The second article, called The Learning Society, is unique in its source (a corporation), its breadth of external review and contributors, and its call for a new learning system concurrent with existing systems but based on a new set of principles and organized differently. The recommendations, however, don’t live up to the promise of the new principles.

The third document is cast as a challenge: “how can technology increase access, improve quality and lower cost?” It was published by Contact North, which was founded in 1986 by the Ontario government to serve the education and training needs of people in rural and remote areas of that Canadian province. It’s unclear exactly how the document was prepared and by whom. Some parts make provocative reading.

After considering each of the documents separately and in conversation with the others, I’m left a bit unsatisfied. Maybe that’s not unexpected. Imagining the unknown devolves with the degree of specificity.

My own take is pretty squishy at this point. Yes to a new learning society of some sort. Yes to the inclusion of everyone. Yes to its inception in entrepreneurial innovation rather than strategic planning. Yes to the criticality of innovation under the severest of constraints. And yes to concurrency with, but alternatives to, existing educational and financial systems. Beyond that the fog deepens and visibility disappears.

From the Campus to the Future
Diana G. Oblinger. EDUCAUSE Review. January/February 2010.

Higher education faces numerous challenges posed by the drivers of change, including worldwide demand for education, financial constraints, and a constantly changing knowledge base. Those of us involved with information technology in higher education thus need to ask ourselves several critical questions:

• …
• If we were to transform the student experience, what would it look like? What would we do differently? How would those changes affect the individual? The workplace? Society?
• …
• If the college/university metaphor today is a network rather than a campus, what does that mean for our work in information technology?

The Learning Society
Richard Halkett. Cisco Systems (GETideas.org). 2010.

The principles that characterize the Learning Society are informed by the demands of the 21st century, by emergent innovations at the very leading edge, and by what we now know about how learning happens. The result is the following set of principles designed to meet society’s new demands for learning and to realize the learning potential of every part of society and every part of the globe.

The Learning Society:

• Engenders a culture of learning throughout life.
• Aims to develop motivated, engaged learners who are prepared to conquer the unforeseen challenges of tomorrow as well as those of today.
• Takes learning to the learner, seeing learning as an activity, not a place.
• Believes that learning is for all, that no one should be excluded.
• Recognizes that people learn differently, and strives to meet those needs.
• Cultivates and embraces new learning providers, from the public, private, and NGO sectors.
• Develops new relationships and new networks between learners, providers (new and old), funders, and innovators.
• Provides the universal infrastructure they need to succeed—still physical but increasingly virtual.
• Supports systems of continuous innovation and feedback to develop knowledge of what works in which circumstances.

Fast Forward: How Emerging Technologies are Transforming Education and Training [.pdf]
Contact North. Challenge Paper, January 2010.

This is a foresight paper, not a policy or planning paper. It seeks to imagine what could happen for learning systems with technologies currently in various states of development. It does not address how change could be made or what these changes may be.

To provide a flavor, here’s one implication that appears in a section called Knowledge Engines, Networks, and Hubs:

Students will leverage technology, peer networks, robots and artificial intelligence in support of their learning challenges before institutions adopt them — acting as consumers, they will drive some changes in the system. They will access knowledge from global knowledge engines available through the semantic web. They will seek credit recognition for their work. They will demand acknowledgement of learning from a variety of sources. The opportunity thus exists to shift to a new paradigm for the management of learning outcomes — a paradigm likely to be resisted to those committed to the old paradigm, which has a strong and successful six hundred year history.

I was again reminded of this while reading Scott Jashik’s Inside Higher Ed article called U.S. Push for Free Online Courses. The article is based on “discussion drafts” of an Obama administration program proposal that would broaden access to community colleges and, in particular, to basic job-related training.

I’m not certain within which audience the discussion was meant to occur, but it is certainly wide-open now. Perhaps that was intended. I don’t know. It’s also pretty difficult to comment intelligently based only on the fragments of information that an article can contain.

So I’ll reserve comment except to say that the notion of a National Skills College might be an interesting idea depending on how it’s intended. Reading between the lines of Jashik’s article, I’d guess that the new Skills College will be another unimaginative effort to assess learning.

But suppose that we cared more about what learners can actually do rather than what they can momentarily remember during an examination? And suppose that there existed a new entity like a Skills College where learners might present what they can actually do (as portfolios?) … and where this might then be translated into various equivalencies (course, credit, degree, job skill, etc) that are the currency by which higher education is mostly valued?

There is a vast rich learning web out there. Much of it is already free.

Both articles appeared in the April 3rd (2009) issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Start by reading Kevin Carey’s piece called What Colleges Should Learn from Newspapers’ Decline. Carey is the policy director of a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization in Washington, DC whose mission is “to promote changes in policy and practice that lead to improved student opportunities and outcomes.” Here’s a taste of his argument.

As of today, there’s no Craigslist busily destroying the financial foundations of the modern university. Teaching is a lot more complicated than advertising, and universities have the advantage of sitting behind government-backed barriers to competition, in the form of accreditation. … [But] it would be a grave mistake to assume that the regulatory walls of accreditation will protect traditional universities forever. … Perhaps the higher-education fuse is 25 years long, perhaps 40. But it ends someday, in our lifetimes.

Then read Obama’s Plans for Higher Education: a Good Beginning, but More is Needed. This article was written by Sandy Baum and Michael S. McPherson, both thoughtful and longtime advocates for reform of higher education pricing and, in particular, student financial assistance.

Sadly the Baum and McPherson article sits behind the Chronicle’s subscription firewall. But here are the principles that the authors believe should define a student aid system that “works well for students and families.”

The system, we argue, should be simple, clear, and predictable. Money should be appropriately directed toward increasing opportunities for students with limited resources. The focus should be on students – not institutions, lenders, or governments. Student aid programs should encourage students not only to enroll in college but also to graduate. Taxpayer money should be used efficiently.

There is an abundance of common decency and common sense in these principles. But the undercurrent in the Baum and McPherson article indicates that decency and sense are anything but common in the U.S. higher education industry.

Ossified. That’s the one  word that best describes for me the condition of higher education when viewed from a macro level. Deceptively solid, primed for fracture under the appropriate stress.

The stressor will almost certainly be revenue erosion. Not because of the current economic recession. But rather because the business of teaching and learning, which most colleges and universities perceive as their core function, will no longer be confined by ivy walls and institutional gates.

There is no mystery in this. It’s happening all around us and in broad daylight for everyone to see. Digital networks, not institutions, increasingly provide access to learning. And both the digital content and the access are largely free to learners.

YouTube EDU is only the most recent major initiative with obvious heritage through courses, faculty, and curricula to traditional colleges and universities. Others include iTunes University and the OpenCourseWare Consortium. Educational entrepreneurs abound. Examples most similar to traditional higher education include P2P University, University of the People, and Academic Earth. Beyond these there is a large, exciting, chaotic jumble of innovation that may portend bigger changes for colleges and universities.

Ossified. That’s the macro view. But at ground level, things are different. Colleges and universities come in every flavor and hue imaginable. That diversity is reflected in their business models. See, for example, the research (pdf) I conducted last year on more than 1,100 private institutions of higher education in the United States. Some business models simply provide more buffering to revenue erosion than others.

I agree with Carey about the sea swell of change facing higher education. But I also agree in part with Baum and McPherson when they focus on pricing. They did not frame the pricing issue in terms of macro-level change, but nonetheless pricing at the institutional level does provide colleges and universities a mechanism to confront an uncertain future in a controlled manner. However, pricing requires answers to tough questions about what, why, and how a college or university does what it does. If not teaching and learning, then what?

The economic stimulus bill now being considered in Congress must look like manna from heaven to colleges and universities. According to an article by Sam Dillon  in today’s New York Times, the stimulus bill would “shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget.”

However, the stimulus package might easily be the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Here’s a question for you. Does your strategic plan include the unthinkable, that university life as you know it may be coming to an end? Take a look around and listen to the distant rumblings that may portend trouble for higher education on the same scale as has already affected industries like music and newsprint.

Ask yourself, can my institution survive change of that magnitude? And then ask yourself, would the economic stimulus plan just further entrench my institution on an established path where change will be even more difficult? Would you be accepting a handout that just further cements your feet in place?

I could easily be wrong, of course. It may be that higher education leads a charmed existence so deeply buffered that it will be impervious to the rumblings of change. In which case, the stimulus money will be welcome.

But just for a moment, consider the possibility that you will be asked to steer your institution into troubled times that dwarf the current economic recession.

Let’s look at just one of the rumblings. In yesterday’s The Wired Campus of the Chronicle of Higher Education, there’s an article by Jeffrey Young that describes two new online universities that use extremely low-cost business models. Young ends his article with these words:

It seems that either University of the People, or P2PU, or some yet-to-be-created institution, will find a way to offer a radically cheaper college degree using online tools. The new models will probably take some time to mature until the right mix of teaching and self-study is perfected.

In the comments to Young’s article, there’s a revealing look into what some of your faculty (particularly your adjuncts) may be feeling. Joe Erwin asks:

Why are we who are highly qualified to provide educational services not being the entrepreneurs in all this? We could “cut out the middle man” (expensive physical campuses and expensive administrators) and enable motivated students to pay us more directly for our services. How essential are all the “overhead” aspects?

If you weren’t already concerned about the viability of today’s form of higher education, it’s time to be afraid. Perhaps very afraid.

In the course of being afraid, you’ll want to ask yourself if manna from heaven is worth the price.

I say this as a friend of higher education, a third-generation academic who has loved university life but now thinks it needs to change.

Here’s the link to a pdf (1.6M) of the slides and the notes, which are a pretty close transcription of what the audio actually says.

I had great fun with this project.

The sketch is organized as a series of frequently asked questions.  To make the language cleaner, I write as if learning communities already existed. This conveys a sense of the tangible that is inaccurate, but it also makes for easier description and understanding.

My intent is to explore education futures under the limitation of rearranging what presently exists and pushing a few possibility frontiers.

Feedback would be much appreciated. If there’s anything of value in this sketch, the next step might be to extend some parts into a more traditional business plan format (e.g., value propositions, cost structure, etc.).

One of the candidates still on my list is SocialLearn, even though it is being developed within an institution (Open University) and is neither open source or freely available. It does, however, contain many of the features that might make a good “kernel.” For example, it uses a modular design built around open APIs, which permits considerable flexibility and easy personalization for learners.

Recently Martin Weller of OU gave a demo of SocialLearn set within the broader context of changes in higher education. The presentation was arranged and moderated by George Siemens using Elluminate. This is great stuff. Definitely worthwhile.

Graham Attwell has an interesting comment on the business models evident in SocialLearn.

George Siemens’ comments and questions to Martin are excellent and provide a poignant reminder that change comes with a dear cost for those institutions least capable or prepared to adapt. My own sense is that the most emergent changes are not likely to start in institutions (e.g., Open University). Rather they will start among the most difficult to reach populations where a quality education is better than no education, where financial resources are severely constrained, and where teaching talent may be scattered and not in sufficient supply. See, for example, the work of Derek Keats and the African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources (AVOIR).

If I’m right in this guess about incubation, then the diffusion into existing higher education may be more evolutionary than revolutionary. I sincerely hope this is the case.

These truly are exciting times.

My basic argument is that new tools encourage this overlap between areas we used to keep distinct, for instance home and work,personal and professional, individual and institution. A lot of people see this as a ‘bad thing’, but I think it has enormous potential also.

Martin and others at the Open University are right out there working the edges of the educational future, and his screencast nicely illustrates some of the issues with which they’re grappling. Highly recommended.

Below is the comment that I left on Martin’s post:

You folks at OU are certainly into some impressive things. And the direction represented by the sweet spot seems right on target. My only concern is whether it can be accomplished within an existing institution. Maybe it can be done at OU. It’s well worth trying. Do you have a sense of how hitting the sweet spot would work for other institutions? Is it a model with enough general persuasiveness and appeal that it could form the basis of institutional change in higher education? Or does hitting the sweet spot require a entrepreneurial foundation outside of existing educational institutions?

Here is one section from the report. It provides a glimpse of a possible future for university learning. It’s still very sketchy, but you can see where I’m headed. The fuller version is located in the PDF, including quotes and references that provide more illustration.

3.    In a networked economy, social innovations in several areas provide the potential for educational change. I am thinking here mostly of university education, but suspect that some of it applies to other educational levels as well.

a.    Price: As educational content becomes digital, the marginal cost of that content approaches zero. Giving learners free access to content becomes an option. This does not mean that education becomes free. It merely exerts downward pressure on the price.

b.    Value: If educational content is given away freely, then what gets packaged with the content is what creates value and can be priced. This might include such things as easily finding content and judging its appropriateness, or personalized assistance in the learning process.

c.    Price redux: Value ancillary to content invites individual pricing based on actual usage. Learners differ, the services they need differ, and a la carte prices reflect that.

d.    Who pays and how: In educational markets, we normally think of institutions and learners and their families being involved in the exchange, with subsidies from government and from businesses. In a networked economy, it is possible to substantially alter this composition (e.g., using advertising revenue). Social innovations in this area can have dramatic impact on education. We don’t have it right yet. A broader more diffuse ecology of revenue streams might work.

e.    Access: If learners and their families bear lower educational costs, then access opens up. Self-selection replaces admissions to an unknown extent.

f.    Community: Access to a community of scholars and other learners is a critical part of an educational experience. Content alone does not provide this experience, no matter how freely it is provided. Communities are now largely institution specific, with exceptions for study abroad, service learning, and other special programs. Networked learning provides much broader opportunity for participation in diverse communities of practice or some variation of these. I’ll simply call them communities of learning.

g.    Credentials: Certificates and degrees provide what Brown and Duguid call a “tradable token in the job market.” As such, they serve students, educational institutions, and employers well.  As Benkler mentions, a number of existing web sites (e.g., Amazon and Slashdot) incorporate peer-review and multiple levels of moderation to ensure what he calls the “relevance/accreditation” of content. Adaptation of these for communities of learning seems entirely possible. Credentials and degrees, or more likely their improved equivalents, seem plausible.

h.    Locus: Members of a community of learning need not be geographically local, yet the communities themselves can still emerge from local needs, cultural beliefs, languages or other considerations sufficiently important to supply cohesion. Scale, geography, and political boundaries partially diffuse.

i.    Pedagogy: The stereotype of teaching and learning as knowledge transmission was probably never entirely true. But networked communities of learning provide an alternative paradigm in which learners at all levels can develop or co-create knowledge. The distinctions between teaching and learning soften.

j.    Membership: Members self-select themselves into networked communities of learning. Our notions about expertise will blur and then modify. Underemployed but talented people (e.g., adjunct faculty) seem likely to find communities of learning attractive.

k.    Markets and firms: Many educational problems seem intractable given available resources and competing priorities. Current public, private, non-market, and market delivery options often seem simply overwhelmed and reform efforts provide only a patchwork of relief. Social entrepreneurs are active in education and their efforts may provide blended market models. New institutions like the Community Interest Companies in the UK also provide interesting options. Or it may be possible to tap into the apparently large reservoir of social production that Benkler describes. Or some combination, or something else entirely. The core feature is improving the global commonweal. There is huge potential here, but much creative experimentation remains.

The article makes interesting reading, as do the comments.

What follows is the comment that I left:

Vance Fried provides a welcome addition to discussions about changes needed in higher education. The specifics are not so important as the mere fact that an entrepreneurial effort was made to imagine a different future for undergraduate education.

Like several of the people making comments, I disagree with the details. But I think it’s a wonderfully refreshing approach. There should be more efforts like this and some kind of opportunity (a wiki maybe?) for people to comment, build on the ideas of each other, and try to carve out a future for higher education that is better than what we have presently.

The technology exists to create colleges and universities unlike any we’ve ever seen. What’s missing are the social innovations needed to tie the possibilities together. One very large innovation concerns the price and cost issue that Vance Fried addresses.

I applaud Vance Fried for creating a new business model and making it public for discussion.