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The Innovative University

The Innovative University

This blog title is the same as a book by Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring published earlier this year. Clayton Christensen has been lauded many times as one of the best thinkers on the planet by Forbes and others. He came to my attention a long number of years ago with a book titled: How Will You Measure Your Life.” You should read it; it will provoke serious thinking.  Dr Christensen left us in January R.I.P.

The Innovative University was published in 2011 but it is very appropriate today.

But let me start with the theme of customer service. Schools are no different than any other business which is supplying a product or a service to a customer. In the Industry in which I spent my career, the Construction Equipment Industry I wrote often in my monthly columns about customer service. I would like to highlight some key points on customer service from a book titled “The Discipline of Market Leaders” written by Michael Treacey and Fred Wiersema. They focused on three areas: –

  1. Operational Excellence

Offering attractive pricing as well as convenience and reliability

  1. Product Excellence

The result of product of service performance excellence

  1. Customer Intimacy

The use of “micro” marketing to work with smaller segments of the market.

Educators need to pay more attention to these three items.

In the customer service world, there is a long-standing perspective that says “if you are going to be mediocre – stay mediocre – don’t confuse your customer.” Well let’s apply that to education. How consistently does the customer get a “consistent” offering of learning? So there is the first question to be answered? Who is the customer? In the Innovative University they say it is “Alumni and State Legislators. I say it is the Students and their Parents. The second question is – What IS a learning offering? What are the schools teaching? It used to be that schooling was put in place to provide professional personal development to students to prepare them for a career. That the career would be contributing to society and provide productivity and profitability for the employer. Is that what we are dealing with today?

The total student debt in the US in 2019 reached an all-time high of $1.41 Trillion.

One of the interesting aspects of education in this “disruptive world” is that although we have seen many new “entrants” to the learning platform we have seen very few “exits.” The book used as the title of this blog had a goal “to inspire today’s higher education community to do what it did in the late 1800’s when Harvard and its ‘peers created a new model of higher education.”

So, let’s take a deeper dive into education. To start with education is typically the largest discretionary item on the budget of the states. In most states it is on the chopping block or at least subjected to large tuition and other related costs for the student to pay. Are we getting our money’s worth? Are we getting work ready people with degrees? I won’t answer that question as I think it is quite obvious as to the answer.

Over the years we have seen some dramatic changes in education. In 1929 – 1930 there were 248,000 public schools.  In 2015 – 2016 that number dropped to 98,000. Elementary schools have changed their approach with Middle Schools and Junior High Schools but the total number of secondary schools has remained relatively constant at 23,900.

After secondary school society has been pushing everyone to get a college degree. Vocational and Technical Schools are also in the teaching business. This type of learning typically leds to job-specific certifications – “job ready” graduates. This sector of the education world is growing at an ever-increasing rate as technology becomes more embedded in more and more jobs. An Education World article “What Happened to Vocational Education (and why we need it back) states that about 70% of High Schools students attend College. However, of those who attend college 40% of the students don’t complete their schooling. And on top of that 37% of the currently employed college graduates are employed doing work that only a high school degree is required.

Clearly these facts are telling us something.

One final note is to be made. Benchmark Assessments, form Common Core standards, to SAT’s and ACT’s everyone seems to be focused on college readiness. More recently you are seeing Colleges drop the need of SAT’s and ACT’s. The SAT, Scholastic Aptitude Test) was introduced by the College Board in 1926. The SAT was originally designed NOT to be aligned with a high school curriculum. In 2016 that was changed. Now it is tied to Common Core.

The scores have changed over the years. Combined Math and Reading/Verbal scores have changed. In 1972 it was 1,039 – In 1982 the score was 997 – In 1992 it was 1,001 – In 2002 it was 1,020 in 2012 it was 1,014. Reasonably consistent. The changes made make comparisons between the old scores and the new scores very difficult.

It is now clearly recognized that there is a need for a radical review and redesign of the learning process. The Internet and On-Line learning have shown that quite effectively. This pandemic, however, has caused some hesitation. Many schools simply went to “Zoom” or some other technology tool and taught the same material in the same manner with the same teachers as if they were in the classroom. That is not a workable answer. Parents across the country in surveys are expressing their opinions on this and those opinions are not favorable.

For “Learning Without Scars” we use skills assessments extensively. They are specific assessments to a specific job function. We have “Skill Levels” for each job function based on thousands of assessments being completed. We categorize employees as having four levels of skills; basic, intermediate, advanced, and expert. We provide specific classes within “Learning Paths” to allow the employees to improve their skill level. We are providing the employees the opportunity to improve their skills and as a result improve the opportunities that they have for their careers.

The US has a high preponderance of the schools for higher education in the world. In 1990 Henry Rosovsky, former Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences wrote that “Fully two thirds to three quarters of the best Universities are located in the United States.”  That is still true. In 2010 the academic ranking of World Universities listed seventeen US Universities in the top twenty globally and thirty-six of the top fifty Universities in the world.

Those results show that we do know how to do it. However, we have work to do. It is time we had a comprehensive review and redesign of some of the foundation building blocks.

The Time is Now.

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What Would Winston Say Today?

What Would Winston Say Today?

Winston Churchill was a special individual. A unique individual. He always stood on principle even at a significant cost to himself personally. He saved the United Kingdom by the force of his will during World War II. Then he got rejected after the war in the first election. It wasn’t the first time he was rejected. But he never strayed from him principles. He was born in 1874 and passed in 1965.

Let’s review some of his quotations.

  • When I was younger, I made it a rule never to take a strong drink before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast. (Single Malt is perfect.)

For today consider the following.

  • The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
  • Democracy is the worse form of government, except for all the others.
  • Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind.
    • (Read about how the Scots viewed societal responsibilities)

Then getting closer to home.

  • You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities.
  • An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
  • If you make 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
  • To build may have to be the slow laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
  • When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
  • All of the empires of the future will be empires of the mind.
  • Every man should ask himself each day whether he is not too readily accepting negative solutions.
  • If we open a quarrel between the past and the present we shall find that we have lost the future.
  • Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
  • The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent value of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
  • The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.
  • We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.

The Time is Now.

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Internet Learning

Internet Learning

Over the past ninety days the planet has been suffering under a serious virus. Nearly everyone has been affected. Some of the results to the economy and societies are starting to come in with analysis on the longer-term impacts.

  • The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the US will see $7.9 Trillion in lost economic growth through the rest of the decade.
  • The World Bank predicts global domestic growth will shrink by 5.2% in 2020.
  • The World Bank expects 70 – 100 million people will be pushed to extreme poverty.

There are many statistics and forecasts being made now about the longer-term impact of this virus and shutting down the world’s economy.

And then we come to education.

There will be a wide variety of forecasts and statistics made here as there are some serious competing self-interests at play. Research conducted by McKinsey & Company shows that the shift to remote learning could set the average student back seven months academically. I suspect there are many reasons for that conclusion and many ways to overcome that difference.

Students and teachers alike struggled with the switch to remote learning after schools were shut down. By their midlife, people who graduate during a recession are also less likely to be married, more likely to be childless and face a higher chance of death than those who did not.

However, what this indicates is that we have to develop better tools for this new wave virtual teaching and schooling – from pre-school to high school. The Khan Academy programs, processes and courses are a good model to consider. They have provided free world-class education to 90 million learners since 2008.

Similarly, EdX, a non-profit created by Harvard and MIT, offers MOOC’s (massive open online courses) and interactive classes in law, history, science, engineering, business, social sciences, computer science, public health, and artificial intelligence. During this economic shutdown “Every faculty member is going to be delivering education online. Every student is going to be receiving education on line. And the resistance to online education is going to go away as a practical matter.” James N Bradley, chief information officer at Texas’s Trinity University. Goldie Blumenstyk, from “The Chronicle of Higher Education” suggests this is more than a Black Swan moment it is “more of a catalyst for online education and other ed-tech tools than decades of punditry and self-serving corporate exhortations.” Going further she says “It seems safe to say that this will be not only enormously disruptive but also paradigm changing. The “Black Swan”, that unforeseen event that changes everything is upon us.

Unfortunately, this will not all be good news. A lot of professors will simply video-conference lectures supplemented by emailed assessments. In truth it will be some time before we can draw any conclusions on what forms of learning the education elite will adopt. Will this rapid disruption produce better results? Only time will tell.

In the Industries, I serve dealers who have not been strong advocates of employee development. They have typically believed that they hired the skills and that was all that was needed. That ship has sailed. With the rapid advances in all aspects of engineering and manufacturing, of materials and ceramics, and computerization and telematics it has become very evident that the skills required to stay current have expanded and changed rapidly. That means adult education is something that equipment dealers are going to have to embrace going forward. The Associated Equipment Distributors Foundation published a goal for the Industry of 80 hours of training for each employee each year. Very few dealers meet that goal. I believe it should be 160 hours.

In an earlier blog, I wrote about how to assign your time each day at work. I started from a position put forward by Dirk Beveridge, he was presented to a sales meeting at a client of mine and he got my attention in simplifying my life in how I manage time. Time was, is now and will be forever, the enemy. The older I get the more this becomes true.

I look at time in blocks – to be precise five blocks.

  • Review Results
  • Working with people to improve performance
  • Communications
  • Process reviews
  • Personal growth.

The personal growth item is the one that I have to fight with every day. There is always something that I view to be more important that self-improvement. It is not that I don’t need improvement, I really do, it is that that other thing always seems more important. It is like exercise. How many of us actually invest our daily time on our health and self-improvement? We all know the answer. So, what are you going to do about it? This “shutdown” has allowed a lot more introspection than normal times. I hope this is a subject that you are thinking about. Your employees need the same push to improve themselves. That is where Learning Without Scars fits in to the employee’s life. It is at the time of their choosing, it can take as little as two and a half hours, and you can measure the improvement in their skills. And on top of that it is $125.00/course or assessment. If you don’t invest in your own personal development and you don’t encourage your employees to improve theirs, how long do you think it will take before your customers notice.

The Time is Now. If not now when?