Thoughts from the World is Flat book

The Global Challenge for Higher Education

William G. McGinnis

The recently published book entitled: “The World is Flat”, authored by Thomas L. Friedman, describes both the history of recent global events that the author maintains have flattened the world as well as describes the steps U.S. businesses and our federal government need to take in order to remain competitive on an international basis. The events described in the book as well as the recommendations provide implications for America’s system of higher education as well. The major global challenges for America’s Higher Education are basically:

1. Increase the number of students in higher education.
2. Improve the education of such students.
3. Graduate more students.
4. Graduate the students faster, and
5. Provide the graduates with a global vision.

The following describes Friedman’s recommendations for corporate America in order to remain globally competitive and my suggestions for America’s higher education to consider in order to remain first in the world.

Recommendations:

1) “When the world goes flat -- and you are feeling flattened – reach for a shovel and dig inside yourself. Don’t try to build walls.” The implication for the U.S.’s higher education system will come from competition from private universities and colleges as well as from international universities, such as the British University. The competition with public colleges and universities will be not only for students but also for faculty, grant funding and prestige. Higher education needs to address this challenge rather than to seek governmental restrictions to build trade barriers. This will require our traditional models of higher education services to be modified to educate students capable of competing on a global basis. Additionally, we need to look to develop links with High Schools and Middle Schools in order to better prepare and motivate their students. Rankings of American universities and colleges, while helpful, should not be limited to just other American universities. Instead we need to develop and report on an international ranking system. This is because our methods of delivery of educational services and the quality of our graduates (our output) will be evaluated by both students and their potential employers based upon global competition. Therefore, higher education needs to develop and support an international rankings system. Another example of such competition is the enrollment of high school students in web offered university classes that allow high school students to receive college credits and for universities to build a relationship with the students. The best students are already involved in such programs. We can expect international universities to be close behind by enrolling students still in high school in order to gain familiarity with these off-shore institutions.

2) “And the small shall act big…One way small companies flourish in the flat world is by learning to act really big. And the key to being small and acting big is being quick to take advantage of all the new tools for collaboration to reach farther, faster, wider, and deeper.” While rural community colleges, typically small and limited in their course offerings, need to especially learn this lesson; the larger institutions also need the same lesson slightly modified. Collaboration with universities or other larger community colleges could allow the smaller institutions to offer a wider variety of course majors including foreign languages for which the U.S. has a shortage of instructors. Another example could entail a group of rural community colleges agreeing to offer unique course offerings and thru collaboration provide such programs on all the campuses in the group without requiring the students to leave their communities. Collaborations between community colleges and universities could include both the offering of 4 year degrees at local community college campuses but also the delivery of remedial education or technical training from community colleges to university students when needed to supplement their university education. Such collaboration may even involve international universities willing to accept our students. The larger U.S. institutions need to similarly collaborate with others when they are not able to offer all the necessary services. Or collaborate with the private sector for additional intern and work experience opportunities especially dealing with global issues and relationships.

3) And the big shall act small…One way that big companies learn to flourish in the flat world is by learning how to act really small by enabling their customers to act really big.” The examples offered by the author describe how large businesses listen to and react locally to the demands of their customers. Basically restating the old adage that one-size does not fit all. In the world of higher education we need to listen to and be observant of changes in the needs of both our students and their parents as well as the needs of the potential employers of our graduates. Our customers (the students, their parents, and potential employers) must be empowered to have a voice in how we deliver services to them such as teaching, tutoring, billing, housing etc. This could also include eliminating the use of text books and adapting a curriculum that incorporates the use of the internet for scholarly research, or the method of paying college fees, the use of on-line academic counseling assistance, one stop on-line registration and fee payment, etc. Students and their parents must be made to feel that they are being treated as individuals and have the services of the college available to them at whatever time they wish to access such services. The large multi-campus university systems in the U.S. need to empower the branch campuses to establish unique methods of serving their students. The University of Phoenix has over 30,000 on-line students who each feel that they are being educated as an individual, such services need to be copied in our public universities and large public colleges as well. Another example would be whereby a student and their parents could track on-line their academic progress and know exactly which courses they must still take and when such classes will be offered. On-line academic tutoring is a further example, whereby a student could register for such services by course offering and then have their tutoring requests followed and have follow-up suggested readings and/or tips offered whenever the student logs back into the tutoring web site. In addition, the best colleges will continually seek input from potential employers to evaluate the knowledge base students are acquiring at the college and whether the learning goals need to be modified in order to adjust to the changing demands of the associated career field. The key is to have the institution act small and the customer (students / parents / employers) act big.

4) "The best companies are the best collaborators." In the flat world, more and more business will be done through collaborations within and between companies, for a very simple reason: The next layers of value creation – whether in technology, marketing, biomedicine, or manufacturing – are becoming so complex that no single firm or department is going to be able to master them alone.” Collaboration between and among colleges and universities is rare due to the inherent competition that naturally occurs between academic institutions. Yet, it is apparent that our institutions can no longer on an individual basis financially afford to provide the academic education on a broad spectrum of programs. Only through collaboration can we meet the growing demands of a wide assortment of education, especially in rural areas of the country. An example would be in the area of remedial education, whereby community colleges can provide such services on a more cost effective basis and usually with better results than most universities. However, through a collaborative program, university students requiring such services could be co-enrolled in community colleges and provided such education in a timely manner thus allowing the student to remain on a steady path to a university graduation. Another example could be whereby a group of small rural community colleges could allocate joint resources for special high cost programs to be offered by only one or two of the campuses with the provision that students from any of the colleges could obtain an education in such subjects through a coordinated distance education system. Thus a student in College A could attend specific science classes via internet at College B and receive the associated academic credit upon successful completion at College A and eventually graduate from College A. As we are now learning, some of the most respected technical universities are no longer in America. Therefore, our community colleges may wish to explore transfer and collaborative agreements with such universities. A student in rural California could obtain an AA degree from their local community college and then transfer to a university from India or China and participate in classes from these schools via the internet or by actually relocating to that country. If we want to be serious about providing a global education to our students we need to consider transfer agreements with such international universities. Such collaboration needs to also occur on the administrative side of the college and university. In locations where there are two or three colleges and universities in close proximity, administrative services such as purchasing, human resources, computer services, facilities planning, etc. could be combined and support thru collaborative programs. An example of this is already occurring is in Colorado where a University and a K-12 system combined administrative services. Another relationship with the K-12 system could be for higher education to provide both tutoring services as well as vocational instructional services to high school students, thus permitting some students to graduate from high school with the ability to immediately obtain employment in licensed trades positions.

5) “In a flat world, the best companies stay healthy by getting regular chest x-rays and then selling the results to their clients.” In the private sector companies need to examine each function and determine its connection to the core mission and profitability of the company. Functions not performing at the best practice level would need to be pruned and replaced with services by others that can provide the best in class. Likewise, higher education institutions need to examine the programs that have developed over the years and determine if they are adding value to the core mission of the institution or sucking off valuable resources. Data needs to be developed that can be used to measure such activities and then ranked with other educational institutions. Again such rankings need to occur on a global basis. In addition, other measurements such as private sector evaluations of graduates, graduation rates, employment rates, etc. should be included in the analysis. The results of these reviews would allow the institution to find and collaborate with the “best in class” organization to provide the needed services. Any corresponding changes in order to improve the institution can be used in advertising the institution to parents and students. In order to make the public aware of such rankings for community colleges, it would make sense to have this data reported on an annual basis during a public Trustee meeting.

6) “The best companies outsource to win, not to shrink. They outsource to innovate faster and more cheaply in order to grow larger, gain market share, and hire more and different specialists – not to save money by firing more people.” The lesson for higher education is simply this, stop providing incentives for people to increase the size of their functions, rather provide incentives for increased results. Typically, managers are rewarded with promotions and higher compensation as the size of their department and responsibilities have grown irrespective of the results they are achieving. Instead we need to reward those who achieve the desired results without adding permanent staffing. This would enable managers to change their operations more quickly as the needs for their services or the delivery of their services changes in the future. On the administrative side of the organization, services needed for new programs such as data warehousing would make good candidates for outsourcing rather than using salary funds to employ a larger permanent work force.

7) “Outsourcing isn’t just for Benedict Arnolds. It’s also for idealists.” The author argues that through outsourcing employers are able to help bring about social changes in other countries. An example could be if a college were in need of data entry services for their Foundation of donor or alumni information on a regular basis, the Foundation could outsource such services to citizens in a third world country and thus besides reducing the Foundation’s costs, the Foundation is providing improved employment to poor residents in the other country and the University is developing a relationship with the country and its citizens which in the future may be a source of new students via web delivered educational services. As a contractor the Foundation could offer college courses to the employees of the company they contract with at a reduced cost and thus help the employees improve their education and perhaps start other associated businesses. Also, the institution could use the relationship to help recruit more students and to identify global sources of funding for research opportunities and funding.

The bottom line is this, Mr. Friedman points out the following short-comings of America’s higher educational system:

1. America will be able to compete IF it starts to churn out knowledge workers who are able to produce idea based goods sold globally and able to fill the knowledge jobs that will expand as our economy goes more global.
2. However, America is falling behind on the basis of sheer numbers. Other countries are now producing more science and engineering students and such production will adversely affect the status of the U.S. higher education system in the future.
3. Also, American students as a whole are not as ambitious as foreign students. The desire for work and the willingness to sacrifice although common in our history is not as common in today’s students.
4. Finally, the gap between scholarly work being performed in other countries versus the U.S. is decreasing. As the author illustrates in his book, scholarly research is increasing in other countries and will soon exceed the amount of work being performed in the U.S. The effect of this transition will be that the U.S. will no longer be sought out for ideas and creativity which until now has been our key to world leadership.

In summary, these are a few of my ideas generated by reading the book but it is clear to me that America, its economy and its way of life faces an international challenge on a variety of fronts, not only from the traditional form of terrorism but more significantly from the economic problems associated with an economy too heavily dependent upon oil resources, an educational system that is being surpassed by many other countries, and a polarization of our own citizens in politics, in social status, and in economic status. Once our country loses its ability to offer those at the bottom of our economic ladder the ability to climb up and achieve a higher standard of living, our national progress will cease and our nation will begin to diminish as a world power.

It is not too late, if we as the leaders of America’s higher education will take the initiative to promptly redesign our institutions in a more competitive model that will produce the citizens needed to collaborate and compete internationally for the benefit of all.