|
Vision 2010 Scenario-refinement seminar
Phase 2 May 1995 |
|
|
Vision 2010 Scenario-refinement seminar
Phase 2 May 1995 |
Participants:
Peter Arum
Daniel Atkins
Pat Battin
Rowland Brown
Steve Cisler
John Cohen
Laurie Crum
Paul Elsner
Billy Frye
Jonathan Grayer
Bob Greenes
Richard Lanham
David Liddle
Clifford Lynch
Stuart Lynn
Deanna Marcum
Michael Marien
James O'Donnell
Jay Oglivy
Martha Pinto
Alexander Singer
Judith Singer
Douglas Van Houweling
Katherine Willis
Summary of Comments and Ideas
Generated by Group 2
Chicago, May 1995
Introductory Presentation
Richard Lanham
Significance of the Digital Signal
The commingling of text and images linked at multiple levels has a long
history exemplified by the 12th century Bolgnese manuscript of the Codex
Justinianus. The work is significant because it (1) demonstrates the basis of
scholarly communication which is some kind of conversation or exchange; and,
(2) underscores that in most scholarly communication, (most of western
textbook communication) there was as much imagistic information as people
could handle.
One framework that can be used to plot out in a non judgemental way various
kinds of scholarly signals is simply by their wavelength and frequency-how
fast the exchange goes and how much there is in it.
Since the digital (multimedia) signal enables the agile manipulation of the
communication in ways not possible in the printed book, it breaks down
barriers between professions and disciplines.
The ability provided by the digital signal to move information around
interactively on any level, scaling it automatically, phenomenally increases
productivity.
The digital signal also supports 3 dimensional exploration of the information.
As a result, there's being negotiated a different relationship between
abstract, conceptual thought and behavioral thinking that is associated with
three-dimensional space,
Michael Marien:
Scholarship
What is productive scholarship which is both good and important? How do you
highlight and promote that in information systems?
Projections for 2010
o Human activity more global and interconnected (driven by electronic
technology) scholarship becomes more of a global enterprise
o World will be dynamic with many changes and surprises
o More population (7 billion -- increase of 23%); bulk will be in 3rd
world
o More AIDS and possibly a major virus.
o Average age is going up; more health care expenses
o More unemployment and underemployment
o Greater rich/poor gaps, more inequity in economic resources and
access to information.
o More people living in urban areas world-wide.
o Globe will be warmer.
o Continued financial tightness; universities entering age of
constrained Resources
o Increasingly the world and U.S. will be multicultural
o Increasingly we become a knowledge society
--What kind of scholarship is needed for this world? More broad
interdisciplinary, multicultural scholarship (the very thing universities are
bad at). This will increasingly not happen at universities. There are more
think tanks and more people make their living in more non-traditional ways.
--How can technology help/hinder this needed scholarship? What other barriers
are there to this needed scholarship (tenure, notion of education as a "fixed"
activity, scholarship values)
Scenario Development
Group 2 was asked to validate and expand upon the scenario development work
of group 1. That group had created a focal statement and scenario matrix.
They had also identified events that fit with each of the matrix quadrants.
These were then shaped into four draft scenarios. Group 2 was responsible
for ensuring the logical congruity of the scenarios, expanding them and
identifying early warning signals.
Matrix with Quadrants Named by Group 1
Initial Review of Scenarios and Comments by Group 2
Discussion of Literacy
The group requested information about the two axes including the process used
to determine them and the meaning of literacy, the X axis.
Literacy was deliberately chosen as opposed to high-tech versus low-tech
because it had the notion of adoption, of fluency, of more than the existence
of technology but the adoption of it.
There are new genres being invented here, new forms of expression and so this
was an attempt to identify the extent to which those are adopted and people
become fluent in using them and they become the norm as opposed to the
exception.
It was not simply the existence of higher and higher tech but it had to do
with the societal adoption, the penetration of that.
There were these 30 or 40 different factors, and then we tried to do a
grouping to come up with two axis. So the question was taking these clusters
of things and saying that those kind of cluster a catch phrase called "new
literacy" and those kind of fit into competition....The question of new
literacy did not actually fully differentiate whether it was cause or effect.
It was intended to capture things, for example, the pervasiveness and
bandwidth of the internet.
{The X-axis is intended to capture} the idea of what is a new sociology in
which knowledge is produced, disseminated and so on.... the nature of
transactions and the exchange mechanism and the knowledge creation mechanism.
What I think everyone is saying is that the traditional visual wall is going
to create new forms of community, new forms of learning, brickless, walless,
the ability to engage in new kinds of exchange. So I think of that as the
sociology of learning. And that's an evolutionary process, it's not either-or.
Its the effect of how much and in what proportion of higher education is going
to be where.
Discussion of Competition
I was struck as to why on the matrix competition is seen all the way whereas
in some cases it might not be competition but your client base withdrawing
from you because of changes in external forces which may not be competitive
but because some aspects of this service you're providing that you take for
granted as the repertoire of services the university provides the community
may be seen as not having value added in terms of currency in the workplace
It may just be that we have set upon a mode of defining excellence as though
what we offer is what everybody wants.
So another way of looking at it is that competition is an increasing
perception on the part of the public. Skills training is going to be valued
higher than the kind of educational learning model which we traditionally
offer.
The competition axis was not about whether in some sense competitiveness
exists in the marketplace, it was about whether the current educational
institutions continue to be dominant or whether there is a mismatch between
what we do and what society really thinks it needs.
Competition doesn't mean Yale versus Harvard; it means universities versus
Microsoft.
Reason for limit of two axis
We discovered over time with the development of scenarios that as artificial
as it may be, and seemingly over-simplified, that it really does help if
you're developing a set of scenarios both in the understanding, working with
the scenarios and communicating with the other people that if they do have
this logical relationship to one another that they can be quickly captured.
It is immensely helpful to have the clear, logical relationship among the
scenarios. [comment by facilitator]
What we're talking about when we're talking about stories or accessibility or
about the ability to persuade and to identify is really literary appeal. What
you're trying to say is that we have to be literary critics in order to create
these scenarios; that is to say that the planning of the story is suffused
with literary argument, literary awareness...and that these habits of mind
tend to be encouraged to some degree by digital expression. They're clearly
not invented. You have the x and y coordinates and not because reality is
always divided into x and y but because the visual cortex always allows
certain kinds of positioning that makes x and y coordinates persuasive.
Critique of the draft scenarios
I don't think I can tell even now having these axis in front of me which
scenario fell into which quadrant. There's too much language here. I would
like to know what few distinctive characteristics out of these descriptors
really make the difference...which ones are the determinative characteristics.
The names don't really communicate.
Quadrant 1
As a group the participants were asked to consider key indicators , the
underlying conditions that will enable this scenario to happen.
Diversity of learning options
We talk about competition. What we're really portraying here is a learning
society with a great diversity of learning options available to it.. A few of
those are interpreted as competition but really diversity of learning
opportunities, of areas to learn may really be a better way of capturing the
theme here.
I thought we were getting more diversity for the potential consumer in this
quadrant. Higher education ---yes it was competitive but this is not a bad
situation for the consumer either nationally or globally because there are
more different opportunities than without this knowledge creation and higher
literacy. It may be troublesome for higher education but it shouldn't be
troublesome for education.
One thing is pretty clear there's an awful lot of ambiguity in these
scenarios, and we're getting 180 degree differences in interpretation of this
scenario. Again, from some one who participated in the last phase, the essence
of what we were talking about was that there were more options. The
technology was going to relax constraints and that consumers would have more
options available to them and again it was written from a university-centric
point of view and was supposed to be a wake-up call to universities that were
going to be people cutting into your turf. Maybe Microsoft, maybe Kaplan-that
this monopoly you had on accreditation, even accreditation, is going to be
jeopardized. And from the consumer side, I don't think the intent was to keep
more people out, it was going to empower more people in, because you could
work part-time, you could get desktop delivery. There were alternate modes of
educating and certifying yourself, and that the universities who were going to
be prosperous in the future and were going to make up deficits for states who
use state funding, were those who were going to be more agile, that were going
to grow their markets.. and you wouldn't have to leave your village to get the
education, where you had to go to Michigan or Stanford or Harvard in the past.
Social view of learning
The way I interpret this one is that both the corporate and the individual
members of society have greatly increased the value they've placed on
learning. They're willing to pay more for it. It's viewed as a growth
marketplace not only for universities but also for corporations. This has now
become a time to learn things when you need to learn them and to learn what
you need to learn and this is viewed as a very valuable thing in society.
There is an underpinning which suggests that the tradition of universities to
teach people how to learn or to make competent scholars and thinkers as
opposed to skills training . The notion of a swing back toward being
"responsive to the marketplace" or what kind of students do we wish we were
getting right now that come to work in our company or teach in our elementary
schools or whatever. And thereby what particular skills go with it that I
think they should have and I don't really care so much as to whether I've
trained them in a deeper or broader way to think.
In this scenario, the current policy-makers see higher education as if they
are saying we will continue to support the university but we will support it
in a lesser way where free-market forces pick up some responsibilities for
this activity. This is an advanced stage of where we are now but more so.
There is some evidence that part of our backing off on public commitments of
higher education has been a dysfunctional political activism that we have not
been able to design or develop because some of the market surveys and focus
groups including in California show a very large public interest in supporting
public education in contrast with policy-makers views. People are very
concerned about access. They're very very concerned about the ability to be
credentialed in society and move forward with an educational level that will
meet the standards that they need to have in the marketplace.
This is a scenario that is solely focused on measuring and assessment.
There's got to be a currency, if you will, a way of evaluating someone's
worth, and its almost a binary thing; either you are or you aren't; it really
doesn't matter how you got those skills
Economism
This is a world of the marketplace. And you wouldn't get that unless you had
a fairly strong economy.
In this scenario I get a few research universities offering lifelong learning
contracts and initiating aggressive outreach programs. I can imagine an
effective educational insurance company.
The economism you're describing has some crisis somewhere. Is the discrepancy
in the have's and have nots. I would suggest that the discrepancy between
people who have new forms of knowledge are in greater conflict with, or in
contrast to, those who have none.
There isn't a student body. So there's no demand for diversity. This is a
market environment for learning and if you can find a way to get your learning
financed, you can be a learner but if you can't you can't.
In that kind of environment, the way the problem might be responded to is a
voucher system as opposed to support for institutions. Another free market
solution.
And if the condition is massive movement of people around the world, which
there is, then you will see how global free market forces will intersect with
those populations and we will achieve diversity, more faith in the free market
system, hence more diversity.
Environment
The conditions to make this scenario happen are that things need to be
volatile and people need to be relatively cheerful. Cheer is a level of
toleration of the negatives of your environment.
I have a slightly different point of view. It comes back to what's happening
in the rest of the world. This scenario talks about how competition among US,
European and Japanese institutions becomes intense. There well may be a
different scenario which is the countries of Asia no longer send their
students to the US institutions for their graduate studies. They do it
themselves. There's no longer a need to send and that has a significant
effect on the economics of the US universities.
You have to assume that the environment is dynamic and that you have a massive
technology infrastructure...that are both national but globalized and this
calls for a very, very intensive arrangements in working out both the private
sector and whatever other areas of global economies have to be worked out.
Whether or not that turns out to be true makes everything matter a lot.. I've
been taking the view that this would not happen at all if it couldn't happen
in a completely organic way. That is, it would have to be an infrastructure
that could popularly grow as the internet and popular computing...I think
you've raised a perfectly good polar opposite view of that which is the
problem of growth like a rambling vine and it may have to be structured a
lot better and that could have a big effect on the timescale.
We're assuming an underlying technological infrastructure which assumes that
you can pick up the telephone or that you have access to the infrastructure
where you live without having heavy tariffs imposed upon it by a national
country. That's a big assumption.
Quadrant 2
Diversity of learning options
Universities continue in a kind of a traditional mode but in some ways are
increasingly in the wrong business with respect to the greater space of demand
posed by the users of the graduates or the certified people. So we have a
smaller niche of a potentially larger market.
Universities have in the past at least marginally defined themselves by what
they don't do. The scenarios need to be used in ways that will be
affirmation of mission, what we do as opposed to what we don't do.
Social view of learning
One of the indicators of this future is the kind of irrelevance from at least
the employer's perspective of the university experience.
Economism
Recognition that universities or especially certain classes of universities
are in the prestige business. And if we were to see an erosion of that
prestige, in other words if the Princeton or the Harvard or the MIT degree was
no longer worth that premium that would correlate with this scenario. That it
would be characterized by an undercurrent deterioration, but without adequate
attention to what manner -- not reading the tea leaves correctly.
An observation was made that for those scenarios to take place, for portions
of the market of traditional universities to be eroded or taken elsewhere that
we would need to see increasing returns to scale caused by technology. Right
now, in the place-centered, one-on-one, high reliance on physical proximity as
a means of education that takes place in the university there are certain
scale issues. You get to a certain point and you have a research university
but when you get to seventy-five thousand and so forth it becomes a point of
diminishing returns and non-manageable. Now the assumption here is somehow the
use of technology changes that and you can do more things at the margin and in
fact more profitably, you can add more and more students through this
technology-mediated environment. And so the assumption is that for the
technology-mediated approaches to education that the Kaplans, the Microsofts
might bring forward there would have to be this new economy of scale mediated
by technology.
Environment
During the discussion of Quadrant 1 by the entire group, the facilitator
pressed for key factors that are characterized by the heading environment.
However, these do not emerge from the small group discussion of Quadrant 2.
Universities
Universities are automated but not transformed; traditional but in a
competitive environment, doing traditional pedagogy in faster, cheaper, better
ways.
Other scenarios talked about smaller schools falling by the wayside, some
others would be federated or put together in new ways. But the mainstream is
saying, that's them, that's a unique situation, that doesn't mean anything to
us, that's really not the sign of anything. That universities would be
rationalizing in light of colleges failing that it was their problem not ours.
The university needs to look inward as well as outward to really deal with
fundamental issues like what is a truly well-rounded or educated person in
this rich world? What are the employment opportunities or the employment
marketplace, knowing that there are large and perhaps growing numbers of under
or unemployed people.
Universities are in general too self-serving, there's still too much
entitlement thinking, sacred cow thinking with respect to society.
In thinking about universities as hierarchical organizations, more or less on
company or corporation model, and even in this discussion you discover us
talking about how the corporation, substituting that for the word
"universities", needs to change. I think that universities are actually much
different from that in their corporate existence. I think what they are are
communities that have special purposes. And one of the purposes they have is
to provide a relatively stable foundation for individual entrepreneurs, called
faculty, who in fact pretty much self-determine the direction that they take
their work. And one of the things that faculty very much value, and we find
expressed all the time, is that that foundation that they stand on and operate
from doesn't change very much. That they can depend on it to provide a stable
foundation, and furthermore, since most of the entrepreneurs or the faculty in
the organization don't think its terribly relevant what the university's
objective is, except to provide them with that stable platform, they're not
very deeply involved in the notion that the university needs to change. And
when you really ask what they want from the institution they don't want an
institution that's changing in some dramatic way. They want an institution
that makes it easier for them to do their work, whatever that gets defined as.
And I think what we're more and more confronting in these discussions is the
fact that we're deeply concerned that the conditions that will allow these
institutions to persist over the years and provide that foundation for our
faculty are starting to disappear. And that, unless we can get the faculty
involved in thinking about how the platform that they depend on can adapt in
the new world, the new conditions, is not going to be there for them when they
need it 20 or 30 years from now. But that--since faculty have never concerned
themselves with those issues about universities--in fact they are bound to the
fact that universities don't change to provide the stable platform, that is an
enormous leap and change in behavior to expect that of faculty.
Quadrant 3
Diversity of learning options
Increasingly, literate students become disaffected with non digital professors
and/or institutions
Social view of learning
Increase in well-entertained couch potatoes who are under and un-employed
Decline in perceived value of education relative to rising costs; lack of good
jobs
Increasingly my view is that education is viewed as of value to the individual
but not to the society. And people are willing to invest in access for
individuals. They don't have great expectations that's going to make the
economy do better but in fact it is an important tool of mobility for
individuals and there are lots of people, especially in a lot of communities,
who value their community providing that individual access.
If we continue to hide behind the bureaucratic structure and not say the
structure has to change in order to give a better education but just give me
more money and I'll continue to do what I've been doing then that's where
we're losing support not for education in general.
To the extent that the public expectation and disappointment about our impact
on the economy is leading to some kind of punishment to a large extent that is
of our own doing. We have been promising far more than we could hope to
deliver just based on what history shows. The time lag between investment and
return is much greater for any political memory to cope with and the
probability that a given investment will lead to Silicon Valley or whatever is
so remote that for us to go out on a limb and do as many research universities
do, promise state that if you invest in us we will recover[X dollars] is..was
a horrible doing. I think the mistake was that we represented ourselves as
something different to society than we are supposed to be. We forgot what our
core mission is. I think all of us think universities are quite vital to the
societal infrastructure within which the economy can thrive but to say our
purpose is "invest in us so we can improve the economy" or "we will improve
the economy" that is a significant misrepresentation and distortion of what
the mission is. That's why I come back again and again to the notion that we
have to remember what we're all about and represent it honestly to ourselves
and to the public. Even as we look at the kind of environment that is forcing
us to consider change.
There's another time lag here that will disappear in this 2010 vision, and
that is the success that a lot of universities and colleges are getting today
in raising money from people of the GI Bill generation and their remembrance
of the importance of education to their success.
Economism
Little profit in CD-ROM and edutainment
Environment
There are going to be a number of social issues on which society is dependent
and so their energy and mental thought is diverted to those issues so that
there is an ambivalence about education, they're not wholly satisfied .
Increase in ability of family to pay for education and increase in grants and
federal loans.
No inspiring and consistent message from political leadership
No student, parental, society pressure to change
Increase public spending at the expense of higher education budgets
Prisons/"corrections"
Health care in an aging society which is likely to go up rapidly
K-12 education --not so much that there is massive public support but
court orders for equality in funding will cause jacking up of K-12
budgets
Economy remains the same or declines.
Major failed mergers of technological industries which decreases pace of
innovation
Coming of the millennium does not serve as a vehicle for inspiring important
people to change in any lasting way.
Increasing nationalism and/or trade wars result in fewer foreign graduate
students.
Global telecommunications is not seamless.
Universities
The discussion examined the university within an external context rather than
considering internal factors.
Quadrant 4
Diversity of learning options
There will be an increasing market toward customization of education on the
individual organizational level. This will be increasingly global.
Social view of learning
The standards of credentialing will become what is important to the individual
and organizations hiring those people, and as a way of transferring the notion
of prestige instead of courses or activities that you have done at Harvard,
Harvard has said "we have standards." So in this world the [individual] might
go around and collect models and courses from a disparate set of sources and
at the end take some exams, have them examine what you've done and get the
credentials.
The primary value of a mature, prestigious institutions is that it absorbs for
the employer the risk of whether or not this assembled transcript is a good
thing. It says Okay we're going to put the seal of the university on this
because we looked at this and we know enough about the courses you took and
based on that, we aggregate this to be a certifiable degree. And so that
post-certification is the main value of a prestigious institution.
Its part of the concept of life long learning.
Economism
We came back to the idea of vouchers where you would have education insurance,
a la unemployment insurance. The idea that the funding will probably come
through the individual more than through the institution and so that it would
be more consumer-based and individuals would be making decisions about how
they would be using these funds as opposed to institutions to try to get
funds. They would have a lot more discretion about how they would spend it.
[Stimulated by government policy and the individual as consumer] the
university would become much more entrepreneurial again.
There will be an economic structure for electronic commerce to handle
administrative transfer of fees.
The educational insurance policy
Somewhere mid-career people will need to step back. Corporations are spending
{ dollars} on their people today but people who don't work for corporations
where will their {money} be coming to go back and reeducate yourself and bring
up your skills. There will be a mechanism for people to fund this lifelong
learning concept ---that's in this scenario
Environment
This is a rather deregulated environment that would allow the university to
take advantage of other technological infrastructures to the extent that
programs make use of multimedia.
Some of the intellectual property issues we are now facing have been resolved
Universities will align with one another, packaging their information and
spreading it out. As they consolidate their power and get so much strength in
the distribution channel, government will step back in and try to break up the
monopoly.
This model essentially says that there is a new media, a copyright service
center that works efficiently, smoothly and invisibly.
Students will live in multiple virtual environments. Facilitating the access
of those multiple virtual communities is going to be considered the strength
of the university today.
Universities
We saw universities becoming more along the lines of the
studio.[e..g.movie/video production].really using or distributing education
and research, managing that infrastructure and its production team around
[enabling]faculty and the team that would be able to put all this together.
That would be one of the major goals of the university and one of their
strengths.
This is a model where universities are successful and responsive.
In this scenario tenure must go away....that's tenure without cost of living
increase (Compensation is separated.) Tenure is viable as long as no other
competitor becomes moderately successful at offering the services of the
university. (Example of auto industry and labor unions prior to Japanese in
US)
Strategic Options and Implications
According to facilitator: "We use the diversity of the scenarios to stimulate
thinking about a very broad, long list of strategic options, but then you take
the long list and in effect windtunnel the long list through all four
scenarios, and see which ones crash in several of the scenarios, and see which
ones survive through all four scenarios, and then you have a robust strategy
that has been shaped by divergent thinking in a lot of different worlds and
will survive a lot of different worlds and that's something solid. Strategy
is a coherent pattern of action that consciously intervenes."
Based on the experience of Global Business Network, the facilitator, the
following are possible responses to the scenarios:
1. Pick one scenario and bet the company (shouldn't do this)
2. Hedge across all scenarios (sometimes not possible to do)
3. Become a Learning Organization
4. Modify existing strategy (have intended strategy; direction)
Old model like making a marble sculpture (put on shelf and collect
dust); new like throwing a pot (re-shape continuously based on events)
5. Rank strategic options by risks and rewards (usually end up doing this)
6. Look for vulnerabilities and bottlenecks
7. Reframe the industry (rare scenario effort--where they reveal something
so radical that things are turned upside down) (paradigm shift)
8. Pursue least regret (Pascal's Wager) (which bets can we not afford to
lose) (first out gets the arrows in the back; other people win)
9. Identify pre-determined elements
Quadrant 1
The reason why the strategic options in this part are so different from other
ones is that this is a case where entrepreneurship digitally is suddenly a
very strong force. Part of this now says that the university faces a set of
opportunities and challenges to offer more compact kits of knowledge than
entire course and degrees and so on. It's practical as individuals, as stand-
alone scholars, to make and sell to other people who are highly responsible
for their education.
I notice in the scenarios there's notably absent in them.the possibility of
some new leadership sciences or some new managerial sciences accompanying this
whole new transition that we're making. We're assuming that we are using the
same leadership skills and the same mental models
On the option front, this part of the matrix more than any other requires, I
think, that the university setting either promotes or can demonstrate a higher
return on investment than people they are competing against, and in many ways,
the winners in this game, because its a digital world, are going to be the
people that attract the most capital and develop their options. And if the
university setting allows that possibility to find a more profitable product,
then in fact the university setting will win.
The credentialing thing you talked about earlier vis a vis people, in a sense,
is different. Now it takes on a different important characteristic. When
information is plentiful and everywhere, it's of low value. What's valuable
is attention and trust. And what universities have to sell is this idea of
saying, "we have looked at these materials; we know a great deal about the
content of these. They are worth your time to pursue and be involved with"
That is being the organizer of and validator of, to some extent, things
produced elsewhere--so you become kind of like the Wine Spectator or Siskell
and Ebert or something in the sense that you're selling method information or
allowing an evaluative process.
This scenario to the extent that it is global defines a need for global
alliances.
It's a world where you enjoy a temporary advantage by your agility but
everybody else adapts to that agility ad you actually end up stepping up the
competitive environment it seems to me. If your position is only temporal, it
is not very well established.
There's competition within, among, between and you are constantly reworking
everything.
The implications have implications....A lot of this discussion has to do with
the necessity for us to be more responsive, implying less stability. And yet,
the one thing that universities have done pretty successfully, western
universities, is to provide a stable environment in which people can come
apart from the world and do scholarship in a disinterested way, that is to
say, scholarship the results of which are trusted. And if you carry that too
far then you become a monastery that's isolated from the world. How do you
get these things to work together; how do you be responsive without giving up
that essential element of stability that enables scholarship, whatever the
modality of it, to still occur. And in my view if we in this new marketplace
adopt solutions or responses that destroy that credibility then we've lost the
game in terms of what we should be as institutions. We may be different kinds
of institutions. And its hard to sit still with the implication of that kind
of thing. Who cares at that point? Universities as we know them, if you
carry that to its logical extension, will have gone out of existence; we will
have lost what's so precious about them. We always have to come back to :
What is it we are trying to accomplish. I think it does get back to this
issue of mission or what is the social role of the university. And if you
sacrifice those essential characteristics of it in the effort to survive in
the new marketplace, you have, in fact, paradoxically not survived.
The point is, the objective is, to keep doing the same thing, but the set of
arrangements the institution has to make in order to keep doing the same thing
are very different. This scenario feels a little bit, too, like the same kind
of thing. That we have a set of core values or things we want to continue
doing, but the arrangements we make with other folks who are in education,
training, and consuming business here probably have to change in order for us
to continue with this scenario to do the things that we really think are
important and valuable.
Early indicators
At this stage in the scenario building process, participants are challenged to
identify little signs of big changes, to think upstream and to look for
vectors of change. The small groups also considered strategic options.
There is substantial variety across the groups in the degree of focus on the
early indicators versus strategy.
Quadrant 1
More subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal
Lots of "Robert Winter's" setting up multimedia firms (reference to CD program
demonstrated by Richard Lanham)
Universities contract with "Rochester University" to teach Physics 101
Passage of Telecom bill deregulation (confidence in ubiquitous network access)
Increase in laying fiber optic cable all over country
People are making money on the Internet
Quadrant 4
Early indicators
Universities are in a competitive environment but have not fully embraced the
new literacy to the extent that they could. Universities potentially become
less relevant in how they think.
Collapsing mergers, resource sharing because of sub-critical mass within
departments (some may be indicators of doing right thing rather than decline)
Moving from full service to niche markets
Tracking content of agenda for day to day meetings of University senior
administrators and AAU meetings in various years to see what they were
actually talking about.
Retrospective indicators (provided by B. Frye):
Chronic deficit, a cumulative outspending your means
Costs increase at a rate higher than institution projected
Increasing loss of public trust
Failure to identify frustrations of faculty including the balance of
research to teaching
Emergence of faculty as free agent, having more loyalty to their
discipline and moving to highest bidder rather than allegiance to
institution
Consider, as a model, medicine with its long period of denial although faced
with fundamental changes.
As a tactical response, fat trimming, pruning the weak unit, but without
recognition of the larger trend and consequently, failing to take a strategic
approach.
One shot funding provided for information technology in order to make a splash
but without realization that this is permanent and an essential part of the
infrastructure. .
Failure to maintain the physical plant and the lack of political will to
really do much about it. Failure to consider how collaboration technology
might be used rather than bricks and mortar.
Legislatures intruding into the "public ivy's"
Four year degree can't be done in 4 years because of lack of availability of
courses.
Problems with pricing structures (discount pricing structures) -- somewhat
analogous to pre HMO medical arena where fees for a particular procedure were
arbitrarily priced because no one really ever paid --the system paid. For
higher education, key to this are cross subsidies from financial aid and a
growing sense of hopelessness on pricing.
Companies allow alternate policies for "certification"
Companies do more in-house education/training or overtly going into the
education business but only if it can be justified on their bottom lines.
Class action suit for academic malpractice filed against a university.
A degree even with high marks not enough for first job. "Internship" as a
minimal requirement Students continually evaluating cost-benefit of 4 year
degree
Deterioration of academic libraries because they no longer have adequate
budgets for either collection building in the traditional sense or investment
in infrastructure for access..
Increasing level of indebtedness by students and increase in hours spent at
part time work.
Failing to make commitments to higher productivity so that faculty assume
increased resources are intended for smaller class sizes.
Group comment: Some of the items we listed are not relevant to this scenario
specifically
This scenario further separates have and have not's
Minority access still not transparent on campus. Some sense that applications
of technology may enable those traditionally outside education mainstream to
gain access to education.
Rising anti-intellectualism -- particularly from some political sectors (can't
teach Macbeth)
Need identity maintenance
Conflicts with knowledge identity
Support "learning play" in a more innovative way.
Could have profound impact on under-represented sectors
Life style and knowledge may conflict (not cool to want to learn)
Expose kids to knowledge acquisition in more neutral/private non-
threatening settings
A lot of interesting opportunity
Need to read indicators correctly so for example local physicality less of an
issue (UCLA having a Fresno access point rather than University of California
at Fresno) being created. And the flip side is that one of your competitors
may set up on campus, a virtual campus.
Strategic options:
Be careful of applying methods from corporate sector to university sector.
The president of a university does not determine the life of the institution.
That depends upon the community of scholars and others (regents, legislators,
alumni, students) Changes can't be mandated
There may be limits to how far universities can move into niche markets and
still be a university (breadth versus depth)
Very subtle strategic options for Universities and perhaps specific for a
given university.
The question is whether there is a redefinition of the university.
Quadrant 3
Early Indicators
:
Quality of life has gone down globally yet level of dissatisfaction has not
yet taken a toll on the university environment. Parents and students are not
complaining about education.
Universities see implications of the Hockey stick curve, for example firms
like Kaplan burst on the scene and surprise university.
Overall, public universities are doing worse with the privatization of public
university research.
Demise of affirmative action for admissions
Different kind of management skills required at the university
In general, more specialization
Failure of multimedia products resulting in less innovation and reduced
pressure for universities to adopt the much touted technology.
Assault by government on university indirect cost allowance slows down.
Slower growth in network connectivity whether Internet or cable.
Public relations firms hired by universities to maintain their images.
Funding by NSF, ARPA, NIH continues at present level with increments for
inflation.
College sports attendance stays high
Others scenarios laughed out of future GBN workshops
College presidents stay longer in jobs
Distance insensitive learning goes the way of the picture phone.
George Gilder agrees with Cliff Stoll
Big 10 virtual library fails.
CARL goes under because of costs and lawsuits (copyright)
The best indicators are the opposite of those in the other scenarios
Strategic options
Get out of the undergraduate business (ship them elsewhere)
Contracting out lower division
Market the traditional undergraduate experience as a strong point
Focus on core competencies (maybe far fewer disciplines)
Form strategic alliances, for example join rather than compete with Kaplan or
community colleges.
Resist fads; stay in maintenance mode
Quadrant 2
Early Indicators
Michigan Online grows more rapidly than AOL or CompuServe
There are more free trade agreements (GATT, NAFTA)
Progress on intellectual property management and distribution occurs.
Increased "shopping" by nations for knowledge services and by international
students occurs
Strategic Options
Decided that the institutions who survive and thrive do so because they are
able to move quickly. They did this by:
Revising structure to be agile
Being able to prototype and pilot several different types of products in
the areas of programs, organizations etc.
Being willing to outsource all but core competence
Having multiple reward systems
Encouraging unit initiative
Rewarding interesting failures (risks get taken)
Mass customization
Build up academic expectations
Concentrate on existing connections to alumni and parents
New services might be introduced such as:
Encouraging grads to stay in touch via network ("on job--on campus")
Building and maintaining the "virtual campus"
Utilizing research university infrastructure in networks and alumni
expertise
Maintain a brand awareness within university and its extended family.
Become a gateway to the world with filters into types of services, information
and products passed along this network into the community.
Leverage "community building" offerings
a) athletics
b) arts
c) friends
d) physical presence
Put real resource in:
library access
faculty "presence"
beyond physical campus
View the university's environment as global with global competition and
regulation. Consider also viability of niche markets and research when these
can be aggregated globally.
Review of work--What has been missed?
What are the low probability, high impact events that could really make a
difference.
Devaluation of the dollar.
Total restructuring of Washington :budget, no science policy, no department of
education.
Assessment (which is being discussed elsewhere). How to improve
effectiveness, not by high technology, but by doing things that work better
(e.g., team learning by students; writing skills for science/engineering
students)
Have we missed a normative scenario- not a scenario of what might happen but a
scenario of what ought to happen.
Values. What is new society going to value? What are the core values for the
university?
Strategies for changing the environment, the conservative organization of the
university.
A continued escalation of terrorism, both domestic and international, and
serious crime which leads political leadership both internationally and
nationally to enact much tighter restrictions on communications technology
with the consequence that the fundamental infrastructure for the "new wine"
scenarios is unavailable and the scnarios unfeasible.
What is needed in leadership? University presidents are not trained to be
"presidents." Need a change in university governance.
Implications of technology for supporting "narrow-catching" (Chart and
bullets provided by facilitator) From broadcast to Narrowcatch
1) Broadcast (mass-Market)
2) Narrowcast (niche markets)
3) Direct marketing (Segment of one)
4) Narrowcatch (Unique individual to selected products and services
1) Broadcast (mass-Market) -- Liberal arts education
2) Narrowcast (niche markets) -- Senior year
3) Direct marketing (Segment of one) -- Graduate education
4) Narrowcatch (Unique individual to selected products and services) --
Expect student by him/herself to integrate this together without assistance
(absent faculty advisor)
Need to tap alumnus for "narrowcatch" customized integration of specialized
disciplines (intellectual resource that hasn't been tapped)
Power is shifting from large organizations to individuals. Today,
universities give students financial aid so the student must go where the
funding is. If funding shifts to the individual, then he or she can pick and
chose, shop around.
This is also true on the producer side-these technologies fundamentally
empower the faculty member who would have less reliance on large bureaucracies
in order to deliver.
Haven't talked enough about demographics. Projects for K-12 students in
California. There will be a very different student body (more Latino than
white; increased Asian/Other). Net new wealth in Asia will be equal to that
created by Europe and United States. Statistic showing reverse relationship
between students going to college to develop meaningful philosophy of life and
be very well-off financial. (kind of like sideways 8).
Vision 2010 May 17 & 18, 1995
