There has been growing talk about the "crisis" in higher education.
Politicians are calling for major overhauls of both public and
private colleges. Tuition is still outpacing inflation even in the
face of a tsunami of bad press. The public is rapidly losing
confidence in the ability of higher education to provide the tools
today's students require. There has been a flood of books in
response to these criticisms from both the left and the right.
Authors from inside and outside of the academy have offered their
diagnosis. In The Idea of the Digital University, the authors argue
that the forces that have brought about these changes are the very
tools we need to solve them. They show how the university has to
adapt to the digital age while keeping what is most essential to
its mission. In 1852 John Cardinal Newman wrote The Idea of the
University which has been required reading ever since. This book
begins with the issues that he dealt with and updates the
discussion for the digital age. Employing history, philosophy and
survey data, the authors show the impact that digital technologies
have had on higher education. By going back to the works of such
thinkers as Aristotle, Kant and Newman, the authors show how the
essence of the university can not only survive but also thrive in
the new digital age. If colleges create, store and share
information does it not make sense that the digital revolution
(which changes the way we create, store and share information)
would shake the university to its very foundation? The authors, who
have together spent more than seventy years in higher education,
give us a blueprint for what can be saved and what needs to change.
Controversial, polemical and expansive this roadmap for the future
will be sure to make a good read for those interested in the future
of higher education. From Kirkus Review: A sweeping study of the
university structure, emphasizing how higher education must evolve
in a digital era. The mass adoption of online technology has
pervaded every manner of business; universities are no different.
In fact, as McCluskey and Winter suggest in this probing work, "the
digital revolution is changing the very DNA of higher education."
Still, "the university has come late to the digital revolution,"
and the authors explore the reasons why. In text that's both
interesting to read and carefully researched, McCluskey and Winter
discuss the role and structure of the university in general,
lending a historical perspective while continuously drawing
comparisons and contrasts between the traditional and digital
university. The authors address in detail the most obvious evidence
of online influence-the growth of online courses-but they pay equal
attention to broader implications: the opening up of new avenues
for library research, the shift away from paper-based student
records and the fundamental change in the way professors teach
students. The authors often return to the notion that "Big Data
will impact how the university sees its students and their
learning." McCluskey and Winter cite Target, the retail chain, as
being exemplary in its use of customer data, and they directly
relate those efforts to the ways in which universities will have to
use "Big Data" in the future "to see where education is succeeding
and where we have work to do." The authors also raise the issue of
nonprofit versus for-profit universities, the latter having
expanded largely because of online course offerings. Rather than
take a position in favor or against for-profits, however, the
authors diplomatically discuss some of the ways the nonprofit and
for-profit institutions could learn from each other. Finally, the
authors offer their own perceptive assessment on what the digital
university might someday look like, postulating about dashboards,
data warehouses and digital report cards. Comprehensive, insightful
and visionary.
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