The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of
Higher Education from the Inside Out
By: Ken O’Donnell, Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Policy for the Office of the Chancellor of the California State University
Henry Eyring of BYU-Idaho got a lot of attention with last year’s publication of The Innovative University, an insider’s account of changes to the higher ed business model. BYUI has pursued online learning and year-round operations to rationalize its costs of instruction, taking some cues from the for-profit sector.
Eyring began by observing that higher ed may be slow to adopt online learning, owing to a rollout that coincided unfortunately with the tech bubble. He said in the decade or so since, the technologies have gotten stronger while higher ed’s finances have weakened, making alternate delivery more attractive.
He went on to ask us to think about industries vulnerable to disruption, versus those that aren’t. Our suggestions:
Disruptable:
- newspapers
- airlines
- photography
- music distribution
Not Disruptable:
- household goods (e.g. soap)
- theme parks
- sports franchises
- fast food
- hotels
From that list, you would expect universities to be relatively durable. Like theme parks, we “bundle” services on a single site– things like buildings, people, and experiences. By contrast, the newspapers’ tactic of bundling their cost center (reporting) with a revenue center (classified advertising) became their undoing when the two functions were decoupled five or six years ago.
Eyring doesn’t believe higher education has seen the full effects yet of the unbundling that on-line learning represents, but it’s clearly under way. Aside from the online phenomenon, there’s also our bundling of lower-division coursework (a revenue center) with graduate research (a cost center), making us vulnerable to disruption. Our best defense is to take a cue from Harvard’s recent commitment to contain costs.
Eyring closed the session by observing that our moment of transition calls for a new kind of Morrill Act, referring to the 1862 legislation that created the land-grant universities. By underscoring our national commitment to learning, it reconfigured public education for generations afterward. We may be at a similar turning point.
