Articles about transformations in higher education are being published daily, it seems.    Many of them focus on affordability and the fact that the increasing costs in higher education in the United States cannot continue to exceed inflation or the increase in earning power of Americans.  Very few of these articles, however, offer solutions or examples of solutions to the high cost conundrum.

In the September issue of Fast Company Magazine, Anya Kamenetz writes an interesting article entitled “How Web-Savvy Edupunks are Transforming American Higher Education.”  She begins the article by discussing how the internet and various applications or sites such as Google, YouTube Edu, iTunesU, Wikipedia, and Facebook have changed the way all of us share information.

Yet while colleges like MIT have placed all of their coursework online for free, an MIT degree costs about $189,000.  She cites Jim Groom, an “instructional technologist” at the University of Mary Washington as stating, “Colleges have become outrageously expensive, yet there remains a general refusal to acknowledge the implications of new technologies.”  According to Kamenetz, Groom coined the term “edupunk” to describe the high-tech do-it-yourself education.

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Whenever I can find a good book or research paper on the topic of distance education, I will usually obtain a copy in order to see if there’s a trend or idea that is worth noting or pursuing.  For a few weeks, I had noted the ad in The Chronicle of Higher Education touting their new report, “The College of 2020:  Students.”  I had to pay for the report, so I’m sure that the Chronicle wouldn’t like it if I provided a blow-by-blow description of its contents.  However, I think that they would not mind someone touting the report on their blog, so my thoughts are summarized below.  (Those interested in purchasing the report can do so at the following site:  http://research.chronicle.com/asset/TheCollegeof2020ExecutiveSummary.pdf.)  

Chronicle Research Services released the first of a three part report last month that describes the characteristics they predict that we will see in college graduates of the class of 2020.  The fundamental themes of the report are that as the class of 2020 (today’s first graders) enter their college years, their demands on colleges and universities will be drastically different from what students have previously expected, forcing higher educational institutions to reconsider their curriculums, formats, and basic characteristics.

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It is really hard to identify when ethics –or the lack thereof –became a social issue of the magnitude that it seems to be now.  When I received my MBA from Tulane in 1978, a course in ethics was required for everyone in the last semester of the two year program.  It was considered the capstone course of the MBA program and our professor utilized the case study format.  Later, when I passed the CPA exam, I had to take an ethics exam in order to obtain my license in the state of Maryland.  In the early years of my career, I remember the Ivan Boesky scandal on Wall Street in the 1980’s.  Boesky took down Mike Milken of Drexel Burnham and a few others.  Of course, most recently, we have seen the fallout from Enron, Bernard Madoff, and others.  But ethical lapses are not limited to businessmen.  Almost all of us can name a few politicians who strayed from the norm like Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, Governor Rod Blagojevich, President Richard Nixon, etc.  We can also name a few government employees who earned notoriety by selling their country’s secrets including Aldrich Ames and Jonathan Pollard.   Baseball fans might think about gamblers like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose or steroid users like Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro, and Manny Ramirez.

I don’t know if the omnipresent nature of the media has drawn more attention to ethical lapses of our political, corporate, governmental, and sports figures or if the frequency has, as I suspect, increased.  However, a recent article in the New York Times spurred me to write this piece.  Written by Leslie Wayne, the article mentions that nearly 20 percent of this year’s graduating MBA class at the Harvard Business School have signed a voluntary student oath that pledges to “serve the greater good” and to “act responsibly and ethically.”  MBA programs have not stopped teaching ethics.  In fact, Harvard, Wharton, and Columbia have several ethics classes and Wharton and Columbia have ethics centers.  I think it is good that these students created this pledge.   However, ethics is not just business ethics.  Ethics is ethics.   Good ethics is good for business.  Good ethics should be good for all of our leaders and followers, no matter what their chosen field.

Ed Strong was one of my grad school professors at Tulane.  On one of my early postings on this blog, I mentioned his name with a list of professors who I found notable for their teaching abilities when I was in college.  Ed found that posting and sent me a note.  We have remained in touch off and on through email and Facebook.  A few months ago, Ed sent me a link to one of the postings on his blog, Cabbages and Kings, and stated that I was one of his few Facebook friends who might be interested in the post.

I clicked on the link and found an interesting post where Dr. Strong shares his teaching philosophy.  He originally wrote the piece for his application for a tenure-track position at the university where he works as a full-time visiting professor.  You can read his post yourself or my synopsis below.  Either way, I think it is worth sharing.

Dr. Strong has a unique and varied teaching background.  His first teaching opportunities were with the Army where the teaching philosophy focused on the notion that only three teaching points could be absorbed and retained by students in an hour-long class.  From the Army, Dr. Strong went to INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France which uses a teaching style similar to that found at the Harvard Business School:  individual instructors are required to undertake extensive preparation, often in conjunction with other professors teaching the same or similar classes.  His time at Tulane, as he explains, brought a very different teaching experience.  Dr. Strong writes, “…I spent 34 years at Tulane, a school whose culture held that the instructor was – once the classroom doors were closed – answerable to no one for what went on in the classroom.”  From these experiences, Dr. Strong’s teaching philosophy has settled into a somewhat eclectic and, by his own admission, ever-evolving one.

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