Mark Greenfield

I rarely allow guest posts on this blog but today I am making an exception. Pat Lynch is someone who I have followed for many years and someone I deeply respect.  His book “Web Style Guide”, co-authored with Sarah Horton, was one of the first web books I ever purchased and I still refer to it on a regular basis.

Pat has shared with me his thoughts on the recent conversations on the future of higher education web development (see “When the Axe Man Cometh” on uwebd). His historical perspective on the future of university web services departments provides sage advice for us all. Thank you Pat for sharing your thoughts and I look forward to continuing this important conversation.

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THE FATE OF COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES IN UNIVERSITIES

I spent most of my 39-year career (so far) at Yale as a manager and director of various kinds of internal communications services, including science graphics, medical illustration, video production, biomedical and general photography, computer graphics and slides film-recording (back in the 1980s), desktop publishing, web design, print and reprographics services, and web design.

In reading the recent discussion about the hardships and possibly dim future of university web services departments I saw many parallels with the fates of past communications services that came, flourished over several decades, and eventually faded away as technologies changed and the “digital revolution” absorbed virtually all forms of media.

Today a faculty member with a $500 camera and Final Cut Express can do more than we could with $150,000 of video equipment just 10 years ago. Owning FCE doesn’t make you Steven Spielberg, but the artificial barrier of access to exotic equipment is gone. Do we still need video professionals? More than ever, as audiovisuals begin to dominate web communications. You can’t do a faculty interview satellite feed to The News Hour with a FlipCam. But video (and web) professionals need to get used to having lots of company in the lower-skilled areas, and many “commodity” video shoot-and-edit jobs are being done by clients themselves now.

I’d love to think that my university employs me and my service department colleagues for the intrinsic value of our vast and varied media skills, developed over decades of experience, but the truth is much closer to this: The underlying rationale for a university service department is based on skills that are hard to find at that time, or involve equipment that the average faculty or staff member couldn’t afford, or wouldn’t know how to use. So, in the 1970s and 1980s fee-for-service university media departments made most of their money providing services people could not easily make on their own: (silver) photographic prints and slides, hand-drawn graphics, early forms of pen-plotter and film-recorded computer graphics, and various video and audio productions. All required expensive equipment, and knowledge about how to use that equipment.

We also did more exotic forms of communications like biomedical and surgical photography, medical and biological illustration, and higher-end graphic design, but the truth was that the commodity graphics and photo services subsidized the more complex offerings. As laser printers replaced most reproduction of graphics, charting software democratized the ability to create graphs and charts, and PowerPoint replaced 35mm slides, both the specialized and the commodity services shrank.

In my former field of biomedical communications, funded mainly by commodity photo services, most university departments are now a small fraction of the size they were  in the 1980s. They aren’t needed anymore, and they faded away over the last 15 years. Unfortunately some valuable services that were once more available to faculty were accidental victims of this shift. Photomicroscopy, biomedical photography, biomedical illustration, and high-end graphic design also shrank in many universities, more as a financial byproduct of the fading of commodity service departments, not because the high-skill services weren’t needed.

This cycle of waxing and waning of service departments is perfectly normal, and is (mostly) healthy for the university. It happened to photography and graphics, it will also happen to web units that flourished when the skills needed to create a state-of-the-art site were not widespread. The web was not invented yesterday—we’re now almost 20 years into the web era, and it’s long since time that we moved beyond the cottage-industry stage of web design as practiced by specialists, and entered an age when the average university staffer can expect to use the web for routine communications without needing specialized professionals to make that work.

At Yale that shift in web services means that we do dramatically less “static” web design, and now mostly use open-source tools like Drupal and WordPress, working in more standardized interface and identity templates (albeit with plenty of look-and-feel customization as required). This makes sense for our users, and for the University. For the next 3-5 years or so this sea-change in web support is keeping everyone very busy, but inevitably web jobs will change and some will fade away as we succeed  in democratizing access to the web.

So does this history mean that current web designers simply must accept the inevitable shrinkage of their web service units? Yes, but new opportunities in communications are constantly emerging. If today’s web designers think flexibly about their positions and skills, and pay close attention to the changing needs of their home universities, the future can be very bright.

Consider: The media departments I used to work in have mostly faded away, but today MORE people are employed at Yale doing various forms of communications support than in the past “glory days” of centralized graphics, audiovisual, and photography service units. The dramatically lower costs of digital communications (web, social media, digital audiovisuals of all kinds, graphic design across many media) have created far more opportunities than they ended. The people involved are decentralized throughout the university (another key effect of the change to digital media), instead of being concentrated in large service units centered around unusual or expensive equipment. Today it’s actually easier to find a university job in communications than it was 20 years ago. You just won’t be working in a big service unit.

So, the fate of web units isn’t necessarily another sad story of a once-thriving service fading away. In historical perspective this is really a more typical story about job change and evolution. It’s the way it is, and it’s the way it’s always been.

Twitter: @patrlynch

Yesterday the DOW closed at 7,552.29, losing 5.56% of its value for the day. We are hearing this news all too often over the last few weeks. This is the worst economic environment we have seen in quite some time. And it’s not just the financial institutions and the automobile industry that are suffering. Higher ed is feeling the pain as well.

SUNY just announced a tuition hike effective this January. There are numerous stories about budget cuts, hiring freezes and no money for travel. The Boston Globe recently wrote an article on how Financial Chaos Threatens to Besiege Universities. I am feeling the effects myself. My operating budget this fiscal year is 32% less than the previous year, despite a significant increase in workload. And I am being told it will be worse next year.

Yet, for all the pain caused by the current financial meltdown, it is only the warning shot across the bow.

The true paradigm shift is just around the corner. The tipping point will happen shortly when stealth fighter parents will replace helicopter parents on college campuses. Gen X parents are coming and they will demand that colleges reexamine their entire operation from a price and value perspective. They will look at the college their children attend as a calculated market choice. They will view colleges as one of many providers in a large marketplace as new competitors emerge providing alternative choices for much of what college provides.

All of this will put increasing pressure on colleges to provide value and to focus on efficiencies. Consider the following from a recent survey on the rising costs of higher education:

• 64% of respondents do not believe higher college costs are leading to more learning on campus
• 44% believe that waste and mismanagement significantly factor into increasing college costs

I spent much of 2007 writing about how higher education web development will get flattened. The premise is that the same forces of globalization that have flattened the business world will soon flatten higher education and that their will be repercussions for higher education web professionals. What happens when web development becomes a commodity? The services we provide will be disaggregated, distributed, produced and reassembled with amazing efficiency. It may well be that many of our services will be outsourced in the relatively near future.

I recommend we approach this coming storm proactively. Become a web evangelist. Focus on how the web can provide value and how it provides a sound return on investment. Use valuation methodologies like ROI to provide the framework for prioritizing projects and accountability.

Many people who hear my presentation on “Higher Ed Web Development Gets Flattened” leave thinking that none of us will have jobs five years from now. That is not my intention and I don’t believe that will be the case. In fact, I think the opposite is true. The role the web plays on college campuses is undervalued. When the time comes to disaggregate the functions of the university, the forensic accountants will quickly see that the web provides true value and should get more resources, not less. That being said, I do think our jobs will change dramatically. The best approach is to start to think about this now. To quote Will Rogers:

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

As we prepare for higher ed web development to get flattened, what is the one thing that can not be outsourced? The answer comes from my colleague Diane Kubarek from Cornell. When I posed this questioned to her during lunch at HighEdWebDev 2007, her immediate answer was institutional knowledge. Knowing the culture of the institution, how things get done, who to go to to solve specific problems, and building relationships around campus are the value that a web professional working on campus brings.

Last year I was one of several thought leaders who were asked by the 2006-07 National Association of Colleges and Employers Future Directions Task Force to write an essay on “how college students and employers will interact and connect in the year 2017″. Below is the essay I submitted. While the focus was on Career Advisors, the ideas are certainly applicable to higher ed web professionals. I’m convinced more than ever that our profession will undergo dramtic change in the next 10 years.

Here is a link to the full report called “Through the Looking Glass: The Future of College Recruiting”.

Higher Education Gets Flattened
By Mark A. Greenfield

2017. Welcome to the New World Order.

The World Is Flat, the seminal book written by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Thomas Friedman, describes the fundamental changes that happened at the dawn of the new millennium. Outsourcing, offshoring, insourcing, and the other flattening forces have created a connected world, and business will never be the same. Exponential change is here. While higher education is notoriously slow to change, change will happen, and quicker than you think.

Globalization 3.0, the arrival of the technically adept Millennial Generation, and the ongoing Communications Revolution will create a perfect storm that will forever change the college campus. Rising tuition prices and increased competition for the best students and best faculty will require colleges and universities to operate more as a business. In addition to fundamental pedagogical changes, all support services will be subject to the forces that have flattened the business world. The services and processes provided by career centers will be disaggregated, distributed, produced, and reassembled with amazing efficiency. It may well be that many of the functions of the college career center will be outsourced. If placing orders today at the fast food drive-through is handled by a call center hundreds of miles away, anything is possible 10 years from now.

By 2017, providing guidance to college graduates as they make the transition from college to work will require a new paradigm. Many basic assumptions that exist today will no longer be relevant. How do we prepare our graduates for jobs that don’t exist yet? With the growth of free agency, more graduates will work for themselves or small companies instead of large corporations. Americans working for a foreign company may be as commonplace as working for an American company. (Defining an American company may be impossible). With the half life of knowledge now measured in months and years instead of decades and centuries, lifelong learning will become essential and nontraditional students may outnumber traditional students.

In this sea of change there will be an opportunity to redefine the role of higher education professionals and company recruiters. As Daniel Pink describes in his book A Whole New Mind, we are moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. As many services of the career center become even more virtual and automated, the key will be to focus on the value chain. Automation and outsourcing of the routine, lower level work will allow more time to focus on creativity, leadership, and innovation, and ultimately better services to students. The time to think about these issues is now, before higher education gets flattened.

2017. Welcome to the New World Order.

Part of my presentation on higher ed web development getting flattened explored the importance of developing your right brain. I came across this intriguing visual of a dancer. If you see her spinning clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Most of the time I see her spinning clockwise, but occasionally I see her spinning counter-clockwise.

How about you? Take a look and let me know what you see.

I just finished reading A University for the 21st Century. The author is James Duderstadt, President Emeritus at the University of Michigan. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in the challenges and opportunities for higher education in the new millennium.

I was particularly interested in the last two chapters which addressed many of the issues we discussed at my presentation at HighEdWedDev 2007. Here are some quotes from the book:

• The system of higher education that emerges in the century ahead will almost certainly be far different from today’s. Higher Education will either transform itself or be transformed as financial imperatives, changing societal demands, emerging technologies, and new competitors reshape the knowledge enterprise.
• Most colleges and universities are now looking for ways to control costs and increase productivity.
• In recent years, we have seen an explosion in the number of new competitors in the higher education marketplace. It is estimated that in 1998 the revenues of for-profit and proprietary educational providers were in excess of $3.5 billion and growing rapidly.
• Higher education is an industry ripe for the unbundling of activities. Universities will have to come to terms with what their true strengths are and how those strengths support their strategies – and then be willing to outsource needed capabilities in areas where they do not have a unique advantage.
• Universities are under increasing pressure to spin off or sell or close down parts of their traditional operations in the face of new competition. They may well find it necessary to unbundle their many functions, ranging from admissions to counseling to instruction and certification.

I would add web development to that last list.

Many people who hear my presentation on “Higher Ed Web Development Gets Flattened” leave thinking that none of us will have jobs five years from now. That is not my intention and I don’t believe that will be the case. In fact, I think the opposite is true. The role the web plays on college campuses is undervalued. When the time comes to disaggregate the functions of the university, the forensic accountants will quickly see that the web provides true value and should get more resources, not less. That being said, I do think our jobs will change dramatically. The best approach is to think about this proactively not reactively. To quote Will Rogers – “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”