Paul Kim, of Stanford University, takes a Darwin-influenced look at higher education, nothing among other things, the evolution of the new species called for-profit institutions. As others have noted, recently, by statements like, "I don't see the innovative changes happening that we need." (Dennis Jones of NCHEMS), Kim concludes with:

Today’s higher education ecosystem teems with vibrant organizations, yet the signs of evolution seem less evident, and its clock speed seems to be extremely slow. Either no competition exists among species with dominant power (a shared intellectual monopoly, perhaps?), or environmental pressures have not reached a level sufficient to force evolution. Or — the worst possibility — people might be fine with the way teaching and learning take place today and have little interest in concepts such as open interfaces.

His article is led by four key take-aways:

• To survive and thrive, living organisms, industries, and institutions — including higher education — must evolve or adapt to changing environments.

• The slow evolutionary clock speed and failure to adopt contextualized open interfaces in the higher education ecosystem may threaten its continued survival in the face of new environmental pressures.

• More effective and efficient knowledge creation and distribution can increase the evolutionary clock speed and fuel successful evolutionary changes.

• The higher education ecosystem has produced some projects demonstrating an evolutionary shift in approach that could fuel further successful evolution.

Click on the title, Is Higher Education Evolving?, to access the resource described above.