Change We Must: Deciding the Future of Higher Education

College is too expensive for too many; politicians call for more financial support but approve far less; underpaid and overworked adjuncts teach vastly more than the impressive faculty who drew students to campus; departments and administrations focus more on protecting their territories than on pedagogy or even management. Technology is extolled and resisted, hyped as the force that will utterly transform or deform education. It seems clear that the American system of higher education is broken.

No one “fix” will serve. In a series of essays collected and edited by Matthew Goldstein, credited with reviving the vast but waning City University of New York, and George Otte, Director of Academic Technology at CUNY, well-respected and innovative educators offer solutions to the fiscal, administrative, pedagogical, technical, and political problems. As the editors say of their fellow contributors, “Their solutions mean changing hearts and minds as well as budget processes and governance, managing change and technology as well as teaching and learning.”

Among the solutions:

• Break the centuries-old models of brick and mortar education and replace it with online, peer-led, and adaptive learning.
• Re-envision governance so even reluctant faculty and administrators can once again become invested in education rather than self-interest.
• Implement innovations that demonstrably work and earn faculty buy-in.
• Find innovative ways of promoting the changes American education so desperately needs, including figuring out when and where students are most likely to learn.

With solutions from such stellar educators and thought-leaders as Cathy Davidson, Candace Thille, Ray Schroeder, James Hilton, and Jonathan Cole, Change We Must is a must-read for anyone wanting American higher education to succeed and thrive in these challenging times.