The Huffington Post is putting a healthy amount of blame for the mounting cost of higher education on OPM partnerships. Is that the most deserving target?
Grow Up and Knock It Off!
Higher education is broken. I’ve talked to educators and administrators from the most famous institutions on the planet. All of them have horror stories of how impossible it is to overcome the baggage, the traditions, the paradigm that is higher education. Not the Ivy Leagues, not the most innovative community colleges and not even the for-profits who were designed to do exactly that. The system is broken and at this point it’s hard to find anyone or any way to fix it.
Is ASU Innovative?
The normal dysfunction of higher ed was clarified for me by a professor at ASU. He was explaining how impossible it was to create a curriculum map. He said that they have potentially 10 or more versions of any given class, often under different departments entirely. Those 10 versions of the class are taught 10 completely different ways with no more than a nod to outcomes and objectives. So, trying to find “the” course of truth to use for a large-scale experience is impossible. They ended up creating yet another version from scratch. That description is not only the opposite of innovative, it’s not even inline with the most effective practices for education.