Climate change and higher ed--a clarification

Lionofzion made an excellent point in response to yesterday's post about the possible implications of climate change on higher ed. LoZ wrote:

Maybe there are good reasons schools don't change with immediate social concerns. If all schooling had been reformed entirely by the Cold War, adjusting to a post-Cold War world would have been even more difficult than it already is. The fact that our institutions maintain a core of stability while adopting some changes for the times is a strengh, not a weakness.

Why try and build a school around every new thing? Climate change is a large and important issue, it will no doubt impact people for a long time to come. But it's not the only thing out there, and we shouldn't focus everything around it. That would be a way to guarantee failure in many of our worthy endeavors.

My short response would be "you're right." That is, it would be a mistake if every college (or even many colleges) re-worked themselves in response to issues arising outside of higher ed.

My slightly longer response would go like this: It is true that it would be a mistake for many colleges to re-work themselves in response to climate change. But as a sector, higher ed is pretty unresponsive to change, and particularly change that improves student learning. The schools that have earned a reputation for innovation and quality in learning (setting aside the wealthies...Harvard, Yale, etc.) have done it by re-creating themselves in response to a major crisis.

Re-invention might be particularly useful for some private institutions, who could be priced out of existence in the future unless they become more distinctive. So, can climate change and the things we are learning through it, be a catalyst for an institution to remake itself, become distinctive, and create great learning for students?

There is sort of a case study out there in Sterling College. Sterling's curriculum is built around sustainability. That has led to some very interesting learning opportunities for students there. For example, all of them spend much of the first semester in a cohort tending an organic farm.

Sterling is also a very small college, and seems destined to always be one. So perhaps climate change isn't something around which a college could remake itself. But I would argue that some schools would be well-served to search for a metaphor or an issue that can be the basis of thorough-going change.

Blog Action Day: Climate Change and Higher Ed

Today is Blog Action Day, a global effort to turn the attention of bloggers (and blog readers) to a single topic. The topic this year: climate change.

Climate change has had two notable impacts on higher education.

First, it has turned campus processes green. AASHE tracks sustainability efforts in higher education; every week the list is longer of schools with LEED-Certified buildings, carbon neutrality pledges, and revised purchasing, sourcing, and food policies. This is a major change, and it is driven in many instances by students.

Second, it has influenced the curriculum. The number of academic programs in sustainability, environmental engineering, green technology, etc. etc. is swelling. Of particular interest is the way in which climate change has revived field work in science (particularly biology), after years in which the trend was ever more towards lab-based practices. Bio-engineering, bio-chemistry, neurobiology will continue to grow no doubt. But it now appears that field and environmental biology will not become a backwater.

These are major changes. But they leave me wondering if deeper change is possible. After all, lots of public issues have led to curriculum and policy change. The Cold War sparked foreign language study and the militarization of academic research; the decline in civic engagement provoked service-learning. But higher ed seems to have absorbed these impacts, and continues along much the same trajectory as before.

So, questions. Could you build an institution around climate change? How big would it be? Would it have a campus? Is there something about the nature of climate and environment that would shape relations between students, faculty, staff, and administrators? Would there be a hierarchical org structure, or a networked structure? Where would the humanities fit in Climate Change U? What would be evidence of its effectiveness? How would students be different leaving than they were coming in?

the value of intangible things

This TED Talk by ad man Rory Sutherland, is laugh-out-loud funny. (Especially good from 13:00 on). But his main point--that in a world of scarce resources, we ought to do more to increase the value of intangible things, and the intangible value of real things, is profound.

Education is currently awash in the practical --trying to demonstrate tangible value, develop real skills, create new things--programs, patents, technologies, etc. All this stuff is important, but as Sutherland points out, it may not make people happier. What is more, if its main message is about consumption (come, buy our new thing, earn more money, etc. etc.) it may be doing harm.

There are things that add intangible value to education though. Ceremonies and diplomas, for example. (If you have ever been to a graduation event of students who had to work hard, the ceremony itself is enormously important. Or visit the home of a first-generation graduate, and see the diploma in a place of pride.) And gifts--of time and books particularly. And perhaps most importantly, perspective. One of the most effective ways to deal with any current problem, personal or societal, is to be able to put it in the context of human trials.

Of course, there are anti-democratic sorts of intangible value as well. Education at Harvard is no better than lots of places for most students. But the brand itself is of huge value, and that value endures through the life of the graduate. So the challenge for educators everywhere is this--how do we increase the intangible value of education, but do it democratically, so that education has an egalitarian impact on society?

Is it possible to focus on learning as a president of a state university?

Sometimes it takes the convergence of two events to make the obvious, well, obvious. For me it was the publication of Wannabe U. an account of the effect of "the market" on administrators at an aspiring state university (U Conn, speculates Inside Higher Ed) overlapping with the inauguration of my friend Matt Holland as the new president of Utah Valley University.

Matt is my age (early 40s) and looked at one way, an unlikely president. Only two years ago he was named Associate Professor of Political Science at BYU. He has essentially no administrative experience. And he is an inspiring teacher, one of the few able to really make learning happen in BYU's largest classes (900 students at a time). He is from a prominent education family though, well connected in higher ed, state government, and the LDS Church, and a really fine guy.

He was hired at UVU largely because of his academic credentials. Given his lack of administrative background, and his solid academic bona fides, one might think that his inauguration would focus heavily on the learning goals of UVU. No such luck.

Instead, the charge from the Board of Regents, the talks by the Commissioner of Higher Ed (and Matt's own talk) were put almost entirely in administrator-speak. Build the brand, be efficient, raise funds, make students feel comfortable, strengthen the economic infrastructure, attend to the interests of local business, be relentlessly positive, pretend that it is possible to do everything, etc.

I'm an administrator and I heard a lot of my own rhetoric in the inaugural talks (especially that it is possible to do everything simultaneously). But at least at Westminster, a private school, the rhetoric of administrators and faculty share a focus on student learning. If we can't convince students that the education they get here is worth the cost, they won't come here. And if their learning isn't worth the cost, they will go someplace else, perhaps UVU.

UVU is a good school--the most innovative in Utah Valley, with great faculty, strong community connections, and satisfied students. And it is deeply committed to making higher education accessible to low-income, first generation, english-language learners and others who otherwise might not get a degree. But it seems that these students, more than any other group, deserve an intense focus on learning, from faculty, staff, administrators, regents, and the President. I hope Matt is able to do that. Given the remarks from his bosses, it will be an uphill climb.

A pathway to reduced cost and improved learning

This article outlines the ambiguous results of the National Center for Academic Transformation's efforts to redesign courses to improve learning and reduce costs. With an 8.8 million dollar grant they were able to rework many courses to be more cost-effective and provide equal or better learning to students. But even key participants didn't see cost reduction as a key outcome, and while the article isn't clear about it, it seems that students saw few, if any, reductions in cost to them.

Why is this the case? Because the project focused on redesigning courses, which, I will argue, is a late rather than early step in the effort to reduce costs while maintaining quality. Why? Because it does not foreground the cost to students, and so cost reductions do not make it back to them.

Here is a process that, by putting the cost to students first, has as a by-product the improvement of student learning and course redesign:

1. Hold the line on tuition. This is a no-brainer. Tuition is the biggest bill that students pay; this is the place to start. Holding the line might mean several things depending on the campus--no tuition increase, tuition increase at the level of inflation, a guarantee to every student that they will not pay more tuition in any year than they pay in the first year. I've advocated before for greater transparency in tuition as well by cutting tuition by the amount of the discount rate and then not discounting. Holding the line also has the benefit of bringing positive publicity to the college at the beginning of the process--essential if the campus wants to increase its overall budget by increasing enrollment.

2. Push back on other fees, especially the cost of "board"--Even very good students who get essentially a full-tuition scholarship fall into financial hardship because of the other costs of higher ed. The cost of "board" (eating on campus) is especially obvious. Why pay over $1000 a semester to eat on campus when you could grocery shop and spend much less? The cost of food in campus cafeterias is set by the food service (Sodexho here). Visit any cafeteria and try to find any meal for less than restaurant costs. It cannot be done. (There is an opportunity here, btw, for Sodexho and other food service providers. Be on the cutting edge and lower your costs. Or, provide lower-cost options. Or open an on-campus grocery store where students can shop for themselves. Any of these things wins market share in this climate.)

3. Institute a 4-year guarantee--I know that there will always be exceptional programs where it is impossible to get through in four years, or reasons why students choose not to complete in four years. But a four-year guarantee should be the default, not the special case. A by-product of the guarantee is curricular reform--not reworking course content (this comes later) but re-thinking course sequences and other learning experiences affiliated with the major.

4. Innovate in cost/quality by starting with new programs--Any new program ought to be able to deliver an education at a cost below the campus average. And it ought to be able to attract new students to the campus by virtue of its lower cost. Here the guiding rule should be to think big. I proposed the creation of a new, private junior college in a previous post. I've been running the numbers and I think it could be done by a private institution at the same cost as at a state-run community college (and provide a decent salary to faculty and a better education to students) if students could earn an associate's degree or complete their GE requirements in 3-semesters while paying the equivalent of 4 semesters of community college tuition. Westminster's BBA program costs students half of what regular tuition costs here. The power of requiring new programs to cost less than existing ones is that it gives faculty the opportunity to design better, less costly learning with a blank slate rather than refining what already exists (something that has rarely worked.)

5. Work on curriculum reform in the mainstream--Once a 4-year guarantee is in place, and new programs are designing innovative, excellent, and low cost education, then it is time to turn to the campus mainstream. Here, I recommend curriculum redesign, not course redesign first. Why? Because curriculum redesign will already have begun due to the 4-year guarantee and the new programs. And because it is key to passing reduced costs to students. The best way to go at it is to focus on redesigning the general education curriculum, the curricula of big academic programs, or the curricula of programs most similar to the new, low-cost programs. I would also encourage folks to think about the ways that the co-curriculum could fit in here by bringing students powerful learning entirely outside the classroom. This is the place also for technology to be inserted. The question becomes how might technology allow us to reconfigure the entire learning experience of students, not how can technology make a course different.

6. Course redesign--once costs are constrained, new models are flourishing, and the campus community is working on redesigning curricula, then faculty can turn to the work of redesigning particular courses. Why do this here?

• Because faculty tend to be late adopters (this is the virtue of a discipline and faculty tradition--you are disciplined to not follow every whim of fate or time or culture).
• Because course redesigns have a context in which to flourish.
• Because the campus infrastructure is already in place.
• And because faculty can see that a focus on cost has not hurt them or intruded on their academic domain--the classroom.

In a setting like this, redesign will flourish and it will already be the case that students are enjoying the benefits of reduced costs. Or, it will be clear that the process doesn't work, and the learning that takes place in the classroom will have continued without significant interruption. Either way, the outcomes have a greater potential for good than by starting with course redesign and seeing what happens next.

Blogging Outliers : "The Roseto Mystery"

I'm a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell. I've taught The Tipping Point and written about its application in education settings. I'm finally getting around to reading Outliers: The Story of Success, his most recent book. In Outliers Gladwell tries to suss out the combination of genetics, individual effort, and community structure that leads to excellence. I'll blog chapter-by-chapter, trying to draw out implications for education.

The question I have in mind is this: If you wanted to design a system of education that would lead to success, what would it look like? (No cheating by pulling a Harvard and relying on the best inputs in the world.)

The Introduction to Outliers describes a small town in Pennsylvania that by measures of public health, was one of the most successful communities in the US. Death rates from heart disease were will below those at the national level, even though risk factors (smoking, poor diet, genetics etc.) were close to the national average. Why so healthy? Gladwell identifies two types of factors:

1. Common culture--nearly all of the settlers of Roseto were originally from Roseto Sicily. They shared religion, language, and family ties. Common culture created a common set of expectations, among which was the belief that successful people had some obligation to the community, and that those who were struggling at one time or another could expect support. (Gladwell calls the culture egalitarian. I'm not sure it was in the way we tend to define egalitarianism today. People weren't financially equal, but their inequality did not have major social or health implications. And the gap between rich and poor was not huge.)
   
2. Rich connections--Rosetans were connected to each other in many ways. It was common for three generations of a family to live together; for extended family networks to cut across the town. Most worshipped at the same church. Many belonged to civic groups--22 civic organizations in a town of 2000. The sociologists who studied the town noted informal connections as well--people cooked for each other, visited each other, and maintained their common culture by means of their connections.
   

Lessons for education? Gladwell doesn't talk about schools in this chapter, though given how Catholic the community was you can guess that there were public and parochial schools in town. But you can see how certain community characteristics--common expectations, mutual support based on connection not obligation--would make it possible to host schools with the same values. It is interesting also that the community became successful in public health without that being an explicit goal of the community. It was a by-product of how they lived, not a result of a plan.

A key question for school-builders is whether in the absence of common culture and rich connections in the community, a school could help create them. Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone is trying to use schools to build a healthy community in Harlem, and then use that community to strengthen schools. The schools in HCZ have had some success. Less is known about the impact of the schools on the community.

In cities and towns there are likely still these clusters of good communities--perhaps not the whole town, but rich connections and common cultures that stretch across the geography. IF that is the case, school-builders ought to seek them out, and locate schools at the intersection of culture and connection

Build to think

Over at Musings from an Amateur, Bryce Bunting wonders why students love to learn but don't like school. He tells the story of coming to like writing not from taking writing classes but from blogging. His explanation of why he learns this way? What Prof. of New Media Clay Shirkey refers to as the "architecture of participation."

Shirley suggests that old media had only one model--comsumption. Experts produced, the public consumed. New media, on the other hand is built around a three-part model: consumption, production, and sharing. In Shirkey's view production and sharing are ever more important, because people are willing now to spend a bit of their "cognitive surplus" on exactly those things. We don't only watch (consume) TV. We also make it.

The analogies to education are pretty clear here. The old model of education was consumption based--experts produced knowledge, students consumed it. When they had consumed it well enough, they demonstrated it by producing something of their own.

I hope we are moving towards a "new media" model of education, where consuption, producing, and sharing all take up major proportions of student and faculty time. (After all, one of the main complaints of faculty is that they don't get time to consume (i.e. read, do research, take a sabbatical) because they are always producing stuff.)

But how to do it? Tim Brown suggests that "design thinking" can make it possible. His ideas are far bigger than I can describe here, but one phrase in his talk stood out to me--that designers shouldn't "think about what to build" they should "build in order to think." (This turn reminds me of William Carlos Williams' line "no ideas but in things.")

If education is based on the idea that we build to think, it has several implications:

1. No need to start with giving the background--start with doing. Write a paper to discover what you know and don't know; learn to play an instrument by playing it.
2. Do the same thing several times in order to get better.
3. Build trust, because when it isn't possible to know the outcome in advance, the project depends on trust (or community) not a promise of success down the road.
4. Trust grows when work focuses on real human need.
5. The realm of real human need is huge. Working on needs isn't, then, just about hunger and poverty. Instead it is about being honest in public about one's own weakness and showing patience with those of others.
6. Work in public, revise in public, fail in public.