Mark Greenfield

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.”

I’ve had many people looking for more information on Pecha Kucha after using it for my presentation at HighEdWebDev 2007. A Pecha Kucha slide show consists of 20 slides for exactly 20 seconds each for a total time of 6:40. For more information see:

• Pecha Kucha: Get to the PowerPoint in 20 Slides Then Sit the Hell Down
• Pecha Kucha blog post from Seth Godin
• pecha-kucha.org

I recommend everyone experiment with this presentation style. The restrictions actually force you to be very creative in structuring your presentation. (Good exercise for the right brain!) More importantly, it makes you focus on the most important points. There simply isn’t time to stray off topic. And for those of you involved with writing for the web, I can think of no better exercise for writing concisely.

I’d like to see expanded use of Pecha Kucha at the next HighEdWebDev conference. Maybe a Pecha Kucha Night, or an hour set aside simultaneously in each track. Imagine the value in seeing 6-8 rapid fire presentations in an hour.