Transcript Framing the Conversation - East

Framing the Conversation About the
Knowledge Society
John Hawkins
Deane Neubauer
Senior Seminar EWC-MQA
October 21-23, 2007
Some Issues to Keep in Mind
• Higher Education is in a highly dynamic state and it is
hardly uni-directional
• The rates of change for HEIs and the nature of those
changes may be more rapid than we are accustomed to
• At the core of much of this change are all those “things”
that make up the emergent knowledge society itself, e.g.
new technologies, new languages, novel notions of
“connectivity”, information/knowledge overload, “haves
and have-nots”, social networks, etc.
• As we talk, here are six other “things” to keep in mind as
frames or context elements for our discussions
Exponential-ism
• The most extreme of knowledge theorists, e.g.
Kurzweil (The Law of Accelerating Returns), posit
the exponential growth of information, knowledge,
and computing
• By these arguments we stand on the threshold of
vast and significant changes in how we create, use,
transmit information and communicate
• The critical questions are whether such changes will
change the university as we know it (As seemingly
they must!) and how?
Slipping Away
• What are the dominant and pervasive change
models in higher education?
• Is change positive and purposive? or
• Is change more reactive and less conscious?
• What is the relationship between our institutional
change processes and their linkage to social change
needs? Who is in charge?
Mission Change and Creep: what
should higher education Do?
• Arguably “teaching, research, and service” are all
changing—in kind and in terms of their
relationships to each other
• To what extent will HEIs take on missions that align
with “who will pay”?
• How will HEIs be brought into the great questions
of our age: global inequality, conflict and peace,
climate change and sea level rise?
The “Student”
The world faces at least thee modal demographic patterns—
all evident in Asia
Growing older
Staying younger
Steady maturity in persistent population growth
Devising education, including life-long education, to meet
alignment and capacity needs across populations
 Revising the student with respect to: gender, age, social
resources, and repetitive learning needs, and longer stays in
university
 Shifting from a “teaching paradigm” to a “learning
paradigm”
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Presentation to KMUTT, October 11, 2009
The Persistent Ambiguity of
the “Alignment” Issue
• The complex issues embedded in the
“vocationalization” of higher education
• The marketplace as an area of constant change and
mixed signals
• How “reactive” should HEIs be in this interaction?
Characteristics of Model
• HEIs created own industries off-site; royalties fed
back to university
• Rise of multi-disciplinary curriculum and research
centers
• Economic crisis further differentiates research
centers in favor of market attractiveness
• Value of research is to the degree it creates wealth-research innovation web
Characteristics of Model
• Shift away from “a research tradition that has been
independent of outside interests (Korten)
• Context of: declining public funding, rise of neoliberalism, concern with alignment with “real
world”
• Industry support of shift as cost-effective for
development teams
Role of Students in New
Model
• Both graduate and undergraduates now regularly
participate in research: UC over 50% of UG
involved
• Inequality that has always characterized these
relations is more pronounced
• Exchange system with industry--students as gifts to
industry
UCLA’s Clean Tech Project
• UCLA/USC; City of LA; NSF; Chamber of
Commerce; various firms in LA area
• Bringing together of multi-disciplinary centers at
UCLA to create new technologies for
commercialization
• Goal of job creation
• New IDP for students; job alignment
Partners
• UCLA; USC; Cal Tech
• Mayor of LA: Community Redevelopment Agency;
LA Business Council; LA Department of Water and
Power
• Several Business in the LA Area
Role of UCLA “Centers
• C Energy, Science and Technology
• C Embedded Network Sensing
• C Climate Change and the Environ.
• C Climate Change and Solutions
• C Corporate Environmental Solutions
Students
• New IDP Established: Leaders in Sustainability
• MA Degree: Science and Business
• Funding from NSF
• Job Alignment
Can Everyone do This?
• It is expensive if done in the dominant paradigm
• But an emerging trend pioneered by MIT and others
point to a new paradigm
• MIT Open Source; China Open Resources for
Education (CORE)
• The Million Book Project; Dspace; Google Library
Project; etc.
Enduring Questions of Public
and Private
• What prevailing notions of public and private, state
and market, will follow this recent ascendant period
of neoliberalism?
• Who are leaders and who are followers in social
discourse over “the public good” as it embraces
higher education?