The Five Revolutions in Higher Education | From the Bell Tower
Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PAJun 30, 2010
If we don't heed the change on the horizon, we could be inviting our own obsolescence
The title for this column is similar to one I used before, quite some time ago. It inspired and described a presentation I gave at the 1995 ACRL National Conference held in Pittsburgh. In those days the conference was a smaller affair, but having a contributed paper accepted was no less rewarding than it is today.
I got the idea for the paper from George Keller, who at the time was the director of the Higher Education Leadership program at the University of Pennsylvania. I was taking courses toward an advanced degree, and had the good fortune to become one of Keller's students before he retired from the classroom. I was inspired by a lecture he gave about important trends impacting on higher education, and his vision of how they would transform colleges and universities. This material, I thought, was something academic librarians needed to hear.
So I co-opted the idea of the five revolutions, put a library spin on it, and delivered my first paper at an ACRL conference. Guess this column proves that my operating procedure has changed little over the years.
The Five Revolutions
Although they may sound fairly obvious now, at the time, Keller's Five Revolutions represented fairly new thinking in higher education—and with his many years of consulting work with colleges and universities he was able to concisely and convincingly express how each was likely to transform the academy. Take the Demographic Revolution. Keller pointed out that the new immigration wave of Hispanics, coupled with a demand for American higher education from students in other countries, would dramatically shift the makeup of the student body.
The Socio-Cultural Revolution explored how the deterioration of social capital and the growing divide between haves and have-nots would impact on the preparedness of students for higher education.
The Economic Revolution—to show you how things stay the same the more they change—focused on the declining economic power of America and its impact on governmental support for higher education.
Keller believed the Technological Revolution could profoundly change instruction and extend it beyond the campus. He did acknowledge that technology was a double-edged sword for higher education, and introduced entirely new dilemmas for decision makers.
The fifth and final revolution was Higher Education itself. Even back then Keller recognized that accountability and competition would emerge as critical issues, and that higher education would never return to its days of lethargic change.
Five new revolutions?
In a recent op-ed piece for the Washington Post, Philip Auerswald, an associate professor at George Mason University, identified five new trends he believes will transform the academy-or at least contribute to the bursting of the higher education bubble.
His first trend is about students, and how they no longer feel obligated to attend class. All they want, says Auerswald, is the credential. Next up is the cost of tuition and the dangers of extreme student debt. And adding to the debt problem is the recession problem, his third trend, since banks are making it harder and costlier for students to take out loans. Those first three together add up to his fourth trend: that students will care less about institutional credentials and more about gaining competencies, and that they'll be fine with bargain basement competitors. Auerswald's fifth trend is the growing dominance of global corporate education. Put simply, who needs a high-priced, highfalutin college when they've got Wal-Mart U?
Not unlike Mr. Keller's, Auerswald's message is that some higher education institutions will survive no matter what happens, but that for the vast majority failing to heed these trends could lead to obsolescence.
Similar but different
Auerswald's essay made me think of that old conference presentation, along with what Mr. Keller had to say about paying attention to change in environments external to our own institutions and the higher education industry. That mindset greatly influenced my own developing interest in "keeping up" and how important it was to take off the library blinders and stay alert to developments in peripheral fields and larger societal trends.
The major difference between the five offerings from Keller and Auerswald is that Keller's, for me, represent a more overarching and timeless set of revolutions that continuously force transformation on the higher education industry—at least for those institutions that acknowledge them in order to stay competitive. Auerswald's are a more timely set of forces that are challenging traditional institutions to adapt to an environment in which they must find better ways to retain and graduate students before putting them into bankruptcy.
The bottom line for both: if higher education institutions fail to respond to or stay ahead of these transformations they will find themselves in the same boat with the newspaper, real estate, domestic auto, and all other industries that have experienced the bursting of their bubble.
Steven Bell is Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. For more from Steven visit his blogs, Kept-Up Academic Librarian, ACRLog and Designing Better Libraries or visit his web site.
