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Vision 2010 Meeting with American Association of Universities Provosts
Phase 3 September 1995 |
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Vision 2010 Meeting with American Association of Universities Provosts
Phase 3 September 1995 |
An invited group of provosts from the American Association of Universities
were asked to review the scope and products of Vision 2010. Specifically, the
project's organizing committee wanted to know whether the scenarios produced
by the Vision 2010 working groups were useful to the provosts. They also
looked to the participants for advice about the future of the project. The
following themes and issues emerged from the discussion.
Themes
Scope of Vision 2010
Vision 2010 considered its scope to be an examination of the future of
universities in the context of a "digital culture".
1. What will be the outcomes of the digital revolution for the individuals
it's oriented towards, the young people, the students. Should Vision 2010 be
testing that?
Approach
1. You seem to have a top-down approach and at some point if any of these
ideas are going to be implemented effectively, the faculty and students will
need to be involved. I know the provosts [are expected] to implement change
but unless you get your faculty on board, you're going nowhere.
2. We've got a collision between restructuring of the American university and
this is being influenced by a fundamental change in the information system.
How do you formulate these issues, how do you put them on the ground on local
campuses and ...making them work using the local knowledge of a particular
place and time.
3. Scenarios are helpful; they're teaching tools. There is a limit to the
extent to which you can endow a long-term scenario in a dynamic environment
with reality states.
4. Incorporating some invariable concepts is needed, That's one thing that's
missing here.
Timeframe
1. {The scenarios} weren't saying much that was particularly useful right now
and that's a matter of the distance, of the focal point, that they went just
too far out.
2. Part of the challenge that you can help with through this project is how to
connect those long-range guesses that we can have with some shorter-range
decision making.
3. There's a real disjunction that exists at universities on the rate of
change or the direction of changes. The rate of change is dramatically
different from the rate here.
4. I don't think 15 years is very far out at all in terms of change. And I
think the "let it happen" approach would be fine if the environment was going
to be ours to control. The students are changing so fast that if we let it
percolate up I'm afraid that will be too little too late.
5. Certainly the intermediate, 3-5 years and the longer term both ought to be
looked at.
Provost Role
1. There 's a whole set of issues that are relevant to the top down [approach]
, forces we can't individually control on our campuses, political and market
oriented. We have to position our institutions so that we can adapt, create
a climate on the campus where we keep very smart people, very creative people
who have access to the tools that are necessary.
2. What you need to do is to rely on the leaders for a sense of what this is
about or a vision and let those people frame the debate on the campus.
Change in higher education
1 When you actually try to implement a change in the way people are teaching
and the use of this kind of technology, some faculty will come along part-way,
and then begin to pull back because of personal experience. It changes the
way they work. And it changes it so profoundly that they don't want to work
in this new way. They don't see all of the characteristics of the new mode
and they know the old mode well. Modest enhancement of what they have been
doing is acceptable but radical change becomes very difficult.
2. It's not a matter of creating an elaborate and powerful device for
teaching something; it is that the entire relationship between students and
faculty and among the students themselves changes and nobody can define a
course anymore.
3. The factors that change people's behaviors are predictable and they are not
changing very rapidly. How faculty or students get from here to there will
depend a lot on what resources, what tools, what environment the university
has provided.
4. I differentiate what's likely to happen in undergraduate education and
community colleges from what might happen in our more sophisticated
operations. As a matter of fact I think these tools will make it possible for
us to enter the commercial sector in a big way in the more sophisticated
areas.
Issues
1. What is actually occurring on campuses relevant to Vision 2010's scope?
2. To what extent is the digital signal truly a new form radically different
from others that higher education has experienced in the past?
3. Will the digital culture produce a better educated citizenry with
collective values that are beneficial to society and the individual?
4. What will be the characteristics of future students? What will be the
influence of K-12?
5. What are the values that are absolutely central to the mission of the
university?
6. To what extent are research universities protected by their focus and
perceived value by society as conductors of higher level knowledge beyond the
general undergraduate program?
7. Will institutions be able to relax the environment or culture which is
generating a conservatism intolerable to change.?
8. How will a climate for joint ventures occur?
9. What kinds of planning tools will assist university administrators and
faculty in creating the future they want for their campuses? 3
