State Agencies and the Space for Change
Justin Bathon on Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 2:30PM Had the pleasure of filling in this morning at a meeting of the Council on Postsecondary Education in Frankfort. They had invited Curt Bonk down from IU to come talk to the Board and in a follow-up meeting with higher ed. faculty in the state. It was informative and I found myself taking a lot of notes (which is a sure sign that I'm learning something because I usually don't).
What struck me though as CPE folks were talking, and inviting University folks to chat as well, is that state administrative agencies, such as CPE, are going to quickly be ahead of our universities in the mentality needed to meet the demands of the digital, global age. For instance, Dr. Bonk brought up Open Access Journals, and I suggested this is an area where CPE could become involved by recommending to universities that scholars publish their works in locations where the people of Kentucky can access them (i.e. not your traditional, academic publishing house journals that are only purchased by university libraries). The people of Kentucky paid for that work, they might as well be able to read it, right? Well, CPE seemed on board, the University reps ... not so much. And, therein lies a very difficult problem when the very people the state relies on for change and new ideas, are the ones that are innately resistant to that change.
This level of innate resistance in universities, especially public universities, has been brought about by years and years of traditions, bureaucracy, and ethics. This innate resistance stops university folks from even considering the arguments in the first place. On the open access issue, for instance, I would challenge anyone to consider the arguments for and against with an open mind and conclude that traditional paper journals were the superior publishing outlet. But, it is not that university folks are stubborn in holding to the wrong side of the argument ... it's that they don't even consider the argument as an argument in the first place.
Collectively, this is why we need state actors to force us to at least consider the arguments. Consider online teaching. Consider tenure and promotion changes. Consider integrating with K-12. Consider lifelong PD relationships. Consider it all, frankly. Nothing should be off the table in an environment where universities are struggling to survive anyway. And so, while it is necessary for grassroots movements to push universities from the bottom up, we also are going to need a good deal of top down momentum. The fact CPE would even consider bringing in Curt Bonk is encouraging. CPE gathering faculty together is another encouraging sign. So, I'm hopeful. But, I hope they also see the space they are creating within that environment and very carefully consider which voices are included - because the space created by those conversations has a direct correlate with those voices.
After all, I was at that meeting by accident. I was just filling in for someone else. Had the composition of that room been different, without strong voices creating the space for change, I'm afraid a very different conversation would have ensued.
Reader Comments (4)
This is an important post, Justin, and I agree with you that higher ed is BEHIND on all of this. I think you're fortunate that CPE is pushing on this front. I think most of us do NOT have state agencies that are leading the way in this area. Instead, they're just as behind as P-12, higher ed, state and federal legislatures, etc. So consider yourself lucky. What you describe is not the norm.
Well, I am glad to hear that Scott, and I can't tell you how fortunate we have been to have the support of almost all the state government leaders of our various administrative agencies (can't say that about the legislature, but that's because I haven't spoke with many legislators ... yet, anyway). I do feel there is a bit of a "we can't lose, so we might as well try" mentality in Kentucky and whether that is because it is Kentucky or we just happen to have a fortuitous group of leaders it's hard to say.
But, I also think that there are those in state government that are willing to listen. I agree there are probably not a lot of natural digital leaders in that group currently, but having worked with state education leaders in 3 states now, I have always been pleased with their ability to listen to new ideas. I think they almost always find themselves in situations where "change" is required. Very seldom do we hire a state administrator and tell them to keep the status quo. So, selling them on change I frequently don't think is the issue. It's the type of change that's the issue and where folks like you and me have to make hay. But, so much groundwork has been laid already by folks like Friedman, Wagner, Christensen, Gladwell, yourself and others that I think the argument is increasingly falling on favorable ears.
The beauty from my perspective is that the kind of change that we are frequently talking about fits so naturally with the kind of change they have wanted to see for years. For years they have wanted to see the recalcitrant universities engage K12. For years they have wanted scholarship to penetrate beyond the academic journals. For years they have hoped the universities would maintain learning relationships with alumni. The Internet facilitates all of those favorable transactions and, thus, puts additional pressure on institutions to consider their old traditions. Thus, I think there is really a natural alliance between their goals and the natural results of digitizing and globalizing the institutions.
When are "we" starting an open-access ed. law journal? (see e.g. Siemens' model: http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/journal.htm)
Also, see the comments about "interactive open access publishing and peer review" in this article: http://cameronneylon.net/blog/peer-review-what-is-it-good-for/
I'm serious 'bout this...
JB
I'm working on it Jon. We have been in discussions with ELA from a couple different angles, and I think it is coming eventually. It's hard to force them to move quickly, but on the other hand I really value the legitimization that a professional organization as the sponsor can provide. So, we must be patient and keep making the arguments - because that's really where I see us going. In fact, it is really "going back to." Prior to the 1950's - 60's, most publishing in the U.S. was by professional organizations, not publishing houses. The publishing houses came in when mechanization made it profitable to publish and sell journals back to the academics. But, publishing houses are only useful when they made the process simpler, easier and cheaper. With electronic publishing, none of those are the case anymore and so I see us eventually cutting them back out unless they find a way to actually provide a useful service that a professional org. with a techy and an editor can't provide on their own.
On the issue of peer-review, yeah, there are serious flaws and certainly too much reliance. As an editor for EAQ (ed. leadership's premier journal) I can pretty confidently say that peer-review is not adding a whole lot that a good editor couldn't do on their own. In fact, as the link you provided showed, in some fields a very good argument could be made that peer-review is actually a substantial impediment to innovation ... in a time when we need a lot of innovation.
If we can get to a place where we have an informed marketplace of ideas (yeah, a very big IF), then we could rely more heavily on the market to regulate the value of ideas instead of so called "peer-review" experts, who frequently are quite ignorant of most of the detail in a given field. Blogs, of course, already function in this marketplace and based on hits and other stats, one can determine quite readily a blog's value to a professional community.
Anyway, we just need to keep working on it. The institutions will change or they will die ... one or the other (doesn't even matter that much to me which one).