University Business - September 2012 - (Page 27)

exaggerated. Profound misunderstanding of the mission of a highly selective, affluent research university led University of Virginia’s trustees to embrace “strategic dynamism,” an approach to change unsuited to the modest degree of difficulty that the university faces. Journalists, donors, and policy officials may forget that disruptive approaches will succeed only when local circumstances warrant radical change. Take the example of Southern New Hampshire University, a small, traditional, private institution that hoped to become distinctive when Paul LeBlanc became its president in 2003. LeBlanc has been a remarkable leader. His vision—largely realized a decade later—was to make SNHU truly accessible to nontraditional students and thereby to increase enrollment, financial health, and visibility. LeBlanc describes what he has done as predicated on Christensen’s ideas, and Christensen is an SNHU trustee. Under LeBlanc’s leadership, SNHU offers a three-year bachelor’s degree for the most self-disciplined students, a “no frills” degree at a low price for students who hope to save money, and an extensive online program for students whose work and family obligations make traditional classroom schedules impossible. But LeBlanc would be the first to point out that these programs aren’t for everyone. They address needs that are different from those of most students. It is significant that SNHU continues its traditional residential undergraduate program. LeBlanc understood well that circumstances at SNHU differ from those found elsewhere. For example, his state’s universities charge very high tuition and fees compared with public colleges in other states; New England is dominated by private higher education; the New Hampshire government recently opened a branch campus of the state university in Manchester (even though SNHU and other private colleges have ample capacity to expand); and like many northern states, New Hampshire is losing population, especially young people. The obviuniversitybusiness.com ous point that the state government’s subsidy of expanded capacity at the private colleges would have required far fewer tax dollars than starting a new campus was lost in the shuffle. In light of these factors, SNHU felt enormous pressure to become distinctive, and it has. A direct relationship exists between student success and face-to-face learning and co-curricular experiences. DiSrUptiVe CHaNgeS Are there circumstances when other colleges and universities ought to consider disruptive changes? Yes. The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT), for example, in working with many large state universities, has demonstrated convincingly that student learning will increase, costs will decrease, and fewer students will drop out from giant lecture courses when technological delivery of course content is used instead of lectures. In some ways, this model sustains and improves the traditional model, rather than replacing it, as massive, open, online courses (MOOCs) claim to do. It would be a mistake to extrapolate the NCAT approach to all courses at state universities, to any courses at highly selective institutions where nearly all are self-disciplined learners, or to smaller colleges where no economy of scale can be gained after making the investment to convert a course to a technology-based approach. Some policy gurus and technology executives argue that everything worth learning can be made available on handheld mobile devices, so “placebased” education is no longer necessary. They, too, are unable to rebut evidence that shows a direct relationship between academic and postgraduate success, on the one hand, and face-to-face learning and residential and other co-curricular experiences, on the other. Are there other colleges that have been transformed quickly? Yes, especially among smaller private colleges that are nimble, flexible, and entrepreneurial. The circumstances of these successful disruptive innovations are always sui generis. Notre Dame of Maryland University has imaginatively integrated a pharmacy school and a women’s college on the same campus, a combination many people believed to be impossible. And the University of Charleston (W.Va.) adopted the “checklist” approach surgeon and writer Atul Gawande introduced to hospitals, with amazing quality improvements. HigHer StaNDarDS Is a campus-based education necessary? Everyone knows the story of how college drop-outs Bill Gates and Steve Jobs made good. Earlier generations grew up hearing of children of immigrants enrolling in low-priced, non-residential institutions and becoming successful adults—or even about those who educated themselves through public libraries. In America, there are many routes to success. But none of these stories offers an attractive universal model for a country in which two-thirds of high school graduates enroll in college and expect to have opportunities to do so. Nontraditional approaches offer neither a way to meet the national need for more people with advanced knowledge in critical fields (such as scientists) nor a way to acculturate young people when public schools, churches, and the military do not. We must strengthen the colleges and universities we have, make them more efficient, and motivate them to aspire to even higher standards of intellectual achievement. The way to fulfill those goals is not to jettison a model of higher education that works extremely well in most cases to adopt approaches that are effective only in highly specific circumstances. Richard Ekman is president of the Council of Independent Colleges, www.cic.org. September 2012 | 27 http://www.cic.org http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - September 2012

University Business - September 2012
Contents
Editor’s Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Independent Outlook
Financial Aid
Virtual Viewbooks: Ready? Or Not?
Technology Changes Everything
Connecting Learners, On Campus and Off
The Changing Face of the CIO
Efficiency Greats
The Administrator's Bookshelf
Oceans of Data
Education Innovators
Internet Technology
End Note

University Business - September 2012