There has been much discussion in the business press lately about higher education, with many voices crying for a significant reworking of the MBA. Unfortunately, that's a band-aid--way too little and much too late. In contrast, I'd like to suggest seven much more radical innovations that can and should be considered for higher education in general, to strengthen our economic foundation for the future:
1. Eliminate Bachelor degrees. We all know that a degree is all but meaningless and can be acquired with the faintest trace of actual education. It often represents a young man or women who had no better options so simply stayed in school. But it is not an effective indicator of education, intelligence or learning. To wit, George W. Bush and William F. Buckley both got BA's from Yale. What does that tell you?
2. Replace degrees with standardized testing, similar to the GED, SAT or ACT. Really, who cares what classes you took in school if it didn't stick? Why should employers or graduate schools give you special consideration if you didn't learn anything? Instead, create a bevy of tests that measure knowledge, perspective, creativity, aptitude and problem-solving ability in very specific fields.
3. Make educational pursuits modular. Instead of one four-year degree, accumulate any number of credits or certifications indicating knowledge in a particular area. For instance, spend a summer studying in a foreign country and get a Level 1 credit in Turkish Studies. Build a house for Level 3 credit in construction. Naturally, these would have to be legitimatized by standardized tests. There are several repercussions here. One, my beloved classical liberal arts education would fall by the wayside for most students. That's fine, since many degree-seekers breeze through those classes anyway. And two, it would free up passionate students to focus on specific subjects earlier in their educational careers. Let's face it, there are plenty of technology and science students who have no interest in history and taking a few survey classes isn't going to change their world views. Let's free them up to write code or conduct experiments.
4. Eliminate universities and replace them with private instructors. Build on the model of ancient times, where itinerant professors like Confucius roamed from town to town teaching eager students for pay. Of course the Internet will play a big role as well. Why allow your education to depend on half-interested professors more intent on research, professional stature and tenure?. Get teachers who care about teaching and let them compete for your educational dollars. (One added benefit of this is the savings in state budgets.) Of note, private universities could still exist as prestigious research institutions that provide graduate degrees.
5. Give each high school graduate vouchers for limited higher education. There goes some of the tax dollars we just saved. The vouchers could be spent on part-time or full-time education. Students can earn more vouchers through additional efforts which benefit the public, such as volunteerism or military service.
6. Make team problem-solving projects a standard element of all higher ed pursuits. This is what is going to save the world--people learning to work effectively together to accomplish great things. Technology soon will grant us all the processing power and memory capabilities we want, much of it through brain implants. We will need leadership, followership and partnership to harness these capabilities. These need to be the focus of our pedagogy.
7. Let innovation be the differentiator. It's not just what you know, or even how well you think, that will drive our economy in the future; it's how effectively we can innovate--advancing our technology, products, business processes and management practices to create new solutions and new markets. Companies and research institutions should pay a premium for innovation talent, not just for a business major with a communications minor graduating magna cum laude.
These can't happen overnight, but something big should start happening soon. The world is changing rapidly, much faster than any of us have ever experienced. We need to be aggressively challenging all of our old models, but perhaps education more than any, because it's the foundation of our economic structure.
