One of the most maddening things about higher education journalism is the widespread assumption of fragility.
Take the notion of vulnerability to technological disruption. The most recent example of this is a piece from University World News (which really should know better) entitled “Can Universities Survive the Digital Age?” It’s an absolutely ridiculous question that could only be posed by someone who knew virtually nothing of the history of universities.
Every time there’s a technological innovation, somebody thinks the university must be in trouble. Only 24 months ago MOOCs were going to kill universities. In the mid-1990s there was loads of techno-fetishist nonsense about the Death of Distance, and what it would do to education. Before that it was computers (check out this cute piece from the 1950s), and in the 1960s and 1970 it was television (remember the University of the Air?) – although the earliest predictions about the effects of TV on education date back to the 1930s. And before that, it was radio that was going to revolutionize education. And before that, as Gavin Moodie reminds is in this fine article (longer version available here), Gutenberg and the printing press had the potential to “disrupt” higher education (why go through all that oral disputation in Latin if you could just read a book in the vernacular?).
The fact is, every time there has been a change, universities have found a way to incorporate the new technology. New technologies never replace previous channels of knowledge transmission – rather, new channels are just added to existing ones (this is of course is a major reason why technology is usually a source of university cost inflation, rather than a cost savings). Universities adapt. Because the point of a university is simply that it’s a place where people gather to learn and discover using all sorts of tools, not just (as some reformers seem to think) via oral communication.
But it’s not just the techno-fetishists who think universities are fragile. People are always worrying about whether institutions can survive “cutbacks” (a term people use even though operating grants have been increasing continuously for over 15 years at a rate well above inflation). Of course they can. You can cut universities forever, and they will still function. Look at universities in Africa, operating in conditions of unimaginable penury. Look at universities like Beijing or Tsinghua, which moved their operations thousands of km (on foot) in order to stay open during the Japanese occupation. Or look back at Canadian universities in the 1930s, when most universities lost half of their funding (or more in the case of the University of Manitoba, where the bursar made off with the endowment). They survive.
They survive because communities have pride in even the tiniest universities, and sustain them as best they can. They survive because at least part of the academy will remain to the bitter end, wanting to continue in the mission of transmitting knowledge. In the midst of wars and famines, universities have survived, sometimes in the most treacherous circumstances imaginable.
Universities are like cockroaches: they are almost impossible to kill. They’ll be here after the apocalypse. The idea that a temporary loss of income or some minor technological advance will do them in is simply laughable.
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Lovely post! Lovely metaphor! But, a big enough shock could kill some of them, and/or make the survivors smaller. And we need to be ready for that. We won’t always grow, in numbers and in size. Especially if the population stops growing. And managing a growing university (“where do I hire new profs?”) is easier than managing a declining university (“where do I fire old profs?”).
(And thank you very very much for what you said about my blog post a few days back.)
I’ve written more than a few times about silly forecasts about higher education’s demise. However, the endurance of universities in the face of cutbacks, new technologies and so on has less to do with the community wanting to sustain their local institution, than the ability of the institution to ward off new and better solutions to learning that upset the institutional model.
You note that “every time there has been a change, universities have found a way to incorporate the new technology.” Yes, universities incorporate new technologies, but only those aspects that fit with its current design. Those aspects that challenge the existing model are jettisoned. Frequently, this removes the value that new approaches and technologies can offer. The current approach to online education taken by our colleges and universities is an obvious example. Despite the ability to use online learning to personalize learning, measure learning outcomes, employ simulations, and reduce costs, the majority of institutions have managed to turn this potentially revolutionary addition to higher learning into slightly more convenient version of the early 20th century correspondence course.
I think Keith’s point about existing institutions being able to “ward off new and better solutions” suggests where the existing institutional model may be vulnerable. The question is less about the universities surviving than about the current enterprise models surviving (with implications about which institutions will thrive and which may not…).
See Stanford2025.com for some scenarios of possible future models that hint at some of the ways our universities may begin to diverge from the existing enterprise structures.
Hmmm, reminds me of the statement, “too big to fail”.
Well put. I’d just add that the constant drum-roll of existential threat seems designed to destroy the university as such, justifying things like the end of tenure, “disaggregation” or merely a more overbearing audit culture.