"What's Going On?"

So, What’s Going On?

If you know me at all, then you know that I believe that almost every important truth can be illustrated by quoting some snippet of dialogue from one of my favorite movies…. and I have many favorites.  And, while the phrase “What’s going on?” is most certainly included within the dialogue of 100’s of movies, the one that sticks in my mind is from “The Lost Boys,” a 1987 campy, sort-of-funny-sort-of-scary horror film about young boys and vampires (and some think was an allegory about young boys and the drug culture) that has become one of my favorite cult classics.  Michael (the lead boy) asks the vampires (who he does not yet know are vampires) “What’s going on?” and from there he, and we, go on to learn the answer.

“What’s going on?” is an apt question for us in higher education.  In fact, as was true for Michael in “The Lost Boys,” it may be the most critical question for us if we are to thrive in the world to come.  There’s a lot going on “out there” in the world that has a direct bearing of the future of what goes on “in here” at our colleges, and I want to make sure we’re ready.  And, while the “goings on” have been going on for quite some time now, in just the past few weeks I have had a number of friends send me snippets of that dialogue to make sure I’m paying attention, and I want to pass the favor on to you.

First, Tim Nesbitt, a key player in the initial implementation of Governor Kitzhaber’s Education Reform policies and now with The Oregon Idea, an advocacy group of the advancement of education in Oregon, sent me this from the e-Publication, The American Interest:

The End of the University as We Know It

By Nathan Harden

From the January/February 2013 issue

“Big changes are coming, and old attitudes and business models are set to collapse as new ones rise. Few who will be affected by the changes ahead are aware of what’s coming. Severe financial contraction in the higher-ed industry is on the way, and for many this will spell hard times both financially and personally. But if our goal is educating as many students as possible, as well as possible, as affordably as possible, then the end of the university as we know it is nothing to fear. Indeed, it’s something to celebrate.”

(You can read the full article at: http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1352)

Then Curtis Johnson, co-author of one of my favorite books on the future of education, Disrupting Class, and Senior Associate for Evolving Education (www.educationevolving.org), sent me this from The Chronicle of Higher Education; an article about how the Carnegie Unit of Credit Hours has come to be used in ways that are actually impeding us:

              The Curious Birth and Harmful Legacy of the Credit Hour

             By Amy Laitinen
             Published: January 21, 2013

“As higher education becomes increasingly necessary and expensive, measuring time rather than learning is a luxury that students, taxpayers, and the nation can no longer afford. While Carnegie's free money for pensions [the original purpose of the credit hour unit] dried up long ago, the federal government is spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to pay for time-based credits and degrees of dubious value.  Paying for what students learn and can do, rather than how or where they spend their time, would go a long way toward providing students and the nation with desperately needed, high-quality degrees and credentials.”

(You can read the full article at: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Curious-BirthHarmful/136717/)

 And then most recently, my friend and Executive Director of the Whitewater Institute (www.white-waterinstitute.org/), Marilyn Lane, sent this to me from The New York Times:

Revolution Hits the Universities

             By Thomas L. Friedman

Published: January 26, 2013

“I can see a day soon where you’ll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world — some computing from Stanford, some entrepreneurship from Wharton, some ethics from Brandeis, some literature from Edinburgh — paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion. It will change teaching, learning and the pathway to employment.”

Then, quoting M.I.T. President, L. Rafael Reif, Friedman concludes, “There is a new world unfolding, and everyone will have to adapt.”

(You can read the full article at:  http://nyti.ms/W5DuoN)

Add to these two of my favorite pieces for stirring up a conversation, the somewhat apocalyptic EPIC 2020 video (http://epic2020.org/) and the Ken Robinson piece on Changing Educational Paradigms (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U), and I think we begin to have a picture of “what’s going on.” 

 

To use Clayton Christensen’s term, “Disruptive Innovation” is "what's going on."  The combination of radical advances in technology and the fiscal dynamics of a competitive world that is no longer constrained by time or distance creates for us a new educational paradigm that we can choose to see it as either threat or opportunity…. and our place in the future depends on which we choose.

 

 

Giving Us the Room to Grow

I look on in dismay as the story of Manti Te’o’s non-existent girlfriend unravels and now is being dissected with a level of intensity that can only be explained by a collective defensiveness at having been duped.  Subsequently, questions about who knew what, when and how drown out the one question that matters – Why?

I won’t pretend to have any insights into the particular details of Manti Te’o’s story, but I can tell you that this one reminds me of so many that I know from my past.  As a person who has worked closely with college-aged students my whole professional life, I’ve seen a lot…

Ø  There was the young girl who kidnapped herself for a week

Ø  A young man who demolished his own dorm room and claimed it to be the work of a jealous past relationship

Ø  Another man who took a sledge hammer to his own car and filed a crime report with the police

Ø  A young man who claimed to have inadvertently witnessed a major drug deal and now was in fear for his life

Ø  A younger man who wrote pseudonymous love letters to himself and left them out for others to discover

We – all of us – do a lot of “strange” things to try and find meaning and “place” in our young adult lives.  I have seen and been a part of lot of this, so much so that I no longer find it all that strange.  In fact, to the best of my knowledge, most of these people have grown up to lead healthy and productive lives…. some of them in places of great power, and responsibility.  One thing for which I am grateful is that these young people had the benefit of growing through these experiences beyond the spotlight of our voyeuristic interest.  

Manti Te’o is not just a news story.  There are lives at stake here and I believe that, if given the respect and compassion that every young person needs and deserves, Manti Te’o’s life will turn out just fine.

Canaries and Coal Mines

Canaries and Coal Mines

Before the development of modern detection equipment, coal miners used to bring caged canaries with them into the mines because these birds were known to be more sensitive to the presence of the poisonous gas methane than humans.  If the canary died, it was time to get out, and fast!  Reflecting this little bit of history, the phrase “canary in a coal mine” has come to serve as a metaphor for almost anything that can give us advance notice of some other impending event.

When it comes to anticipating and understanding the need for and the form of Education Transformation, I believe that Health Care is our “canary in a coal mine.”  Let me explain……

Arguably, we have some of the best health care in the world.  People from all over the planet come to the USA to benefit from some of the best medical attention that money can buy. And yet, we Americans are actually less healthy than the people who live in those other countries.  In a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences(1), we are told that “Americans are far more unhealthy that people in 16 other developed countries.”  In spite of the fact that we spend $8,600 per person per year on health care – more than twice what countries such as Britain, France, and Sweden spend – our infant mortality rate is higher and our life expectancy is lower than these other nations.  For whatever reason, American health care costs too much and produces inadequate results, and so we find ourselves in the midst of a heath care crisis… and a health care reform movement that scares a good number of us. 

Perhaps not surprisingly, these are some of the same problems we face in our education system.  Higher Education in America is of the highest quality in the world, but it costs too much and it educates too few.  When measured in aggregate as total cost per student completion (a measure that is comparable to the $8,600 per person per year we spend on health care), we spend $590,549,000 ($354,329,000 in direct public resources) per year of community college education and produce 11,116 graduates – that’s $53,126 per completion.  And, only 38% of our adults (25-34 old) in Oregon and nationwide complete a post secondary degree or certificate, a figure that puts us behind at least 14 other countries, including Canada at 56%, and South Korea at 62%.  The parallels between education and health care are just too strong to ignore, and I believe that the problems we share have some of the same root causes – as well as some of the same solutions.

Health care has been and is now at an increasing pace moving through a transformation that focuses on four things: outcomes instead of procedures; more uniform (if not universal) access; increased stratification combined with increased coordination of the delivery model; and all with a continued focus on quality.  These are also the essential components of education transformation.

 Focus on Outcomes

For health care, the Outcome is a healthier people: reduced infant mortality, increased length and quality of life.  It is NOT number of office visits, number of medical procedures performed, or the financial investment made.  Are we healthier?  Yes, or No.

For education, the Outcome must be a more productively educated people. It is NOT how many people are admitted, how many classes are offered and taken, or the financial investment made.  Are we more productively educated?  Yes, or No.

Universal/Uniform Access

For health care, Access means that all people have time-appropriate access to the health care that will be most effective in helping them to live healthier lives.  It does NOT mean that people can get into an emergency room when all else fails, nor does it mean that people can use health care to pursue non-healthy purposes, or purposes that jeopardize the health of others.  Access has to be a pathway that leads to the Outcome; Access to a destination of better health and not just to more health care.

For education, Access means that all people have access to the educational opportunities that are most likely to result in them being productively educated.  It does NOT mean admitting students so they can swirl, taking classes they don’t want and/or don’t need until the ones they do want/need become available, nor does it mean admitting them into remediation gauntlets that effectively “weed them out.”  It doesn’t mean “Access to Access,” nor does it mean Access to everything.  Instead, it means Access to the clearly defined and readily available pathways that lead to being more productively educated, and not just to another class.

Stratification and Coordination of the Delivery Model

Long before the current push for health care reform, the health care profession figured out that a delivery model that depended on the doctor to do everything from taking our temperature, drawing our blood, and checking our pulse, to filling out the paperwork, making our next appointment, and sending us (or our insurance company) the bill would be unsustainable.  It would reduce access, cost too much, and not allow the doctors to focus their skills on the areas where they could do the most good: diagnosis and treatment.  So health care began to stratify its delivery model and, in the process, creating new professions like Medical Assistant, Medical Technologist, Physical Therapist, Pharmacist, Phlebotomist, Registered Nurse, and on and on.  And the result has been a less expensive delivery model that is actually better because it employs the specific expertise of different people along the delivery pathway.  Unfortunately, in the process the health care delivery model has become more confusing and less effective because stratification has not been paired with coordination of health care.  To a great extent, the focus of the current health care reform efforts is on coordination.

While the process of stratifying the education delivery model has begun – we have Counselors, and Registrars, and Deans and such – this transformation has not yet reached into the classroom, where I believe it has the greatest potential for both reducing cost and improving outcomes.  “Disaggregating the Instructional Role” is the somewhat industrial/mechanical but nonetheless descriptive label for this educational parallel to the stratification of health care.  It is a process in which content development, instructional design, knowledge acquisition, knowledge application, learning assessment, and other components of teaching-learning are made into discrete functions and where the faculty instructor is thus freed from other activities in order to focus on the work where their expertise and passion can be focused where it makes the most difference – that point or place in which students learn to make constructive use of the things they know.  Such disaggregated models can have place-and-time bound, virtual, and/or a mix of face-to-face and technologically-mediated components, incorporating emerging concepts like learning analytics, and game-based instruction, virtual learning constructs with personal avatars (think The Matrix), and/or more traditional features like seminars and even lectures.  Incorporating anything and almost everything, a well-coordinated strategy of disaggregation allows for a more specialized application/incorporation of methods and persons in order to maximize the effectiveness of the teaching-learning experience.

Quality

In many ways, the focus on Quality is much the same as the focus on Outcomes, but I want to make this focus explicit.  The transformation of neither health care nor education can come at the expense of Quality, but we can no longer measure quality in terms of the number or office visits, procedures performed, days in class, or resources expended.  Quality must be measured in terms of health achieved, and meaningful degrees earned.

 

(1)    http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=13497&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nationalacademies%2Fna+%28News+from+the+National+Academies%29