21st Century Scholar

There is a classic Abbott and Costello skit called “Who’s on first?” where Costello gets befuddled by the names of his friend’s team. We are close to getting into that situation without half as much humor in academe in terms of academic offerings. Not so long ago if someone wanted a bachelor’s degree we would [...]

For-profit colleges and universities, whether we find them to be friend or foe, are now deeply woven into the fabric of U.S. higher education and society overall. As the 2013 American Educational Research Association Conference in San Francisco draws near, I am particularly excited about sessions that explore for-profit higher education and the changing nature [...]

Yesterday we left off having discussed two disruptive criteria. Today, we will continue with four other criteria. Let’s rejoin Ms. Interviewer and Mario … Ms. Interviewer: Mario, welcome back. Let’s continue. Here is a question that captures the third criterion: Is/was the disruptive innovation produced outside the established value network of traditional colleges and universities? [...]

Clayton Christensen’s examples of disruptive innovations in the private sector show they are usually brought to market by new organizations that, well, disrupt the market. Both these characteristics fit well with breakthrough business model innovation on the adapted Tucker framework I have been discussing. So, in this sense, disruptive innovation is not a framework in [...]

The framework I described and adapted from Robert B. Tucker, in yesterday’s blog, is applicable to higher education. Let’s review a few examples. Historically, the community college stands as a key innovation in the industry. Interestingly, the birth and maturation of this new breakthrough business model did not signal the death of traditional four-year institutions [...]

Innovation is a “hot topic” in higher education, but what does innovation really mean? All colleges want to be seen as innovative. But the implications of truly creating or adopting an innovation in higher education necessitate that we move beyond journalistic hyperbole and the administrative and trustee habit of promoting their institutions as innovative because [...]

Thomas L. Friedman recently wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times entitled “Revolution Hits the Universities.” Friedman’s piece was an enthusiastic endorsement for MOOCs and MOOC companies like Coursera, as he chronicled anecdotes of students and Ivy League faculty conveying their transformational MOOC experiences. Friedman tells of a Cairo MOOC student who was [...]

A growing amount of the discourse on bolstering the U.S. workforce has emphasized how higher education can facilitate such growth. Particular emphasis has been paid to vocationally-oriented institutions of postsecondary education and if they are doing a suitable job in preparing students and getting them jobs. My own research agenda now centers on providing an [...]

Is it easier to talk about institutions of higher learning than the students that attend them? This seems to be the case especially as it pertains to adult students in higher education. There has been growing debate regarding the drivers of postsecondary innovation—for-profit colleges, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and other technologies. These “innovators” are often cited as the reasons for [...]

After a week’s worth of lectures in Sydney I had a splendid time touring Western Australia. We trekked 60 kilometers in three days on the Bibbulmun Track (now we only have another 940 kilometers to complete its entire distance!). We also did our fair share of wine tasting along the Margaret River, visiting friends, and [...]