Given the tectonic shifts in
the education marketplace and in the workforce, if I were a University
President, or member of the Board, I would try to move an institution long-term
into being a Science/Tech/Engineering/Math (STEM) institution, with humanities
in support. If I were a faculty member (which I am), I would look at the
writing on the wall, and seriously look at how humanities could support STEM,
for the very continuity of an institution. I don’t think anyone would argue
that the days are numbered when a majority of students will accept the
traditional requirements of a four-year degree. For better or worse, the shift
is already happening,
What I would suggest, as a tool
for institutions, whether they are STEM, or traditional, is M-STEM. The “M” in
M-STEM stands for Modular, which provides a context for drawing in other skills
when they are proven to support the needs of companies and society.
For example, in a recent report
by Payscale, Harvey
Mudd College
tops out Stanford, even Harvard, etc., on ROI, because they go beyond STEM,
by helping their graduates communicate. The reason Mudd graduates are
appreciated in high-tech, is because:
"Our alumni know how to
write, communicate with broad audiences, work across disciplines and work
collaboratively rather than competitively," said Thyra Briggs, the
school's vice president for admission and financial aid. "We hear
repeatedly from employers and graduate schools that our alumni are often
'translators' in their offices and graduate programs."
So I think that M-STEM could
provide a way to help higher education evolve and thrive, especially in the
large swathe of mid-level private schools, who neither have the power of
top-tier schools, or the support of state funding. But even “top tier” schools could
benefit from an M-STEM approach, and I believe an open curriculum is the
answer.
What exactly the “M” in M-STEM
would entail would be up for debate, but one suggested approach is to connect
Marketing to STEM education, partly to provide a context for teaching effective
writing skills, but also because marketing is directly relevant to any
scientist or technologist or engineer these days, who often end up being
directly involved in a startup.
Also, I reflect on the nature of my own experience – as a
technical writer, I found that technical writing is really about translation,
and ultimately leads to crossover with marketing, product design, and consumer
validation, where concepts need to be “translated”, so they can be explained to
the end user. So I believe that marketing would be a natural context for
teaching writing.
But some institutions may even
need help just getting into marketing, and for them, I would suggest “CASA” – a
focused curriculum based around the core activities in digital marketing.
http://www.casamarketing.org
For some
institutions, this may be the first move into competency-based learning in a
serious way.
So philosophically, where do I
fit in? I can see the completely data-driven argument that would throw the
cannons overboard (humanities). But as a matter of societal continuity, and as
a practical matter of helping people communicate, I think there’s a strong
argument for having the option of humanities, and in some cases, the continued
requirement – writing and history, at the very least. (I am not in the least against the humanities! Undergrad I was a Literature major - but then I was an unemployed Literature major.)
Really what’s happening in
higher education, if you weren’t aware, is what’s happened in a variety of
other industries. The easiest way to get it is to think of social media. It
used to be companies could broadcast a single advertising message and consumers
were forced to absorb it in channels chosen by companies. Now the completely
opposite is true – there’s so many options out there, that it’s all
consumer-driven.
So the “writing on the wall” is
that education will also become increasingly consumer-driven. For example, I
agree that a learning environment that recognizes and strengthens particular
“
innate intelligences” is important. (Howard Gardner, Harvard University’s
“Project Zero”
)
So I would agree that adaptive
learning to deliver higher value relative to innate ability areas or
intelligences is important, certainly in college, but even in high school or
earlier. I would suggest that anyone who would want to do this, could and
should pay close attention to
Beansprock, a new startup oriented around
job search, where the same principles could be applied and integrated with
education.
However, an immediate-term
practical direction where an institution could go would be to escalate and
pursue areas within marketing that are in the top skills areas to get people
hired. I believe these could be a strong contextual platform for transforming an
institution into an M-STEM school, upping the ante on a school like Harvey
Mudd. In other words, the Payscale article I referenced unearths an opportunity
to be at the cutting edge, and contextualized integration of writing
into a STEM curriculum would be bleeding edge.
So what I would suggest to any higher education institution
(including Harvey Mudd) is:
1) Move forward to equip
students with digital marketing skills, using an open curriculum like CASA (
http://www.casamarketing.org), both
for the skills themselves, but also for a context in which writing can improve.
I authored the CASA curriculum; every course results in certifications, it is
already having a measurable impact on job placement, and it is based on hard
data. (see how
LinkedIn data helped to inform the curriculum.)
2) For traditional institutions
who either don’t have a focus limited to STEM, or who have “some” STEM, I would
suggest gradually explore how to move the institution increasingly towards STEM,
based on the data of where the jobs are - not necessarily where student
interest is - but also balanced with where jobs actually are. In other words, every student has a plan "B" that is aligned with the actual job market, and maybe it becomes their plan "A". I would suggest that faculty and administration debate requiring
STEM for every student, either in a
concentration, or major, and incentivizing it (with scholarships). And I would
also suggest putting the “M” before STEM, and integrating writing-communication
with the context of marketing. Then, part of the debate can become how the
humanities could play a supporting role, but where existing or new faculty are
also incentivized to cross-train in marketing.
So who the heck am I? I have been in the humanities
as a student, graduate student and I am a professor of Marketing, but my PhD degree
was technical writing. I’ve also worked for a variety of small, mid-sized and
large companies, experienced layoffs, transitions, worked with startups, and
also survived the Recession.
http://linkedin.com/in/tekelsey
More recently I did some work at a national company that
supports college bookstores, and I got a full dose of the extremely rapid
evolution of educational technology and for-profit colleges. I’ve also taught
in the classroom, as well as online. I am the author of 10+ books (for which I
received an advance, and in some cases, royalties), but on the verge of joining Benedictine University, I was prompted to start
writing free textbooks, and that’s how
CASA came about – I felt sympathy for
students paying the high cost of textbooks. I was also involved in developing free learning material
during my PhD research. As a faculty member, I long for tenure, but I don’t
take it for granted, and I think any faculty member with their eyes open needs
to start looking at colleges as a business.
As for me, earlier in my
career, I was a writer and musician, and had no interest in the way money
flowed, but then after being laid off a few times, the shock of it helped me to
wake up a bit, and a mentor said “Todd, you need to follow the money trail”. It
doesn’t mean worshiping money, just understanding how a business works. And
colleges are businesses.
What I see, including in the
Payscale article, the blog post of mine and the data there, and in the insights
of educational leaders, is that the data and trends will drive an institution
into the ground, or greatly reduce its footprint, if an institution doesn't
start changing course, now.
Other than the two steps above,
I propose, and maybe even prophesy, two perspectives on the challenges facing
higher education:
Medium-term: integrate innate
intelligences, digital marketing and go multilingual: To me, integrating
alignment of innate intelligences could be brought into required
"assessment" courses, and other medium term "course
adjustments" could include increased integration of digital marketing (ex:
http://www.casamarketing.org).
Long-term: It may be that
digital marketing, going multilingual, and integrating innate intelligences
could help an institution survive with some incremental, increased revenue. However,
for survival, if you look at trending, it seems that long-term a STEM direction
would be needed. You could even use M-STEM as a placeholder - M-STEM could
initially mean digital marketing applied to STEM. But then long-term, the
underlying transition of an entire institution towards a primary emphasis on
STEM could take place.
And this question of
institutional continuity might not be medium-term/long-term. It might be
short-term/medium term. If you look at research on Post-Millennials, it points towards
the need for evolution. Education is not alone, companies need to know this as
well –we’re not talking about Millennials, we’re talking about
post Millennials (Gen-Z). For example,
there is a strong
"Gen Z" analysis on Slideshare that has had 400k
views, and underscores the importance of needing to face the next demographic
shift.
What it says to me is that change
is definitely coming, and it is coming soon.
One other comment I'd make is
that I've witnessed or personally experienced mergers and acquisitions
and consolidation in "maturing" industries, such as
newspapers, educational publishers, etc. Mergers and acquisitions and
consolidation are a kind of release valve, where assets are preserved through
consolidation. But I don't see this happening in education, (except in for-profits),
so it basically says to me for colleges:
"Consolidation
is not an option, so it's sink or
swim"
And my purpose in this blog
post is to invite individuals and institutions to go
swimming, either with
M-STEM, or just by exploring something like
CASA.Neither are finished; they are works in progress, and barely just begun. But CASA at least is beginning to produce results.
If you have any thoughts, it would be great to hear them.
