Higher Education Is Stuck in the Middle Ages -- Will Universities Adapt or Die Off in Our Digital World?

By Don Tapscott, Edge. Posted June 17, 2009.

So why hasn't it happened yet? "It's the legacy of established human and educational infrastructure," says Proenza. The analogy is not the newspaper business, which has been weakened by the distribution of knowledge on the Internet, he notes. "We're more like health care. We're challenged by obstructive, non-market-based business models. We're also burdened by a sense that doctor knows best, or professor knows best."

"There are a lot of sacred cows," he said. Why, for example, are universities judged by the number of students they exclude, or by how much they spend? Why aren't they judged by how well they teach, and at what price?

The digital world, which has trained young minds to inquire and collaborate, is challenging not only the lecture-driven teaching traditions of the university, but also the very notion of a walled-in institution that excludes large numbers of people. Why not allow a brilliant grade 9 student to take first-year math, without abandoning the social life of his high school? Why not deploy the interactive power of the internet to transform the university into a place of life-long learning, not just a place to grow up?

Old Paradigms Die Hard

Yet the Industrial Age model of education is hard to change. New paradigms cause dislocation, disruption, confusion, uncertainty. They are nearly always received with coolness or hostility. Vested interests fight change. And leaders of old paradigms are often the last to embrace the new.

Back in 1997 I presented my views to a group of about 100 University presidents at a dinner hosted by Ameritech in Chicago. After the talk I sat down at my table and asked the smaller group what they thought about my remarks. They responded positively. So I said to them "why is this taking so long?" "The problem is funds," one president said. "We just don't have the money to reinvent the model of pedagogy." Another educator put it this way: "Models of learning that go back decades are hard to change." Another got a chuckle around the table when he said, "I think the problem is the faculty -- their average age is 57 and they're teaching in a 'post-Gutenberg' mode."

A very thoughtful man named Jeffery Bannister, who at the time was president of Butler College, was seated next to me. "Post-Gutenberg?" he said. "I don't think so! At least not at Butler. Our model of learning is pre-Gutenberg! We've got a bunch of professors reading from handwritten notes, writing on blackboards, and the students are writing down what they say. This is a pre-Gutenberg model -- the printing press is not even an important part of the learning paradigm." He added, "Wait till these students who are 14 and have grown up learning on the Net hit the [college] classrooms -- sparks are going to fly."

Bannister was right. A powerful force to change the university is the students. And sparks are flying today. There is a huge generational clash emerging in these institutions. It turns out that the critique of the university from years ago were ideas in waiting -- waiting for the new web and a new generation of digital natives who could effectively challenge the old model.

Changing the model of pedagogy for this generation is crucial for the survival of the university. If students turn away from a traditional university education, this will erode the value of the credentials universities award, their position as centers of learning and research, and as campuses where young people get a change to "grow up."

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Don Tapscott is the author of 13 books on new technology in society, most recently Grown Up Digital. He recently completed a $4 million dollar investigation of the Net Generation. He is Chairman of the think tank in Genera Insight and an Adjunct Professor at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.

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