Question. What are the main obstacles standing in the way of an entirely a entirely affordable, accessible, high-quality, and open world of higher education? Are they technological, social, matters of government policy or the conduct and structure of institutions?

Answer. Tradition dies hard. Once you establish a hierarchy of what counts as the pinnacle of excellence (with Oxford and Cambridge in England, Harvard in the U.S., Tokyo University in Japan) it is hard for those who have proted within that system of hierarchy to admit that reputation is not always equal to excellence, that esteem does not necessarily lead to innovation. So institutional resistance, deeply nestled within the class system and reward systems, would top the list. There are also billions of dollars resting in the current system, so there is much resistance to major change.  

This content was previously unavailable to the public. SCUP members and those who attended SCUP–45 in 2010, can download the entire 49-page booklet of SCUP-45 executive summaries here. The document, below, cannot be downloaded, printed, or copied from—only viewed.

After SCUP–45 in 2010, SCUP commissioned executive summaries of 20 plenary and concurrent sessions, which became a 45-page PDF resource available to SCUP members and SCUP–45 attendees only. Starting this week, we will be bringing the contents of one executive summary out each week for everyone to see. This is the first of 20. Read it and see why you need to be at 2011's premier higher education planning event! Registration is open now.

So, what do you think. Will we look back in 40 years and see nothing but the memories or bones of academic libraries? Or, will there still be units performing related duties that we still label, or at least think of occasionally, as libraries?

This blog post links to three, related commentaries. What do you think from the unique perspective of a SCUPer? Reply in the comments below, or go to SCUP's LinkedIn group and engage with the discussion there. Be sure to share not only your thoughts, but links to related resources. Thanks!

Early in 2011, before most of academia was even out of winter holiday hibernation, Brian T. Sullivan of Alfred University wrote a letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education, which is written from the perspective of a 2040 autopsy on the body of the dead academic library. His autopsy concluded that the death of the library could have been avoided by more realistic planning now.

In summary, it is entirely possible that the life of the academic library could have been spared if the last generation of librarians had spent more time plotting a realistic path to the future and less time chasing outdated trends while mindlessly spouting mantras like "There will always be books and libraries" and "People will always need librarians to show them how to use information." We'll never know now what kind of treatments might have worked. Librarians planted the seeds of their own destruction and are responsible for their own downfall.

As you might expect, there was a lot of buzz in the comments.

Nearly three weeks later, The Chronicle published another opinion, by Patricia A. Tully of Wesleyan University, who writes (labeling Sullivan as a Cassandra) that the end of the library is a long ways off:

Mr. Sullivan ends his article by stating that librarians "planted the seeds of their own destruction and are responsible for their own downfall," and he implies that this was in part by participating in the digitization of print materials and the development of a variety of online, unmediated services. But librarians should not be resisting these efforts to increase and enhance access to content—a central value of our profession is to make content as discoverable and accessible as possible to as many people as possible.

And in leading these efforts, we are not making our professional obsolete. Librarians in 2050 will be doing the same thing we are doing now—making content accessible to our users. We will be doing this very differently, of course, just as we are doing things very differently now than we did in 1960. The library will look and operate differently, and perhaps provide a different kind of experience for students and faculty. But the library's end is a long way off.

 Then, last week, James C. Pakala of Covenant Theological Seminary (St. Louis), asserts that Sullivan's autopsy report "Overlooks Libraries' Other Roles," saying that libraries do more than serve undergraduates, and also that faculty and staff require a great deal of information searching and analyzing assistance.

And as to IT taking over libraries, the opposite tends to predominate, owing to such factors as librarians' faculty ties, organizational ability, relational skills, etc. Ironically, the last Educause Review issue of 2010 even warns that campus IT operations could fade as technology becomes ubiquitous and consortia or other competitors beckon.

So, what do you think. Will we look back in 40 years and see nothing but the memories or bones of academic libraries? Or, will there still be units performing related duties that we still label, or at least think of occasionally, as libraries?

This blog post linked to three, related commentaries. What do you think from the unique perspective of a SCUPer? Reply in the comments below, or go to SCUP's LinkedIn group and engage with the discussion there. Be sure to share not only your thoughts, but links to related resources. Thanks!

Fast Company has published a new article and resource from Anya Kamanetz (author of DIY-U). Reacting to a grant of $100M from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to the city of Newark, NJ, she thinks the money is being spent the wrong way. "Is it possible to craft an education platform that's as participatory, offers as much opportunity for self-expression, and is as magnetic to young people as Facebook itself? That would be a theory of change worth testing."

Attached to Kamenetz' essay are 13 "Radical Ideas" from a variety of education leaders. They are short, but some are provocative. SCUPers will especially like Radical Idea #13: Build a Better Classroom. The focus of all is on K–12, but here is a Blog U post with suggestions for higher education. 

The Economist gave us a holiday treat this year, a fairly deep dig into the value of a Ph.D., titled The Disposable Academic. (That'll give you some idea of the thrust of it.)

One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It isn’t graduate school itself that is discouraging,” says one student, who confesses to rather enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What’s discouraging is realising the end point has been yanked out of reach.”

Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.

Serena Golden took an introductory economics class from StraighterLine in order to compare that really inexpensive, no-instructor, all on line class to more traditional offerings at more established institutions. She has written a three-part paper on the experience, with lots of interviews with experts and descriptions of her class experience. Her report might not shake you up, but will will make you think about academic planning and academic programs (and budgets).

One interviewee whose name you will know is Carol Twigg of the National Center for Academic Transrormation (NCAT). Golden finishes her third and final report with a summation from Twigg about StraighterLine's product:

“Within the universe of institutions,” Twigg said, “there are high-quality courses and mediocre courses and really lousy courses…. [StraighterLine] is well within the sort of mediocre and above, because of the oversight that’s gone into it.”

“I think it’s certainly a viable option within the panoply of higher education offerings,” she concluded. “How’s that for a lukewarm endorsement?” She paused, laughing.

“It’s as good as the other stuff.”

The "other stuff," of course, is what our institutions do now for lots more money.

Sheila Croucher studies nations and nationalism. She sees strong parallels between "academic disciplines and departments in universities, on the one hand, and modern nation-states in the international system, on the other," and writes in this essay about how consideration of those parallels might be helpful in making institutional change happen. This thought-provoking piece from The Chronicle of Higher Education is a must-read. Unfortunately, you may find that you need either a subscription or to purchase a day pass to get at the entirety of it.

No blood has been or, one hopes, will be shed over questions of university restructuring. Still, some of the discourse about disciplinary identity and departmental belonging—how they might be threatened by possible institutional change, and why both must be preserved at all costs—can sound primordial. We know, even more clearly than we do with nations, that academic disciplines and departments are inventions. They have been constructed in specific historical contexts and shaped by specific sociopolitical, economic, and institutional circumstances.

But we also know, as with nation-states, that many people care deeply about their disciplinary identities and departmental belonging, and that many of the leaders of what we might call "academic nation-states" will endeavor to protect and promote their constituencies—often appropriately so. At my institution, the College of Arts and Science is engaging in a process of restructuring, and in the early weeks of our discussions, fear seemed rampant. Smaller departments hunkered down, anticipating annexation by larger ones with allegedly imperial ambitions, and some chairs heroically proclaimed their commitment to defend the borders of the department of X. Even departments with histories of dysfunction were loath to explore the possibility of reorganization. Some chairs and faculty members assumed that departmental reorganization would lead to the dissolution of disciplines. Others offered ideas for innovative curricular or pedagogical change, but those ideas typically resided within the departmental boundaries.

[Sir Ken Robinson] "denies that Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder is either a complete myth or overdiagnosed. Rather, the problem is that we’re expecting them to sit around and keep quiet in an educational system no longer relevant to the modern world." And that's only part of this 11-minute part of his lecture, which is animated in a unique and thought-provoking way. We can't imagine a SCUP member who would not really, really enjoy watching this; and be disappointed when it ends too soon!

NACUBO's Matt Hamill completes a year's worth of Business Officer articles in the series, Catalyst for Change: The Economic Downturn Reshapes Higher Education. Read this latest article here; see links to all the articles in the series here.

To be sure, the recession has forced most colleges and universities to broadly reexamine themselves in an effort to reduce costs and adjust to rapidly changing enrollment patterns. Earlier articles in this series have examined institutional actions resulting from these internal initiatives. As Martin Van Der Werf, former director, Chronicle Research Services, Washington, D.C., observed in the March 2010 Business Officer article, “Regular, Express, or Online,” the changes are too broad and too fundamental to attribute to current economic conditions. “There is a rethinking of the way education is being delivered,” he says, “but I don't know if the financial crisis could be isolated as a single factor producing these changes. The financial crisis is encouraging students and families to question what they were already questioning, such as the delivery model, the cost of college, and the difficulty in obtaining a degree. The recession is merely accentuating what people were already thinking.”

Modified practices. The last several years have seen a wide variety of changes to institutional practices in the areas of resource allocation, budgeting, and budget management, but we have also witnessed more significant changes in educational delivery models. This array of initiatives shares one central goal: to drive down students' cost of getting a degree by taking significant costs out of the model. Examples of creative delivery models include online learning incorporated into the curriculum, adoption of three-year bachelor's degree programs, and programs created to blend an associate degree within a four-year program.

Other initiatives have expanded the use of consortia mechanisms to streamline certain campus functions, such as library services, information technology, and cooperative purchasing. Generally, these programs can be successful because of their cost-saving potential, without fundamentally changing what is unique about each participating institution. Another strategy employed by many institutions has been to adjust the price that students pay by revising their overall pricing and financial aid strategies, and their associated budgets. 

"It's like looking inside a box of miracles and being exposed to the guts of change ... If you have a vision and want to know what it takes to turn it into reality, read this book." That's what this Fast Company magazine reviewer says about David Gershon's book, Social Change 2.0: A Blueprint for Reinventing our World. Gershon, with moderator Andy Revkin, is a presenter in SCUP's October 20th Campus Sustainability Day 8 webcast on October 20. Purchase the book here and SCUP gets a tiny percentage at no cost to you!

David started big with the First Earth Run, an 86-day worldwide event and celebration in 1986. Runners carried a torch, encircling the globe. Beginning at the United Nations the flame passed through 62 countries. It was seen first-hand by millions and millions more on TV as it ignited a dream of global unity … .

The stories are compelling. The difficulties he faces, from silly bureaucratic hurdles to real-life emergencies, often appear to threaten and unravel each initiative. But, then David shows us how these very challenges are turned to advantage, becoming the basis for personally motivated change. It's like looking inside a box of miracles and being exposed to the guts of change, which are chaotic, happenstance, and often crushing. Yet, it is these difficult circumstances that Social Change 2.0 builds upon to generate massive, impressive results. If you have a vision and want to know what it takes to turn it into reality, read this book.