Higher Ed GPS: How Will We Get Where We Are Going?

The recent acquisition of Kaplan by Purdue University is more than a one-off transaction orchestrated by a former businessman-politician turned university president. It is also more than a sign of the times, as has been suggested. It is a look at the future of higher education. The synergies of this merger will create templates for a new, sustainable business model for American higher education. It will combine the efficiency of a for-profit model with the comprehensive academic paradigm of traditional not-for-profit models. This not thinking out of the box. It is ACTING out of the box. 

So the question becomes what a new business model for higher education might look like.   The beginning of the answer here is simple--look to successful models elsewhere. Don’t reinvent the wheel.   If higher education is to adapt successfully, it must look to other models that work.   There are many models to choose from—not one size fits all.   The models vary by degree of technological enhancement and scope of services, such as Amazon, Zappos, and Wal-Mart. So rather than reinvent the wheel, institutions must figure out what size wheel fits their individual vehicles. The new organization will need a form that accommodates at least a basic set of parameters.   First is return on investment, both financially for investors, and in terms of jobs for students, employers and communities.   Second, institutions will need to balance the status quo with innovations.   Third, there will need to be a reinvestment strategy to ensure organizational sustaina...

A recent article in eCampus News rehashes the issue of engagement in online courses. Like most pieces, this one misses the fact that online learning is not a simple translation of the physical classroom to a virtual environment.   The gaming industry—and the gaming generation—has been telling us this since at least 2004 in the book Got Game.   Engagement online is much more than peer review of student work, imbedded videos with chat exercises, or “live campus experiences” like interviews.   Virtual engagement is a sophisticated approach to keeping anyone—students included—connected to content, whether that content is a game or a learning object.   In short, sitting in a classroom is not the same as sitting in a chat room, any more than meeting with friends at a coffee shop is the same as logging into an online chat room.   The difference has been clearly laid out for a decade. It is time for higher education—and those who report on it—to ca...

A fourth linchpin for future models is technology.   A major piece of the new faculty role—and of the institution itself—must be technology.   Specifically, higher education must adopt and adapt to elements of technology that are common in the rest of society.   Tim Cook, CEO of Apple said it well in a recent interview concerning education.   He said we live in a digital world.   Yet students find that the classroom is analog.   This is true not just the classroom.   Too often our thinking in higher is education is analog. We must acknowledge that technology is more than adding live links and videos to the syllabus.   It is more than virtual libraries and course materials.   There is much more.   For example, we must expand our use of predictive analytics .   Here we need to stop discussing and begin acting by adopting existing best practices.   We already know what individuals like to eat, their shoe size, and even pref...