Iceland was a canny choice for a Summit. Literally in sight
of the house where Reagan and Gorbachov met in 1986 (Berlin Wall fell in 1989),
it was a deep, at times edgy, dive into the future of education. When people
get together and face up to rifts in opinion and talk it through – as the
Reagan-Gorbachov summit showed, things happen – well maybe. Here's my ten takeaways from the event (personal).
1. Haves-have nots
First the place. Iceland has eemerged up through the
Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which still runs right through the middle. Sure enough, while
here, there were political rifts in the US, with the Coney-Trump farrago, and a
divisive election in the UK. It is clear that an economic policies have caused fractures
between the haves and the have-nots. In the UK there’s a hung Parliament, country split, Brexit
negotiations loom and crisis in Northern Ireland. In the US Trump rode into
Washington on a wave of disaffection and is causing chaos.
But let’s
not imagine that Higher Education lies above all of this. Similar fault lines
emerged at this Summit. As Peter Thiel said, Higher Education is like
the Catholic Church on eve of Reformation, “a priestly class of professors….people buying indulgences in the form of
amassing enormous debt for the sort of the secular salvation that a diploma
represents”. More significantly he claims there has been a ‘failure of the imagination, a failure to consider alternative futures’.
Culture continues to trump strategy.
Higher Education
is a valuable feature of cultural life but people are having doubts. Has it
become obese? Why have costs ballooned while delivering the same experience? There
are problems around costs, quality of teaching and relevance. Indeed, could Higher
Education be generating social inequalities? In the US and UK there was a
perception, not without truth, that there is a gulf between an urban, economically
stable, educated elite and the rest, who have been left to drift into low
status jobs and a loss of hope for their children. The Federal debt held on
student loans in the US has topped 1.5
trillion. In the UK, institutions simply raise fees to whatever cap they
can. The building goes on, costs escalate and students loans get bigger. Unlike
almost every other area of human endeavor, it seems there has been little
effort to reduce costs and look for cost-effective solutions.
Recommendation: HE must lower its costs and scale
2. Developed-developing
The idea that
the current Higher Education model should be applied to the developing world is
odd, as it doesn’t seem to work that well in the developed world. Rising costs,
student and/or government debts, dated pedagogy and an imbalance between the
academic and vocational, renders application in the developing world at best
difficult, at worse dangerous. I have been involved in this debate and it is
clear that the developing world needs vocational first, academic second.
Recommendation: Develop different and digital HE model for developing world
3. Public-private
In an odd
session by Audrey Watters, we had a rehash of one of her blogs, about
personalized learning being part of the recent rise in ‘populism’. She blamed
‘capitalism’ for everything, seeing ‘ideology’ everywhere. But as one brave participant
shouted behind me “so your position is free from ideology then?” It was the
most disturbing session I heard, as it confirmed my view that the liberal elite
are somewhat out of touch with reality and all too ready to trot out old
leftist tropes about capitalism and ideology, without any real solutions. The
one question, from the excellent Valerie Hannon, stated quite simply, that she
was “throwing the baby out with the bath water”. Underlying much of the debate
at the summit lay an inconvenient truth that Higher Ed has a widespread and
deep anti-corporate culture. This means that the public and private sectors
talk past, and not to, each other. This is a real problem in EdTech. Until we
start talking to each other, like Reagan and Gorbachov, this wall will not
fall.
Recommendation: Stop talking past each other, talk to each other
4. Research-practice
Session
after session laid out established and recent research in cognitive psychology
and educational research, which showed the redundancy of the lecture as a core
pedagogic principle. Data was shown of shockingly low attendance in lectures
from both the US and the UK. The illusion that Higher Ed teaches critical
thinking was also exposed by Ben Nelson (critical thinking by the way isn’t
really a thing in itself). Arun’s study in Academically Adrift, of 2332
students, in 23 institutions, over 4 years, showed a worrying lack of success
in critical thinking, complex reasoning and written
communication. Harold Beckering gave a brilliant talk on how
we learn through the correction of errors, yet teaching methods fail to
recognize this core cognitive fact. Roger Schank eviscerated current pedagogy
with its lazy obsessions with lectures, and marking. Think of parents, he
pleaded, did you ever give your kid a test or mark them?
Recommendation: Don’t lecture me!
5. Teaching v research
Astin’s study of 24,847
students, in 309 institutions, looked at the correlation between ‘faculty orientation towards
research’ and ‘student/teaching orientation’ and found them to be strongly negatively
correlated. Student
orientation was also negatively related to compensation, with a “significant institutional price to be paid,
in terms of student development, for a very strong faculty emphasis on research”.
This should come as no surprise. Research
skills require systematic thinking, attention to detail, understanding
of methods and analysis. Teaching
skills require social skills, communication skills, the ability to hold
an audience, keep to the right level, avoid cognitive overload, good pedagogic
skills and the ability to deliver constructive feedback. An additional problem
being the exponential growth of Journals and, some would say, 2nd
and 3rd rate research. The swing away from teaching towards research
over the lasy 6o years has been well documented by Jencks, Boyer, Massy and
Bok.
Recommendation: Research
is not a necessary condition for teaching – break the link
6. Building v online
Most campuses look as though they’ve been built by
committee, often a rather ugly assembly of disparate buildings – that’s because
they have been built departmentally. The architecture reflects the fractured,
departmental nature of the organisation. Encouraged by endowments, where alumni
want their name, if not in lights, in concrete – the building goes on. Yet the
occupancy rates of University buildings shows an appalling return on
investment. At the same time there is often a small and tactical approach to
online delivery. It is perhaps time to consider, what John Daniel called, a ‘default
to digital’ for some courses.
Recommendation: Build less. Balance out the capital budget with a substantial digital
budget
7. Inside-outside
HE is
unlikely to change from inside, as culture trumps strategy. Substantial,
strategic change - online courses,
rebalancing academic/vocational, pedagogic and technology shifts are more
likely to come from outside of academe, influence and action through political
policies, technological shifts, new models such as MOOCs/online courses and use
of technology by students. Sure there’s some good and real change happening
within HE but they tend to be, and remain, outliers. The core system is in
stasis.
Recommendation: Open up to outside, not just with technology
but culturally
8. Tech v anti-tech
In
technology, AI was the hot topic, and rightly so. I gave a session devoted to
its application in learning, others also, and it was a recurring theme. To be
honest, AI is not really the right phrase, let’s just call it smart software.
We had a marvelous talk from Nell Watson on the transformative nature of
machine learning, another from Valerie Hannon making a similar point about the
complexity of the problems we face and the need for smart, technological
solutions in education. Peter O’Driscoll also showed how tech ‘jerks’ people
around in institutions but rather than retreat into culturally safe, luddite
shelters, we need to embrace the technology to do good.
Recommendation: Embrace transformative technology
9. Culture v strategy
Culture trumps strategy. Budgets, chasing ratings, quality
systems, building programmes, obsession with lectures, research-driven
teaching, an anti-corporate, internal-looking culture always trumps strategy. Change
management (planned and executed) is the way to go and we can learn a lot about
how this is done in the outside world – not by writing reports but by creating
a sense of urgency and sustained action. No matter how many summits, reports
and horizon scans we have – ‘the best way to predict the future is to create
it’ (Alan Kay). That means recognising the issues and taking a strategic
approach to solutions.
Recommendation: Strategic, costed initiatives with change management
10. Academic v vocational
There’s
always been a tension between these two but the pendulum may have swung way too
far towards the academic. Roger Schank and I made passionate pleas for more
learning by doing and more apprenticeships. It’s no accident that Germany is
Europe’s strongest economy – they have balance in their educational system. Guess
what happens – within 48 hours Trump issues a major policy announcement
recommending precisely this. We’ve already done this in the UK with 0.5% of
payroll (by law) going towards apprenticeships.
Recommendation: Rebalance academic and vocational
Conclusion
As if by
magic, which of course it is not, within 48 hours of our Summit, there was a major
briefing from the White House about building skills and apprenticeships, exactly
what Roger and I had been talking about. (There is a link which will be
revealed later.) It’s a pity that it’s taken a Trump to get this going – but
hey – I don’t care where it comes from – good policy is good policy. It is an
example of what I was talking about. Paraphrasing Alan Jay, we can take the
future into our own hands or let it just happen.
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