and humane administrators.

  While there was a core of faculty who were chosen to help design the administrative initiatives, the majority of faculty were viewed as obstacles to be overcome rather than equal participants to be consulted.

  Certainly Father Minogue was a pleasant person and respectful in his dealings with faculty but his article reveals a view, commonly held by DePaul administrators, that the faculty's traditional views of the university were rapidly becoming obsolete. The faculty model of a professional career of teaching courses and writing papers and books was not compatible with creating the kind of innovations that they saw as necessary for the years ahead.

  Minogue's vision of the university as expressed in this article is of a market driven educational product, created and administered primarily by innovative faculty members informed by an essentially entrepreneurial spirit. Unfortunately, what this view fails to take account of is that faculty did not devote years of their life in training to be entrepreneurs. They like the university as it is and value its curriculum and harbor the conviction that knowledge is good for its own sake. While most students have a variety of other reasons for going to college, it seems the duty of faculty to share their enthusiasm for learning and hope that some of it rubs off on their students.

  If the university wants to transform its faculty into entrepreneurs, it needs to understand that the driving force of entrepreneurship is profitability. If the university wants to define itself by the profitability of its products, it had better start allowing faculty to profit from their efforts. The notion that the modern university will harness the creative powers of faculty by criticizing them for selfishness and making it difficult for them to get merit increases and promotions if they don't support the mission is absurd. If forced to devote their considerable pedagogical knowledge and skills for the development of essentially commercial educational products, then they will expect to be compensated fully for their efforts or they will leave the university for private business where they will be compensated.

  It is a little like college basketball's struggle to keep their best players from turning professional. They tend to stay longer if they like going to college. If they value the college degree, appreciate going to class, and enjoy the campus atmosphere they may stay until graduation.

  Similarly, professors with marketable commercial skills will stay within the university for what the "obsolete" university has to offer. When the university becomes overly commercial, those with marketable skills will leave for more lucrative endeavors.
  If campus executive officers think they are going to get faculty members to give up doing what they have spent years training to do, to promote the egos and salaries of an increasingly invasive class of administrators, they are in for a rude awakening. Those who can't do the entrepreneurial stuff won't and those who can and want to do it will take their services to the highest bidder.

• Posted by PJ on September 6, 2006 at 6:30pm EDT

• “No frill, just degree” competitors are producing product at less cost etc...

  And so forth...

  If we are going to analyze higher ed (NOT simple skills training) using economics, please - at least let us be a little sophisticated about it. Economists have long since moved past a simple value-added concept of college education. Nobel memorial award economist Michael Spence analyzed education as a 'signalling' device. Students use college ed as a filter to demonstrate their 'quality' (from information economics.) Then there is the networking benefit (sociology), and much, much more.

  If we want to move further out to the frontier neuroscience (including the new field of neuroeconomics) suggests that the human brain is hard wired to interact differently with real people than with robots or other facsimiles of people, or canned lectures.

  Also, in economics there is an argument (from the economic growth literature) that tenure is not obviously inefficient from a societal perspective. That it may be the price we pay as a civilization to induce individuals to invest their lives solving very narrow problems in basic knowledge, where the solutions cannot be patented. Only one professor in a thousand may make a breakthrough, but the permanent welfare gain to society from new knowledge can be a million fold.

  Remember how web startups were going to use canned web lectures from star professors to replace us all? Investors lost their shirts.

  Sure, colleges must adapt to technology, working adults and other changes in the student population.

  But so far the market seems to be supporting the core model of higher ed.

• Posted by Frank Schmidt , Professor at University of Missouri, Columbia on September 7, 2006 at 12:10pm EDT

• "Research I universities that produce new knowledge thrive in this new environment, but they are now dependent upon strong financial links with the economic agendas of companies and countries. They are no longer the sole citadels for the production of new knowledge, but rather just one node on a global network of corporate and national R&D sites."

  Fr. Minogue is talking through his biretta here. According to the NSF Science and Engineering Indicators 2006, industry's share of R&D (over 75% of which is D, Development) decreased from 2000-2004. Universities will continue to be the major source of basic research.

  Educational innovation will continue to come from the traditional universities, as well. The question is whether the political process will continue to favor these new "competitors." At present,they benefit from the combination of Hallibruton politics and Wal-Mart economics.

• Obsolence or transformation of the research library
• Posted by And I have an MLIS degree... , PhD student, instructor, bibliophile... at Land Grant U on September 7, 2006 at 7:35pm EDT

• In response to Steven Bell, academic libraries are very expensive, and of course there is some value. However, declaring a 9% increase in foot traffic does nothing to indicate what that traffic is due to, or what "value-add" is presumably delivered to those feet and attached students, faculty, researchers, and the general public. These kinds of hortatory statements do not work any longer. What is it that delivers value? The enormous buildings needing environmental control? (Build storage-only facilities and dramatically improve the cost-per-book of storage.) Is it the phalanx of (in some universities, largely tenured) full-time librarians? UC Berkeley did away with many of them during the early 90s California budget crisis, and runs largely on student workers. Is it the well-lighted, temperature- and volume-controlled study spaces? Equally replicable in self-funding cafe environments. The library as an institution may continue to exist, but it had better get its priorities straight and move forward, or it will have less and less a say in terms of what it will become. Administrators, students, federal largesse, and the parents who foot the bill are not an unlimited source of funds and goodwill...

• 21st Century Realities
• Posted by Reuben van Rensburg , Principal at South African Theological Seminary on September 8, 2006 at 4:30am EDT

• Many students in the majority world simply cannot afford residential components, nor are their employers willing to let them leave their place of employment in order to fulfil residential requirements. New forms of "contact" tuition via distance education are proving to be a highly desirable alternative to the traditional university.

• "The 20th Century University is Obsolete"
• Posted by Ben Kukoyi , Faculty at Troy University, Covington campus on September 9, 2006 at 4:45pm EDT

• Any institution of higher learning that fails to change with time and adjust to the pace of technological development via E-learning and fails to provide it's student body with choices will be left in the dark ages. Non-believers should see the financial report of Phoenix University and Walden university and the quality of their graduates.

• Narrow View
• Posted by Drew on June 14, 2007 at 5:10am EDT

• I am quite frankly surprised that Rev. Minogue does not give any nod to the social responsibility of the university as an agent of change that can transform the evolutionary structure that he circumscribes as an unchanging and finally determinative structure to which the university must adapt or die. It is as if the corporate and market driven state of the world is so monolithic and powerful that all of our knowledge production and social responsibility must be jettisoned or conform to fit the structure of the market. The alternative that he does not mention is the university as a structure of influence on the market in order to accomodate it to the knowledge that the university produces...

  More on http://musings.tatuskofam.com

• Not just criticism
• Posted by Gypsy Boots on June 19, 2007 at 10:30am EDT

• Re Jonathan Cohen's comment: "The notion that the modern university will harness the creative powers of faculty by criticizing them for selfishness and making it difficult for them to get merit increases and promotions if they don’t support the mission is absurd. If forced to devote their considerable pedagogical knowledge and skills for the development of essentially commercial educational products, then they will expect to be compensated fully for their efforts or they will leave the university for private business where they will be compensated."

  You are right, Mr. Cohen: it is "absurd" to think administrators can rely on mere criticism to whip recalcitrant faculty members into line. What they would really like is to abolish tenure and keep faculty members in line by at-will employment, as in other industries. They are used to a market in which many more qualified people want to be professors than there are positions, and apparently believe this situation will continue forever.