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EDUCAUSE 2010 Day 2: Hamel, Gates, lecture capture, and tough publishers

On 10/14/2010, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, change, changing business models, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, leadership, online learning, organizational change, pace of change, publishing, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

EDUCAUSE 2010 Day 2: Hamel, Gates, lecture capture, and tough publishers — from InsideHigherEd.com by Joshua Kim

From DSC:
Especially of interest here to me was the item about TechSmith and Sonic Foundry…veerrry interesting. Also, administrators, deans, and department chairpersons NEED to hear Hamel’s presentation/thoughts. To me, it held some of the most lasting value from any presentation that was offered online yesterday.

Gary emphasized the need for us to keep reinventing ourselves — and I would add, given the pace of change, this is just as true of each of us as individuals as our collective organizations.  He noted the accelerating pace of change, that knowledge itself is changing…and that most organizations today were never built to handle this kind of change. He stressed the need to be more nimble.

The web:

  • Dematerializes
  • Disintegrates
  • Disintermedites
  • Democratizes

Too often organizational change is episodic, convulsive — reacting to a time of crisis. (From DSC: Read…when the organization has been broadsided.)

We are broadsided not because we couldn’t see things coming down the pike, but because those things were not pallatable to us….hmmm…sounds of online learning and web-based collaboration are ringing in my ears…

Try to imagine the unimaginable.




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My fear for many institutions of higher education…

On 10/12/2010, in 24x7x365 access, adult learning, business side of he, changing business models, competency-based learning/education, consortiums, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, innovation, leadership, lifelong learning, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, staying relevant, strategy, traditional / tradition, trends, United States, using teams, by Daniel Christian

The world changed, colleges missed it — from edreformer.com by Tom Vander Ark

A bunch of colleges are going out of business, only they don’t know it. They pretend that trimming costs and jacking tuition is a solution.  They haven’t come to terms with a world where anyone can learn anything almost anywhere for free or cheap. Art Levine, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, sees three major change forces: new competition, a convergence of knowledge producers, and changing demographics.
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To Art’s list of three big change forces, add shrinking government support, the press for more accountability, and emerging technology…the next few decades will be marked by a lumpy move to competency-based learning…instant information and the ability to learn anything anywhere.
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The shift to personal digital learning is on.  Some colleges get that.  Others will seek bailouts until they go out of business.  Working adults are getting smart on their own terms.

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From DSC:
Time will tell if Tom’s assertions are too harsh here, but personally, I think he’s right.

I have it that:

  • There is a bubble in higher ed
  • There also exists a perfect storm that’s been forming for years within higher ed and the waves are cresting
    .The perfect storm in higher ed -- by Daniel S. Christian

  • Institutions of higher education need to check themselves before they become the next Blockbuster
    .Do not underestimate the disruptive impact of technology -- June 2009

  • We must not discount the disruptive powers of technology nor the trends taking place today (for a list of some of these trends, see the work of Gary Marx, as well as Yankelovish’s (2005) Ferment and Change: Higher Education in 2015)
  • Innovation is not an option for those who want to survive and thrive in the future.

Specifically, I have it that we should be experimenting with:

  • Significantly lowering the price of getting an education (by 50%+)
  • Providing greater access (worldwide)
  • Offering content in as many different ways as we can afford to produce
  • Seeking to provide interactive, multimedia-based content that is created by teams of specialists — for anytime, anywhere, on any-device type of learning (24x7x365) — at any pace!
  • “Breaking down the walls” of the physical classroom
  • Pooling resources and creating consortiums
  • Reflecting on what it will mean if online-based exchanges are setup to help folks develop competencies
  • Working to change our cultures to be more willing to innovate and change
  • Thinking about how to become more nimble as organizations
  • Turning more control over to individual learner and having them create the content
  • Creating and implementing more cross-disciplinary assignments

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From DSC: Some of the elements of the perfect storm in higher ed

On 09/10/2010, in 24x7x365 access, budgets, business side of he, changing business models, cost of getting a degree, curriculum, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, education reform, education technology, engagement / engaging students, funding / grants, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, leadership, learning ecosystem, mobile learning, multimedia, online learning, open courseware and systems, strategy, student-related, surviving, traditional / tradition, ubiquitous learning, United States, by Daniel Christian

The perfect storm in higher ed -- by Daniel S. Christian

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Academic Bankruptcy

On 08/24/2010, in business side of he, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, future of higher education, game-changing environment, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, by Daniel Christian

Academic Bankruptcy – NY Times Opinion — by Mark Taylor, Chairman of the religion department at Columbia University and the author of the forthcoming “Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities.”

With the academic year about to begin, colleges and universities, as well as students and their parents, are facing an unprecedented financial crisis. What we’ve seen with California’s distinguished state university system — huge cutbacks in spending and a 32 percent rise in tuition — is likely to become the norm at public and private colleges. Government support is being slashed, endowments and charitable giving are down, debts are piling up, expenses are rising and some schools are selling their product for two-thirds of what it costs to produce it. You don’t need an M.B.A. to know this situation is unsustainable.

With unemployment soaring, higher education has never been more important to society or more widely desired. But the collapse of our public education system and the skyrocketing cost of private education threaten to make college unaffordable for millions of young people. If recent trends continue, four years at a top-tier school will cost $330,000 in 2020, $525,000 in 2028 and $785,000 in 2035.

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A quote re: a piece of the perfect storm in higher ed…

On 08/24/2010, in budgets, business side of he, dangers of the status quo, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, new business models, by Daniel Christian

“While I still haven’t given up on state government’s role in supporting public higher education,” [Boise State University President Bob Kustra] said, “with each passing year I see more clearly that the funding of higher education as we experienced it in the past will not be replicated in future years.” Boise State needs to re-examine the business model universities use and construct a new one, according to Kustra.

— from What’s next for Boise State?: Kustra asks for a new business model at State of the University Address

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Are there lessons here for institutions of higher ed?

On 08/23/2010, in budgets, business side of he, change, changing business models, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, future of higher education, game-changing environment, innovation, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, by Daniel Christian

BlackBerry crumble: Why RIM is in trouble — from cnn.com

chart_ws_stock_researchinmotionltd.top.png

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BlackBerry’s biggest problem: The app gap (From DSC: RIM didn’t build the infrastructure / ecosystem necessary to compete)
With that in mind, some worry that there are eerie similarities between Research in Motion and Palm, the once-hot smartphone maker that failed to keep up with Apple, Research in Motion and others.

After Palm’s Pre phone flopped, the company’s stock took a nasty dive and some feared that it may not have enough cash to make it for the long-term. Hewlett-Packard finally stepped in and agreed to buy the company earlier this year, however.

Chris Bulkey, an analyst with Technology Research Group in Narberth, Pa., said Research in Motion could suffer the same fate. For now, the company’s sales and profits are still growing, but the pace is slowing.

And without a hot product on the horizon, Bulkey, who has a “sell” rating on the stock, said it’s hard to envision a bright future for Research in Motion.

“Research in Motion sells a commoditized product. There is margin pressure and the revenue growth is weak,” Bulkey said. “Over the long-term, they may need someone to bail them out like HP did with Palm if they see value in the technology.”

From DSC:
Along these lines…I recently received a call from a colleague who mentioned that Novell has recently been pushing their new videoconferencing product…hmmm…WAAAAAYYY too late to the game in my opinion. Here is a company who could have dominated the web-based videoconferencing and collaboration space — had they been able to innovate better and to think just a tad outside their normal LAN box.

If what we are offering in higher ed is a commodity…we had better look out! Times ahead will be very rough indeed. That’s why I have been preaching innovation, change, the dangers of the status quo, planning for the “Forthcoming Walmart of Education” and trying to create a strategy whereby we are not a commodity — as we all must bring something unique and compelling to the table.

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Follow the Money — from InsideHigherEd.com

On 07/12/2010, in higher education, by Daniel Christian

Follow the Money — from InsideHigherEd.com

In a sea of often bewildering data about college spending practices, a small island of clarity is emerging.

In conjunction with its third annual “Trends in College Spending” report, released today, the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability provides a publicly available database that allows journalists, policy makers and anyone curious about higher education an opportunity to decipher where college funding comes from and where it goes.

While the Delta Cost Project has for years provided broad overviews of spending practices at various types of institutions, the new database’s groundbreaking feature is that — fasten your seatbelts — it allows for an analysis of the budget priorities of individual institutions. Jane Wellman, the project’s executive director, hopes that the new data will stimulate conversations about spending priorities and cost containment — or the lack thereof — that generally aren’t happening now at the national, state or institutional level. Such conversations, she adds, are long overdue.

“I think we’ve got a lot of habits to break in higher education,” she says.

While there’s much to pore over in the Delta Project’s new report, it is necessarily limited because the federal data on spending the project draws on are now available only through 2008. Consequently, the recession that is now crippling many colleges and universities is barely captured in the current report — and some of the big spending it meticulously documents happened in what history will likely regard as the heady days of higher ed.

So what can Delta tell us now? Perhaps most importantly, the project can begin to respond in a meaningful way to common arguments that have played out among faculty, students, administrators and state and federal policy makers in the last several years. Here are a few debates we’ve been hearing a lot, and the responses and insights Delta offers:

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Unfortunately, the wastes continue — an analogy illustrating lost value/worth and a horrible cost to society

On 06/11/2010, in higher education, K-12 related, sociology, student-related, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
As I was working out today, I noticed that the United States is on Day 53 of the oil spill!!! The figure has now risen to 40,000 barrels of oil a day that is spewing into the the Gulf of Mexico. Not only is this an enormous waste, but the environmental and economic costs are also enormous!

Oil spill -- day 53!

And thoughts about loss and costs ran through my mind…

Then, later today, I saw this article and those thoughts returned to my mind:

Urban Schools Are Broken, Not the Kids, Founder of University Prep Schools Says — from Crain’s Detroit Business by Tom Henderson (from 6/3/10 with emphasis below from DSC)

“We can’t attain our goal of being a top 10 state if we continue to be a 34th state in student achievement,” said Nolan Finley, editorial page editor of The Detroit News, to begin a morning panel Thursday on innovative education reform at the Mackinac Policy Conference. “We can’t continue to allow one of five students to drop out, three of five students in urban areas.“

…

“If you keep your head when all around you are losing theirs, maybe you don’t understand the damn problem,” said Michael Flanagan, state superintendent of public instruction for the state of Michigan. “Many of us in the K-12 community are in denial. But the fact is, economic development is education, and education is economic development.”

And I reflected upon the figure of 30%, which stuck in my mind as the drop out rate that the US is up to for many cities (don’t quote me on this).

The point is…what a waste! When a student drops out, society is hurt. It’s costly to lose that person’s skills, thoughts, ideas, talents, gifts, abilities. And it can be costly to clean up after these losses, as the bulging prisons confirm. We are all in this boat together.

Every day, a much greater “spill” is occurring in our nation — with enormous costs for the societies of the world — yet we don’t seem to have the urgency that we should have.

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Struggling with the costs of teaching in higher education — Tony Bates

On 04/26/2010, in budgets, business side of he, elearning, higher education, online learning, by Daniel Christian

Struggling with the costs of teaching in higher education — Tony Bates

“So you can imagine my delight when Volume 38, Number 3 of ‘Planning for Higher Education‘, devoted almost entirely to Issues in Higher Education Finance’ arrived in the mail. There was indeed some very interesting findings in the papers in this volume, some of which certainly is of value in supporting what I am going to write in the chapter.”

From that posting, Tony lists the following references:

Bates, A. (1995) Chapter 8: Web-based learning: costs and organizational issues, in ‘Technology, e-Learning and Distance Education‘ London/New York: Routledge

Brinkman, P. and Morgan, A. (2010) Financial Planning: Strategies and Lessons Learned Planning for Higher Education, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 5-14

McPherson, P. and Shulenburger, D. (2010) Understanding the cost of public higher education Planning for Higher Education Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 15-24

Rumble, G. (2001) The Cost and Costing of Networked Learning Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 5, Issue 2

Seybert, J. and Rossol, P. (2010) What drives instructional costs in two year colleges Planning for Higher Education Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 38-44

Twigg, C. (1999) Improving learning and reducing costs: re-designing large enrollment classes Troy NY: The National Center for Academic Transformation

Wellman, J. (2010) Improving data to tackle the higher education ‘cost disease’ Planning for Higher Education Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 25-37

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