Changing Higher Education

Creativity and the Research University:II

This is a continuation of Creativity and the Research University
II. The creative faculty

The issues are different here from those encountered in looking at student creativity, because we are dealing with a class of accomplished scholars who have already shown capacity for creativity.  Thus the environment in which the faculty work becomes a critical determinant of whether or not they can reach their creative potential.

Amabile describes some of the environmental conditions that help to promote creativity.  Among them are:

• stability of employment - this lowers attention to problems not related to the main tasks of research and teaching
• low bureaucracy - similarly, this enables faculty to keep their attention on the important things
• encourage rational intellectual risk taking, accept failure
• encourage interdisciplinary conversations - this help connections into different networks of knowledge
• expectations high but reasonable
• rewards not controlling - faculty choice in tasks, methods

In many ways, we see that the university is set up relatively well to meet most of these conditions. Tenure, for example, provides the desired stability of employment - for those who have it. Faculty are given broad choice by the university in how they will carry out their tasks.  However, even here there are reality constraints that can lessen creativity. For example, funding for the research component of the employment is increasingly difficult to obtain, and faculty generally find themselves devoting larger fractions of their effort to finding needed research funds. The funding, when found, often is narrowly defined and can squeeze out any significant creative flights of fancy. Worst of all, many universities push their faculty to have the largest possible grants at all times - it helps the rankings. Such controlling pressure probably does not lead to the highest creativity.  As Amabile has pointed out, the external funding can be most useful if it comes after the “aha” moment of creativity, since at that point it is not controlling, but facilitating.  Thus some relatively small internal funds to support research through the necessary first idea steps ultimately could lead to increased creativity of proposals.

In addition, other improvements need to be made in the existing university structure.  Bureaucracy, unfortunately, has grown significantly in universities over the years due to both internal and external pressures. Universities tend to have very intrenched administrative systems and groups, and in many institutions strong leadership will be required to create the kinds of administrative restructuring needed to create organizations that more closely meet tomorrow’s needs. For example, on many campuses I hear very vocal complaints about inefficiencies in the research offices, which seem not well organized to meet new requirements of the Federal Government, alert faculty to new research opportunities, provide timely grant financial data, etc.  Internally, the important principle of shared governance has often led to a profusion of sometimes overlapping faculty committees that both demand considerable time on the part of the participants, and lead to frustration on the part of other faculty who feel that their ideas and innovations are being subjected to unfair or confused scrutiny. 

Finally, many of our leaders do not do as good a job as they should of creating a supportive atmosphere of high expectations in their institutions.  Distinguished senior faculty are the most important players in creating this atmosphere of supportive expectations.  For example, I.I Rabi was a Nobel-prizewinning physicist at Columbia, one of the founders of modern quantum mechanics.  He was legendary in his ability to stimulate his colleagues to “try harder”. One of his colleagues was quoted in Rabi’s obituary as saying “The most spectacular thing about Rabi was that during a 15 year period there were four Nobel Prizes all in different fields of physics at Columbia.  Although Rabi wasn’t involved in the specific work, he was the key motivating person.” According to a widely quoted (and perhaps apocryphal) story, Rabi would roam the halls of the department, dropping into offices to ask about the latest research of individual faculty. When it had been explained to him, he would ask, “ Is this the most important problem in your field? If not, why aren’t you working on the most important problem?” With more senior faculty helping to define expectations like that, we would have a much more creative atmosphere!

One of the areas where universities generally are not really good is in encouraging interdisciplinary conversations.  Many claim to do it well, but when you look at it closely, few are actually good at it.  It is interesting to look at the brand new King Abdulla University of Science and Technology (see my comments here and here), which is organized with the goal of actually being at the forefront of  interdisciplinary knowledge creation: 

KAUST is a modern research university unlike any other.  The University is designed to allow physical and human networks – operating largely without regard for organizational or national boundaries – to flourish, thereby creating a critical vehicle for the exchange of ideas and the development of new knowledge.

The KAUST approach is obviously not the only one for increasing interdisciplinary activities and conversations.  However, it does give some feeling for the elements to be considered, and the significant organizational changes that might be required to maximize interdisciplinary exchange of ideas.

Transatlantic joint and double degree programs

A fascinating report Joint and Double Degree Programs in the Transatlantic Context has just been published by the Institute of International Education and the Freie Universitat Berlin .  It describes the results of a survey of American and European universities looking at the rapidly increasing phenomenon of transatlantic joint and double degree programs. The survey was not meant to be representative of activity in an absolute sense (only 180 institutions participated), but rather to show trends and developments.
The report notes:

One of the more prominent recent developments involves the emergence of transatlantic degree programs, such as dual diplomas, joint degrees, consortia and other forms of curriculum cooperation arrangements. Among European countries the introduction of joint and double degree programs has long been a vital part of internationalization strategies in higher education, helping to create stronger links and flourishing institutional partnerships,as well as preparing students for a global workplace. In the North American context, such programs have been until recently a less common feature of internationalization strategies for higher education institutions. However, the interest in curriculum cooperation is gaining momentum not only in the U.S. but in most countries around the world. In an increasingly global and competitive higher education market, collaborative programs, or “codesharing” as airlines would call it, can offer a set of advantages and are an important asset in the struggle
for attracting the best and the brightest.

The report also describes another troublesome aspect of American higher education that such programs may help correct:

Another challenge to transatlantic academic exchange is the increasing predominance of short-term study abroad programs in the U.S. While Europe still remains the leading destination for U.S. students who study abroad, the length of study abroad sojourns has declined dramatically in the past decade. Currently, only 6% of all U.S. students who study abroad, spend a full academic year in the host country, according to IIE’s Open Doors Report. The majority of study abroad programs are short-term programs of eight weeks or less, which may have only limited impact on the development of intercultural skills and foreign language immersion. Medium-term and long-term study abroad sojourns, especially if conducted in a structured way in cooperation with local partner institutions and including exposure to local student body and faculty, hold far greater opportunities in this respect.

Among the many  findings are that double degrees are much more common than joint degrees, but that European institutions offer about twice as many joint degrees as do American institutions.  The US institutions focus on undergraduate joint and double degrees, the European institutions on graduate programs.  The most common programs are in business and engineering.   The most common partners for European institutions are US institutions and other European Universities, but there are a significant number of partnerships with Latin American and Asian institutions as well. For the US institutions, European partnerships are the most common, and Asian partnerships play a somewhat more important role than is the case with European universities. 

At several points, the report indicates the importance of the Bologna process (see The Bologna process- a significant step in the modularization of higher education , Sept 12, 2008) in stimulating such programs in Europe. One very interesting sentence caught my eye:

Built on consecutive, intertwined modules, European BA programs are beginning to find new ways of integrating study abroad components into the curriculum.

Another competitive aspect of Bologna that we in the US should carefully note!

Creativity and the Research University

The world is obviously in considerable turmoil at the moment, and predictability is in shorter supply than usual.  The role of the US in the world is changing rapidly, and we must struggle to maintain our competitiveness in many dimensions.  Under these trying circumstances, I am tempted to reflect once again on what the role of the research university might be in the next decades. One of the keys to being successful in the competition of  a global knowledge economy is to be more creative than the opposition.  Thus it would seem to be a worthwhile time to reflect on what higher education can do to help creativity.  This is an open ended question, and thus the following should considered to be a beginning,  an imagination of some of the changes that might lead to a more Creative University.  I invite my readers to jump in with their take on this question.

I see that universities can contribute to the creativity of three constituencies:

• students - how do we educate students so that we unleash their creative capacity?
• faculty - how do we organize our institution and reward faculty so that they can reach their creative potential?
• regional - what role can a university play in helping a region to become a center of economic growth in creative technologies?

Before talking about these three roles, let me review some general characteristics of creativity that I find useful in thinking about this issue.  I have spoken before about Csikszentmihalyi’s systems approach .  He emphasizes that a creative idea comes out of a three-part system composed of: a domain consisting of symbolic rules and procedures; a field composed of the judges or gatekeepers to changes in domain; and the person with the idea. Csikszentmihalyi emphasizes that all must work together for an idea to be judged as creative, i.e. enter into the domain. As a consequence,  there is no such thing as a creative idea in the abstract. Rather the idea must be judged as creative by some set of humans - and the judgements may change over time as the people in the field change.

Teresa Amabile has looked in detail at the characteristics of the creative person. Clearly, there are “talents” and “personality characteristics”correlated with creativity that are to large degree innate, especially for those of great creativity.  However, there are also a number of aspects of creativity that can be very important for almost everyone. Amabile defines these as: teachable domain relevant skills; teachable creativity relevant skills; and motivation.

The domain relevant skills are really the set of facts, approaches, and connections out of which one can construct a creative solution to some problem. These  include a broad knowledge of the basic factual knowledge of the domain, the principles that pull together these facts, the techniques or scripts that have been developed to manipulate information in the domain, and an understanding of what is considered to be “new” in the domain.  A critical component of domain skill is that the facts be organized and stored in the individual’s mind according to general principles, not specific contextual tidbits.  This is often referred to as expert knowledge, and it leads to flexibility of thinking within the domain, rapid recall of facts, etc.

There are many creativity relevant skills described by Amabile and others. Among the most important are: breaking perceptual set, that is being able to see objects, ideas in new ways ; understanding of and comfort with complexity; keeping responses open as long as possible; suspending judgement; using wide categories to categorize information in order to better see relationships; having the ability to break out of well used algorithms, scripts; and knowing  creativity aids (heuristics)  for generating new ideas.

Amabile has shown that creativity most often correlated with intrinsic motivation - self determination.  And correspondingly, extrinsic motivation most often negative in stimulating creativity - it is the opposite of self determination. Extrinsic motivation can be positive, however, if it seems to confirm competence without connoting control.  It can also be beneficial if it enables the individual to do exciting work, again, without seeming to connote control. For example, after the famous “aha” phase of creativity, there is a period in which considerable work is needed to test the viability of the idea, and move it along to a point that the field can begin to evaluate it. Extrinsic motivation (resources) can be invaluable and positive at this point.  In my view, two of the most important results concerning the motivational aspect of creativity are that failure is a necessary part of the creative process that can provide valuable information, and that institutional encouragement of creativity is very important.

Yet a third aspect of creativity that can be useful in imagining what a university can do has been described by Richard Ogle, who views creativity from a network perspective. He also emphasizes that the creative person is not alone. She is hooked into a network of ideas created by others - the domain, and into a network of the field that will judge her ideas.  Learning how to get into these networks is critical, and much of creativity can be viewed as being able to see how to hook into a different network of ideas and bring some of these ideas back to your network.  My favorite demonstration of this aspect is described in my discussion of InnoCentive, Inc.

I will consider the first of these three areas of the creative university, the creative student, in this post, and the other two in a subsequent post.

A major contribution to our understanding of for-profit higher education

As I went over the not-done parts of my “to do” list from 2008, I found that I had never gotten around to a post about an excellent book on for-profit higher education written by two of my USC colleagues, Bill Tierney and Gib Hentschke.  So although it is a year late - I want to comment on what is now not -so-new, but still excellent New Players, Different Game: Understanding the Rise of For-Profit Colleges and Universities, by William G. Tierney and Guilbert C. Hentschke.

Few issues in higher education produce more heat than the role of for-profit higher education.  Extreme positions abound, generally based on statements of high principle that are only marginally related to real conditions.  Rational discussions based on reality and facts are hard to find.   In this charged atmosphere, Tierney and Hentschke (T&H) have done an excellent job of providing an even-handed, broadly ranging discussion of for-profit higher education that is based on real data involving both for-profit and non-profit worlds of higher education
.
T&H begin by boldly stating on page 1 that “for-profit institutions represent a new, fundamentally distinct type of postsecondary education.” They then spend the next 200 pages comparing and contrasting the for-profit colleges and universities (FPCUs) with traditional non-profit colleges and universities (TCUs).  They look at customers, organization and governance, aspirations and missions, outcomes, etc. They describe strengths and weaknesses of each system with respect to a variety of  viewpoints and policy perspectives.  Importantly, throughout the book, T&H remind us that there is not “a” model either for FPCUs or for TCUs.  Rather, each system is notable for its considerable diversity in most of the parameters that they consider.

Along the way, they invoke Clayton Christensen’s powerful theory of disruptive technologies  to consider ongoing change within the TCUs as compared to the innovations being produced by the FPCUs.  In this context, T&H pose the theme for their work: “The question, then, is not simply whether for-profits are at work inventing and implementing disruptive technologies, but how these technologies will be manipulated and used in advancing a postsecondary education.” 

In order to answer this question, T&H consider the changing environment for higher education generally, and ways in which some of these changes have favored the for-profit sector. They provide solid data on growth in the for-profit sector - types of students, types of programs, degrees and certificates, revenues, etc.  They also look closely at differences in governance and finance between the two sectors, and how these differences drive many of the external aspects of the sectors. Important questions of  public policy relating to differing possible outcomes of higher education are raised and discussed at some length. 

The final chapter reinforces the five themes that have run through the book and that the authors believe will frame postsecondary education in the coming decades: the changing environment for higher education generally; innovation in higher education; issues of delivery and content; increasing amalgamation of cultures due to blurring borders between the FPCU and TCU sectors; and increasing differentiation between individual institutions.

Overall, this is an outstanding and, in many ways pathbreaking, contribution to our understanding of the ongoing evolution of postsecondary education in the United States.  I recommend it to all who are interested in more fully understanding the for-profit higher education sector.

Changes in science teaching - and learning

The New York Times had a very nice article yesterday (1/12/2009) on new ways of teaching freshman physics. I have written previously about some of the drivers behind these new approaches (A D- in science education) . A key driver was the demonstration that students generally were learning only a small percentage (about 30%) of the concepts  that were being taught in the courses, and that this result was independent of lecture quality, class size, or institution.

The article focuses on MIT’s new method of teaching freshman physics courses, Technology Enhanced Active Learning, or TEAL .  I visited MIT last year to look at the changes, and found them to be very impressive.  The old lecture and lecture hall are gone, replaced by an interactive space where students working as groups learn from each other and from other groups, with a faculty member providing guidance and brief presentations of principles.  Data I was shown on learning were very positive, and indicated that the new methods were working very much better than the old.  Still, as I talked to some of the senior faculty in the department (i.e. my age peers), I found significant support for the old methods of teaching and learning - “they worked for you and me”.  The article notes this ongoing discussion in the department. It also notes that no other science department at MIT has changed its teaching approach.  That raises the question - have the other fields (e.g. math, chemistry, biology) looked at whether their students are really learning the concepts being taught in their courses?

Up the street from MIT at Harvard, Eric Mazur was one of the very early proponents of these new methods of teaching.  He has an article in the January 2, 2009 issue of Science (p.50, subscription required) describing his own transformation from lauded lecturer to leader of the movement away from lectures.  He also tells us what he thinks has been accomplished:

Data obtained in my class and in classes of colleagues worldwide, in a wide range of academic settings and a wide range of disciplines, show that learning gains nearly triple with an approach that focuses on the student and on interactive learning

That is a pretty good argument for interactive learning.  However, Mazur also describes the personal cost to him of the changes

So, evidence is mounting that readjusting the focus of education from information transfer to helping students assimilate materials is paying off. My only regret is that I love to lecture.

Change is hard, even when it is desired.

Laureate keeps on building a global brand

Doug Becker, the CEO and Chairman of Laureate, has done a masterful job of inventing a truly global university.  He and his excellent team have built a very visible, positive global brand for Laureate, one that depends on more than their many campuses spread around the world.  He has understood the importance to his brand of working with international public agencies such as the World Bank, and having a visible presence at international meetings on higher education.  

This photo captures perfectly one of Becker's more recent steps in global brand building.  At the December 3, 2008 the Clinton Global Initiative Asia Meeting, Becker announced an international scholarship initiative for deserving teachers around the world to enable them to get an advanced degree in  education, business, or information technology. Laureate will award 1,000 scholarships in this program, which is named in honor of Richard W. Riley, former U.S. Secretary of Education during the Clinton Administration.  The scholarships will be to attend institutions in the Laureate International Universities network.  Because the network has universities in 20 countries, this program likely will both be widely visible internationally, and have local impact in areas where the awardees teach. Of course, because the network is so large and well developed, the marginal cost to Laureate of these scholarships will be small. Other competitors -all smaller- would have difficulty in getting such a beneficial impact/cost from a similar brand-building effort.  Another example showing that size matters, and Becker and his team are working hard to capture first-mover advantage in the field of global higher education .

New global higher education activities by the Apollo and Carlyle Groups

 

A little over a year ago, I noted that the Apollo Group (parent of the University of Phoenix) was partnering with the global investment firm Carlyle Group to form a joint education venture called Apollo Global.  At the time of the post, it was not at all clear what the strategy of Apollo Global would follow, although some analysts had suggested that it might be similar to that of Laureate.  So it clearly is time for an update on Apollo Global, and in the process, on the educational ventures of the Carlyle Group

On Feb 28, 2008, Apollo announced that Apollo Global had made its first move by agreeing to purchase a university in Chile:

Universidad de Artes, Ciencias y Comunicacion ("UNIACC"), an accredited, private arts and communications university in Chile, as well as its related entities. This includes the Instituto Superior de Artes y Ciencias de la Comunicacion, S.A. ("IACC"), the first online autonomous professional institute in the country which was founded in 1981.UNIACC, founded in 1989 and based in Santiago, Chile, has over 3,000 students and three campuses.....
UNIACC is one of the leading arts and communications universities in Latin America and is renowned for its high-profile faculty and state-of-the-art technology. Accredited by the Chilean Council of Higher Education, UNIACC offers 18 bachelor's and two master's programs. In 2004, UNIACC became the first university in Chile to teach a fully online undergraduate program, and today offers six fully online and one blended program, mainly serving the needs of working adults.

Earlier, in September 2005, The Carlyle Group bought a majority participation in a private university in Mexico, Universidad Latinoamericana, S.C. (ULA).  The Carlyle website indicates that in November 2006, it purchased the remainder of ULA. Finally, in August, 2008, Carlyle moved some of its ULA holdings "from one pocket to the other", when it sold 65% of ULA to Apollo Global (which it owns in part), retaining a 35% holding directly.  This then gave Apollo Global a majority stake in a Mexican university, ULA:

Founded in 1975, ULA is renowned for its dentistry, medicine and communications programs accredited by the Ministry of Public Education (Secretaría de Educación Publica, SEP) in Mexico. ULA carries authorization from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM) for its high school and undergraduate psychology and law programs. With four campuses throughout Mexico, including two in Mexico City, one in Tlalnepantla de Baz, and a fourth in the city of Cuernavaca, ULA offers 27 degree programs and has more than 4,000 students.

Thus over the past year,  Apollo Global has established a presence in both Chile and Mexico, and has done so following Laureate’s approach of purchasing existing institutions.  Of course, Laureate already has a very large presence in both Chile and Mexico - and around the world.  It will be interesting to see what Apollo Global does in the future to differentiate its strategy from that of Laureate - and to provide more substantive competition to Laureate globally.  Will Apollo Global make some use of the enormously successful model developed by its sibling the University of Phoenix as it moves forward?

Meanwhile, The Carlyle Group has made a new investment in global higher education. On November 27, 2008, it  announced a $50M (US) investment in Hao Yue Education Group, a prominent Chinese provider of private higher-education.:

Hao Yue was founded in 1997 by Mr. Zhou Jiting and his team. Since then, its flagship school has grown to more than 30,000 students with two campuses in Beijing and more than 200 hectares of campus area. It is now one of China’s largest private universities based on student enrollment, campus area and registered capital. There are more than 1,500 full time teachers among the nearly 30 secondary colleges and schools under the school, offering more than 130 majors....
The business model of Hao Yue’s university puts career training and development at the core of its service proposition, offering a career-oriented curriculum that equips its students with strong practical skills and puts them in touch with a wide employer network. It emphasizes internships for students to gain proper pre-employment training. During the last few years, Hao Yue’s university graduates have enjoyed a high employment rate of approximately 80%.

The announcement acknowledges the “global market turmoil”, but describes China’s education sector as “resilient”. It is nice to know that a group with money is still bullish on higher education!