Planet+Chart

Planet Chart visits the landscapes of history and the crisis in higher education.
University Supernova Somewhere in Another Millenia UniBURSity Supernova Chart the Uncharted

University Supernova
A supernova brightens the sky intensely but at its core is a black hole which will eventually lead to its implosion. With information and communications technologies in the form of the world wide web, the Internet, the smart phone and personal computer proliferating and penetrating down to even the humblest rickshaw driver in India circa 2011; universities began to take on the character of a supernova. Post-modernism brings the rot to the core of the supernova. Harland Bloland wrote eloquently about the crisis and impending implosion in higher education coming through post-modernism. To describe the status of the university at the beginning of the new millenia, post-modernists philosopher Jean Baudrillaird, coined the idea of implosion, and other post-modernist thinkers critiqued the truth and modernist assumptions in the enlightenment values of the university and exposed political agendas behind the objectivity and rationality thought to be at the core of knowledge creation and its viability (Bloland, 2005). George Keller described a similar crisis in higher education with out referring to post-modernism. Higher education was not so much in need of progress as it was in need of complete change to a completely different model as in the change between the Ptolmaic to the Copernican view of the universe. (Keller, 2008).

Here are some of the most captivating quotes from this time.

"The wider role of the University is up for grabs. It is no longer clear what the exact place of the university is within society, nor what the exact nature of that society is." (Readings, B. in Bloland, 2005, p. 132). "Higher education and the academic profession that serves it are on the edge of an unprecedented restructuring that is changing the face-indeed the very meaning -of higher learning." (attributed to Brown and Gibbons in Keller, (2008), p. 97) "We have not changed our structure, pedagogy, staffing,and academic contents adequetly to match all the new developments. We need greater social invention. (interview with Northeastern University President Richard Freeland in Keller, ( 2008), p.97). "The role of the university is in crisis, the ivory tower is collapsing."(Delanty in Bloland (2005), p.133).

"Universities find themselves torn between multiple missions, multiple responsibilities, multiple demands and hence open to multiple criticisms." (Lincoln, Y. in Bloland, 2005, p.134.) This is Yvonna Lincoln, whom Bloland quotes, a leading scholar in alternative epistemologies like Red Pedagogy. It is the use of communications technology and the esoteric and fragmented communities of practise that it fosters which ushers in the collapse of higher education along with the wide dissemination and accessibility to scholarly knowledgeIf we were to take our time machine.

Somewhere in Another Millenia
If we were to take our time machine back to the first institution which became known as a university, seven hundred years before the enlightenment which is The University of Bologna founded in Italy in 1088, we would notice that university originally meant, "community of teachers and scholars," (List of oldest universities in continuous operation, 2011) The university has endured for almost a 1000 years in different incarnations and permutations. Indeed it is one of the longest living institutions on the planet. (Sexton, 2010). Right now it is both the best of times for universities and thier longevity and the worst of times for universities.

UniBURSity Supernova
The supernova of the university is not going out in an implosion but more like a burst. Universities will remain and endure like they have in the last thousand years and Darwinian processes of natural selection will be at play in a learning environmnet radically altered not only by ICT but also other human technologies and entreprenurial endevors like project management and social engineering. How can the 2011 DE leader foster the traditions and continuance of efficiences, the social missions, and benefits presently accrued by universities for our changing society?

Chart the Uncharted
Upon re-entry to present day time, the DE leader/learner in the time capsule should look forward to wearing the many hats of the leader (transformative, transactive, situational, complex, emergent, distributed) and the use and adaptation of present project managment protocols to operationize and instantiate a vision, hunch, new approach, new technology, prototype or pilot project. Upon return to present time, the time capsule traveller can benefit mightily from the habits of scientific investigation. Experiment, tweak, control variables, conduct focus groups, collect data, make predictions, hypothesize explanations, test, retest, and ground the learning. Many a discovery comes not from the lofty lab, but from the practitioner who notices something different or who cuts a corner, makes a lucky mistake, or changes up the order of delivery. Therefore the contention that, "The way [for a leader] to make effective long-term change is to first visualize what you want to accomplish and then to inhabit this vision until it comes true," (Latchem & Hanna, 2001,p.59) overstates the nature of creative change.

Prior to enacting a vision, the DE leader should adopt the resourcefulness, reflective habits, and acute powers of observation of the Renanissance world. A great deal of reflection, revision, ingenuity, imagination, borrowing, repurposing, creative theft, and innovation will be required. The fusion of logos with mythos, reason and emotion, science and art as seen in the genius of Leonardo da Vinci with his visions of helicopters, flying macines and water walkers and his constant reworking of the Mona Lisa over a period of 16 years will be required. Michelangelo talked about the fusion between the medium and the artist in the creative process. The way will emerge to the prepared mind. Leaders need to be open to its gradual emergence before being able to articulate a vision.

The DE practitioner needs to be situated in a community of practise (Gronn, 2003) with a little friendly competition to gain the advantages accrued to the world from the Rennaisance or from Silicon valley, for that matter.