But the plates are moving. Last week Apple announced that they are going into the textbook business. For centuries, the reason that professors and teachers were important was because there were few books and teachers with access to books held the knowledge of the ages. Even after the printing press, books were dear and so we built great universities with great libraries so that we could distribute humankind’s greatest assets. These days, with digital media, the world has changed and knowledge is oftentimes available with a simple keystroke. These changes have thrown the publishing business into a tumult. What’s the importance of the university as a knowledge center when Google provides access to every great work known to humans through Google Scholar?

The movements of these plates push up against centuries of tradition and we are beginning to see dramatic changes in the landscape. Sebastian Thrun, a tenured Stanford professor, announced that he was abandoning his computer science teaching position to capture a bigger audience. After having taught a class on online artificial intelligence to more than 160,000 students, he admitted that he couldn’t continue to teach in a traditional setting in much the way that professors have been teaching for centuries. He is using new technologies to provide incredible access and even one-to-one tutoring by leveraging connection capabilities. He will start up Udacity as a low-cost university that could provide access to millions of potential students.

If we are not prepared, structures not designed for the moment will be severely damaged. Consider MIT’s self-learning project called MITx and a similar project by Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal, that pays select students $100,000 NOT to go to college. In this way, students will identify the skills that they need for their own life, earn “merit badges” that certify to others that they have the knowledge and skill, and bring an electronic portfolio of real samples of work so that in interviews, rather than speaking about things, potential employers can view actual work samples. I have always questioned what the magic of 120 units is? How does that assure us an educated or even trained graduate? Technology is making individualized course curriculum not only acceptable but perhaps preferred.

What becomes of our environment as these plates move? Anyone who has been through an earthquake knows that they are at once exhilarating and deathly frightening. The world is changing. Connection technologies have proved a powerful force but it is not without consequence. Students still need to be concerned with depth as well as breadth, and while each can come to truth from different directions, some directions are more costly and painful. If education is prepared for the next shift, we can look to new and better landscapes that come as a result.

Well, the digital literacies required to post a status update on Facebook are the same skills students need to navigate the online territories of academe. Explicitly, 21st century higher education requires students navigate administrative services and learning communities that exist entirely in cyberspace. Library catalogs, for example, are only accessible via electronic infrastructure. E-mail is a primary way students communicate with professors outside of class. Computers are no longer a futuristic choice proffered by technology enthusiasts; they are the mainstream access route for resources and communication within academe. If you can Facebook, you can probably navigate the trickeries of online course registration each term.

But there’s more: digital literacy research suggests not only that there is a link between online social networking habits and academic writing, but also that cultivating this link improves college readiness. In particular, Facebook has been empirically shown to support rhetorical skills and foster pro-academic behaviors such as accruing social capital and negotiating the politics of student identity (but that’s another post for another Thursday).

The point is simply that Facebook is an asset. So be grateful for that long lost junior high school boyfriend or girlfriend whose contact gives you an opportunity to practice your online skills. Whether you respond with a friend request or fiddle with you privacy settings to prevent further contact, Facebook skills transcend the Facebook platform. You are readying yourself for the 21st century!

In engineering an “angle of repose” is the angle at which soil finally settles after, for example, being dumped from a mine as tailings. The term in Stegner’s novel describes the meanderings of the protagonists, the Ward family. They initially try to make sense of their lives in the West and hopefully one day will return to the East as successes. Scott points out, however, that Stegner’s angle of repose is actually a moment when there is no more significant movement; the people have found a place to rest; Stegner’s characters do not return to the East triumphant. The angle of repose is where people live out their days. Dynamism has ended.

Scott worries that higher education has reached its angle of repose. I have heard similar concerns from many people. I spoke with an older colleague and mentor some months ago and he also suggested the same point. He looked back on a very productive academic career and wondered if the last half century was academe’s golden age. In effect, the last half of the 20th century was a period of dynamic change for higher education, and the first half of the 21st century will be our angle of repose.

What would our angle of repose look like?

If for-profit higher education is 12% of the market today, think of it as 33% in 2025. I don’t see the curricula or delivery model of for-profits changing dramatically, so expect increased emphasis on vocational training and an increase on part-time faculty delivering online courses. All but a handful of public universities will be populated by non-tenure track or part-time faculty. The curricula will still have a smattering of general education courses, but mostly be focused on training. Some elite private universities such as my own will remain similar to what they are today, but the small local and regional privates either will have gone out of business or have been taken over as franchises or chains.

Tenure will be rare. The research function at most institutions will have been eschewed and teaching loads for full-time faculty will be dramatically increased. Student debt, even as higher education gets more efficient, will increase as we shift from a belief that the state should pay for access to higher education to an assumption that the responsibility primarily lies with the individual. The social nature of academic life will have gone the way of drive-in movies; campus life will be looked on as a quaint vestige of a distant past.

Assume that what I’ve written is correct. What will be lost with such a portrait? And if you don’t like that portrait, what’s the vision you want for higher education and how do we get there? Let’s think about that over the next few weeks.

As regular readers of the blog know, I am conducting an ethnography that focuses on the lives of 17- and 18-year-old male teenagers in a low-income neighborhood. My sample includes a range of participants organized into three categories: low, middle, and high academic achievers. A small percentage of adolescents do not consistently use social media. Those teens— illustrating that opportunity aggregates discriminately in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods—most often live in low-income households, have the worst grades, and uneven access to technology. The majority of students, however, regularly use social media, especially Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. It is a critical part of their lives.

How does a researcher incorporate social media data into a study? Few ethnographers blend real world and digital data; danah boyd is the most obvious exception. Even fewer methodologists have provided practical guidance. That should be of no surprise considering the sluggishness of the publication process and the rapidity of technological innovation and adaptation.

Researchers cannot ignore social media; however, students are adopting it in numerous ways, which makes data collection difficult. To make things even more complex, a divide still exists between the physical and digital worlds. In the future, apps like Path will potentially blend the two and provide innovative data collection tools and access previously unavailable. But, for now, we are in a sort of technological and methodological hinterland.

During my study, I have approached social media data as part of document analysis. I friended and/or followed my participants and created lists in Facebook and Twitter. Everyday, I have checked the lists. For notable posts, I have done screen captures and uploaded and coded them using Atlas.ti—an alternative, as my colleague June Ahn did for a recent study, would have been to create a program to collect the posts.

Last week, I sat in a 12th grade class. The 40 students listened attentively to the teacher, or so I thought. As I checked Facebook, I saw a post from one of the students: “LMS [like my status] if you want to date me.” I also saw a series of tweets from another student who was chatting with a friend. Both appeared to be listening in class. This example illustrates the value of collecting social media data. The scenario also highlights the value of social media data for trustworthiness. How does a researcher know his observations and interpretations are accurate? Social media data presents an option for triangulation.

Educational settings are complex. Social media and technology only adds another layer to the complexity. Just as technology is changing the ways in which teenagers interact, it will also reshape every aspect of qualitative research, from collection to presentation. The challenge facing all qualitative researchers moving forward will be to integrate technology into their own methodological thinking.

At the same time as we heard about this request another friend at a respected small, private college told me that his administration had told the faculty that they all needed to take a 10% reduction in salary next year. The college is tuition-driven and the tuition is high. Faculty often don’t understand budgets. They will teach the same classes from year to year and they will barely recognize that their class size has shrunk from 19 to 16; what they will observe and complain about is that they have seen a rise in mediocre students. For a small institution which needs to bring in 200 students a year to balance the budget, a decline of only 30 students can be a real problem. One way to lessen the problem is to admit 15 students who normally should not be admitted. Nevertheless, a shortfall of 15 students who pay full tuition still presents significant problems.

I bring these two disparate economic tidbits together because they reflect the new normal. Some people can’t afford high tuitions and others don’t think it’s worth the cost. After our friend’s request we thought of others we know who may be in similar straits. Off the top of our heads we thought of six friends. Recent data points out that almost half of the country is one catastrophe away from the kind of situation our friend has. One problem is the horrible shape of the economy; the other is that there is no safety net. The move to the political right signals the message that we are all on our own; the government’s role is not to lend a helping hand. A stark individualism personifies the philosophy of Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek, the framers of the Republican Tea Party agenda.

My purpose here is not to delve into right-wing economics, but I do think that the thinking that has set the current agenda does not auger well for higher education. People are going to be unable to continue to pay the tuition that they once paid. State legislatures are going to be unable and unwilling to fund higher education in a way they once did.

Unfortunately, if we look at the current cutbacks from state governments and the responses by most public institutions we find one of two responses—resistance or resignation. Resistance is futile; we can say “you shouldn’t cut the budget” but they will—and did. Resignation is what is happening at my friend’s private college. The assumption is that if we hunker down “this too shall pass.”

Actually, resistance does not have to be futile. We would need more organizational capability than the Occupy Wall Street protests have shown, but one possibility could be a movement aimed at defeating the ideas of Rand and Hayek. But that is a long-term strategy that I do not see bearing fruit any day soon.

Resignation is futile. “This too shall pass” is a recipe for disaster. Assume a family comes upon hard times and the parents decide they have to eat less. That’s okay, but if the budget continues to constrict they simply can’t continue eating less or they will starve.

The vast majority of our traditional colleges and universities are in trouble because they have chosen to eat less. The result will be that within a decade we are going to see a great many small local and regional liberal arts colleges go out of business or merge. At our community colleges, state public universities, and elite public institutions we will see a gradual erosion of quality.

The times call for deliberate action which requires courage and a clear sense of where we want to go.

Further, for the sort of allegations that have occurred he should have kept the executive committee of the board briefed and it appears that he did not. There is a well-known assumption that public boards of trustees hate their presidents and private boards of trustees love theirs. Antagonism is not an effective strategy for a board, but a love affair also enables boards to overlook flaws. Penn State’s Board acted more like a private board with President Spanier. He had been a successful and well-liked president for a great many years. Powerful and well-liked presidents, however, can make for administrative laziness that results in the sort of scandal that ultimately brought Spanier down.

There is always a delicate balancing act between what a Board should know and what the President (and the administration) should handle. I have seen intrusive board members who have destroyed campuses by their desire to have their fingers in activities where they had no business. But how is it possible that senior members of the administration and the president were testifying before Grand Juries and the Board did not know? How is it possible that serious allegations against a well-known employee had been made and the President never thought to tell the Board?

We can say that the President should have told the Board, but again, the culture of the university was such that the Board didn’t expect to know. Sure, the President should have been fired. But the Board needs to rethink how it functions and this brings me to my final point.

Our national associations have largely been quiet on this whole scandal when instead what we should have seen was a coordinated action. The AAUP, to their credit, put forth a (predictable) statement that said, in effect, “This is the result of a lack of shared governance.” Okay, fine. But I am troubled that the faculty at Penn State has largely been silent. There’s nothing stopping them from trying to rethink more aggressively the kind of teaching and learning environment that exists at Penn State that enabled these actions. There’s nothing stopping the faculty for demanding better structures and processes. There’s nothing stopping the faculty from saying that big-time sports of this sort have to end.

The NCAA’s response has been laughable. The NCAA are enablers and little more. ACE—the presidents’ association—has had nothing to say, and the trustees group—AGB—also has not found their voice. This is a moment that calls for coordinated action. We do not need more hand-wringing or haranguing. What we need is a more thoughtful, proactive statement about what we value in higher education, the culture we expect on our campuses, and what that requires from everyone.

When such crimes occur on hallowed ground introspection needs to occur, and from that, may come a renewed hope for the high expectations we must have for one another.

We are in a litigious environment and I suspect that one hesitation may have been that hearsay is just that—someone is reporting what he heard. But a crime does not get to be solved by a university administrator. The university has to figure out how to deal with the individual, but it is the local police who have to investigate the crime. It seems that the administrators failed on both fronts. They neither informed the police as quickly as they should have nor did they help the police with their investigation. They also took no action other than telling Sandusky not to bring children to campus.

What might have been done differently? It is stunning that the university did not seem to have procedures in place with regard to how to handle such a situation. I do not think that we should have rules and procedures for every conceivable action, (how could we) but not to have thought through the consequences of actions is a failure of leadership which results in administrators making up what they needed to do as events unfolded. A larger issue is that the culture of the administration seemed to be one of evasion rather than forthright conversation and action.

Let’s assume that immediately after Paterno reported the incident the two administrators called Sandusky into their office, said that they had to report what had been told to them to the police, and had called him because they wanted to speak with him. Let’s also assume that they had heard previous rumors about Sandusky, but Sandusky also said, “I have done nothing wrong. All I did was horseplay. I’m innocent.”

The job of administrators is not to be judge and jury. They also are not to be the police. We also have the stated belief that an individual is innocent until proven guilty. But it is very strange indeed that the administrators did not suggest, and then require, Coach Sandusky to stay away from campus. He was retired and thus no longer an employee. Even a public institution has the right to determine who gets to use the facilities and who does not.

I don’t like the bravado that many have suggested about how they would have treated the coach. But I like even less a cultural framework that dodges hard issues and has no procedures in place about how such issues should be handled. Indeed, the latter enables the former.

Even then, he had that sort of star power and coaches shouldn’t. I am schizophrenic about college sports. Ever since I was a little kid I have rooted for favorite teams and I still love going to games or watching them on TV. But as I’ve mentioned before big-time football does long-term severe physical damage to some of our students; the culture of football and college sports also can be so strong that it corrodes what academic life should be.

Paterno did what he was supposed to do. We all are taught that when someone comes to us and says that he or she saw something on campus we are to report what we heard to our superiors—immediately. Yes, I have my suspicions that Paterno somehow knew what was going on long before the alleged event in the locker room, but I’m not trying to be Sherlock Holmes. I am more concerned where sports, or any individual or unit, for that matter has such power.

We might try to brush off what happened because Joe Paterno was such an outsized personality. I’ve written previously that if a survey were done he would be the most recognized name in all of higher education. It is a sad commentary on the state of higher education that we have so few individuals associated with academe who are known by the public. At one point, individuals such as Robert Hutchins were nationally known. John Dewey was voted one of the 20 most admired men in America.

What does it say that in today’s America we have not Robert Hutchins or John Dewey on the national scene and instead people can only speak of a football coach? The current structure of college sports is not a viable model. The culture of the Penn State athletic office and the manner in which Coach Paterno functioned is a model of how big-time college sports has gone wrong. The problems that occurred were highlighted by a single incident, but it’s the cultural framework that enabled that incident to occur that needs to be acknowledged and changed.

Here are five events from my past that I have been thinking about in relation to this event. I have previously mentioned two of them. (1) When I was an undergraduate at Tufts I worked at a homeless shelter. I was good enough that they put me in charge of the building on Sunday afternoons when no one else was around—a rarity. I had the capacity to resolve conflicts without getting into fistfights and the administration and the homeless residents trusted me. At all other times we had a bunch of staff, but they figured Sunday afternoon was a quiet time and I could handle the 200 men until the evening staff arrived at 5:00 p.m. One afternoon, John Wilson arrived and he had a bottle of whiskey with him. He started drinking. Drinking was not allowed and I told him he had to leave the building. He said he wouldn’t. I told him he had to leave. He pulled a gun on me and pointed it at my chest. I threw him out of the building. (2) A few weeks later another similar event happened with a different (taller and younger) guy. This time he pulled a knife on me. I was less cocky, but I knocked the knife from his hand and threw him out of the building.

Make my day.

Flash forward to about 10 years ago. (3) We have two grocery stores near our home in Los Angeles; Gelson’s is where the upscale folks shop, and Ralphs is where people on a more limited income go. I go to both stores and over the years I’ve grown comfortable in Ralphs. One day I arrived mid-afternoon and near the juice there was a mother who was slapping the hell out of her young child. The little girl was screaming bloody murder—I would have, too—and people either walked by as if nothing were happening or avoided the aisle. I stood at the end of the aisle and watched. A thin older black woman stood near me and she eventually touched my elbow. “Do something,” she said, “now,” and gave my elbow a shove toward the mother and daughter.

I’ve thought of her command a lot over the last few months. I didn’t really know what I was going to do but I wandered down the aisle and when I got to the orange juice I started babbling at the mother, “Do you know where the OJ with pulp is? I really like pulp in my OJ! How about you?” I kept asking her questions and eventually she pointed to where the juice was. I don’t know how long I stood there but I know it felt like a long time. In acting like a fool (something that comes naturally) I was able to get her to take a breath. She stopped. When I left the store I saw her in the checkout line and her daughter was sucking on a candy. As I drove away I wondered if I should have called child services.

(4) About a year ago I went out to get my double espresso on a bright sunny day. Near the library was a young man who was clearly acting psychotic. Okay, maybe he wasn’t “psychotic.” But he was acting in a way that everyone was giving him a wide berth and he was banging his head against the library wall. I got my coffee and wondered what I should do. I was surprised, just as with the incident at the grocery store, that people seemed to wander by as if everything was normal. I went to my office, called the campus police, and told them to go to the library. The dispatcher said, “Are you sure? No one else has called.” I said in my best “doctor” voice, “I’m a tenured professor at this university and I’m telling you I’ve seen something that is extremely troubling.” She said okay, and a few minutes later a police car arrived and I saw them take the fellow away.

(5) And then last October when I was driving home I pulled up to a red light in the left lane. Two cars were stopped in the right lane and the guys were out of their cars yelling at one another. They turned to get back in their cars but the guy in the second car said something and all of a sudden the guy in the first car came running back and started punching the guy in the chest and head. Both guys were fighting as I sat there in my car. I thought of popping my head out of my sun roof and telling them to knock it off but I didn’t. The light changed and I drove away. I asked a few younger (and bigger) guys than me what they would have done and they all said, “Drive away. Don’t get involved.”

You’re thinking that these events are not equivalent to what the grad student saw in the locker room. Exactly. “Extra-ordinary” events are just that—one of a kind. We never really know what we will do when something happens like any of these events. In our macho environment we all say that we want someone to go ahead and “make my day” but I never felt that way when I’ve stepped into an altercation.

The real test is not what will happen when something unexpected pops up. What we need to do is do a better job in preparing people—students—about what is right and wrong and how we are to treat one another. I’m not a fan of bravado, but neither am I content with the sense that we live in an atomized society where we have little, if any, obligation to one another. The graduate student’s reaction is emblematic of a situation where people seemed to care very little about one another. The failure is not only in a locker room or athletic department; it’s a sense that care and concern for one another is not central in the culture of our institutions.

I still think I should have tried to stop that fight.

My purpose here is not to get into the criminal aspects of this case. Instead, I want to focus on four key parts to this drama. Let me review them here. (1) A graduate student allegedly saw Coach Sandusky raping a young boy in a shower late at night. The graduate student freaked out, talked to his father, and the next day they reported the incident to Joe Paterno. (2) In turn, Coach Paterno reported what he had been told to his two superiors and supposedly did nothing else. (3) The two administrators told Sandusky not to bring children to campus anymore and supposedly engaged in a cover-up and lied to a grand jury. (4) The President said he had complete confidence in his administrators and had not known about the details of the crimes. The Board met and fired Coach Paterno and President Spanier at an emergency meeting late at night. The students rioted. In the subsequent months several more victims have come forward and alleged abuse at the hands of Mr. Sandusky.

When this story broke Barry and I happened to be in Pittsburgh for Barry’s dad’s 95th birthday (a delightful event). As soon as I read the report on Saturday morning, I told Barry that this had national implications and the president could be fired. By Sunday I was pretty sure Paterno and Spanier would not survive. The Keystone Kops manner in which the Board of Trustees acquitted itself during the week could be a case study in flawed communicative strategy, but over the next several days I’ll focus instead on what I think these events suggest for our campuses.