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The Road Ahead: Evolutionary or Revolutionary?

Posted August 13, 2012

The Road Ahead – Evolutionary or Revolutionary

NOTE: This is the second installment in a series of essays reflecting on the future of liberal arts colleges. Some speculate all liberal arts institutions are destined for failure. I disagree. We will explore the current dynamics and set the context for the future of Central College.

The pace of development for internet technology has been nothing short of breathtaking. In 1993, I remember sitting at a computer terminal using one of the earliest email programs called Jove, and exploring a crude version of a web browser known as Mosaic. For those who remember as I do, these programs were as primitive to web-based technologies as Pong was to video games. These systems predated Windows and the use of a mouse was a whole new concept. So, on a plain screen with a flashing cursor, I browsed the entire store of information in Mosaic in a text-only format. At that time, the web probably had less content than the email now sitting in my inbox. I have a lot of nostalgia for those days.

Speculation about the future of our society raced with imagination, even with such rudimentary tools at our disposal. Some forecasts seemed incredible – far too futuristic – almost science fiction. Twenty years later, I think we can say we seriously underestimated the pace and power of advances in internet technology.

Just prior to the unleashing of this wave of technological change, a book about education appeared on the scene in 1992 and became a best seller. The author was Lewis J. Perelman, who has pursued a career as a policy analyst, researcher, management consultant and author. The provocative title for his analysis on the future of education was, School’s Out: Hyperlearning, the New Technology, and the End of Education. A year later the book was released by a new publisher with the kinder, gentler title, School’s Out: A Radical New Formula for the Revitalization of America’s Educational School System.

The book served an important purpose. Its aggressive tone was merciless, but not in the way you would have expected. Critics of American education have abounded for more than a century. Perelman’s point, however, was not that that our schools and colleges were failing. In fact, he was quick to note the educational system in the U.S. at that time was, in his view, the best in the world given the purpose of a “pluralistic and egalitarian society.” His assertion was different. Traditional models of education were no longer relevant and would soon be rejected by society. Why? Technology was about to supplant education at every level. It would be a revolution, not an evolution, driven by dramatic shifts in market forces responding to sweeping advances in learning technology. While his analysis of emerging societal change was ahead of its time, his conclusions and predictions regarding the impacts of change on education have so far proven to be wrong, or perhaps just premature.

The following excerpts come from a section of Perelman’s book with the heading The End of “Education.” (Please note “telecosm” was an early term used to describe what we now know as the internet).

The imminent hyperlearning world, where learning and expertise are diffused everyplace and where people of any age and status may be engaged in learning anytime, makes the infrastructure of “schooling” irrelevant and even obstructive…

In the seventies it was trendy to define schools, colleges, or universities “without walls” to suggest a variant academic institution that was open to the real world. Like “distance learning” or “distance education” – which imply that the telecosm is a mere adjunct to academia rather than a time bomb destined to blow it up – other mongrel platitudes will burden us for a while with a vocabulary contrived to portray revolution as mere evolution: electronic classroom, embedded training, campus-free college, and a term I find particularly idiotic, “technology-based” teaching (as if talk and chalk, books and pencils and such are not technology). Bolder editorialists may begin to speak of classrooms without teachers, schools without classrooms, or ultimately even education without schools. But eventually it will become clear that the system break I identify with hyperlearning represents not merely a new form of “education” freed of this or that encumbrance, but a world freed from the encumbrance of education all together.

Perelman went on to suggest hyperlearning would “simply replace tweaked variations on the vocabulary of ‘education’” by the early years of the 21st century.

So here we are in the early years of the 21st century and School’s Out has faded from memory. Yet the spirit of the idea lives on in a newer concept called, disruptive innovation. The origins of the idea are credited to Harvard business professor, Clayton Christiansen, and refer to an innovation that creates a new market that eventually replaces an existing market. The parallel is obvious. Perelman’s idea that the combination of technological innovation and new market forces would eventually supplant our existing educational systems is echoed in the patterns described in disruptive innovation. The old adage, “everything old is new again,” appears to be true for theorists, as well as markets.

Given the vast changes in society related to technological innovation, why hasn’t fundamental, systemic change occurred in our models of education? To be sure, schools, colleges and universities have adapted significantly to changing technology environments, along with an openness to emerging academic disciplines and professional fields of study. Yet these adaptations have been evolutionary, not revolutionary. They have been sustaining, not disruptive. Why?

For some the answer is one of timing – “Just you wait. Your day will come.” OK. Maybe. Others explain this as the intransigence of the system – “The bureaucracy is simply killing innovation!” Perhaps. But I think there is something much deeper behind this resistance to change, and it’s not the bureaucracy – it’s the market. The difference for the market is a distinction between models of learning that are primarily relational vs. transactional; models of learning that are formative vs. summative; and models of learning that pursue knowledge vs. certify credentials.

Prospective undergraduate students seeking an education at a residential liberal arts college are not buying a credential by simply checking boxes to record the accumulation of credits and courses in order to qualify them for first jobs on their way to careers. They are buying a thoughtfully integrated learning experience carefully designed (in fact, customized) for personal and professional development. It’s an experience rooted in relationship set in the context of academic community. This is considered by some to be nothing more than prolonged adolescence. Others describe this as a luxury society can no longer afford. Yet this is the fundamental question we will ask ourselves related to education in the next decade. Will society reject an undergraduate residential learning environment dedicated to the development of the whole person?

Next time: How will MOOCs, online courses, competency-based education and for-profit institutions change the landscape of higher education in general and liberal arts education in particular?

About the Author

I'm the lucky individual who carries the title, 21st president of Central College in Pella, Iowa. Passionate about higher education and the issues facing it and the world today, I hope to invoke an engaging conversation with all who are ready to dig in, make a difference and build for the future. Share your thoughts. I'm listening and interested.

 

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