Postsecondary Play: The Role of Games and Social Media in Higher Education

1. The Disruptive Future of Higher Education

william g. tierney Many have spoken about the changes that academe faces, but these changes often have been phrased in terms of some distant future. How we construct time in an age-old organization frequently gets measured in decades rather than days. A university’s review of the general education curriculum, for example, may seem thoughtful and deliberative to the faculty and administration if it extends over a year or two and gets enacted a few years after the final committee has agreed to the changes. Any changes to the curriculum also are usually more modest than dramatic. Some courses may get added or subtracted, or a new theme may be created, but the new plan looks like an updated, possibly improved , old plan. Strategic plans or reviews of programs have followed a similar trajectory. Administrators propose a study to improve the institution or to provide direction , and members of the faculty study the problem during the academic year with an appropriate interlude over the summer. Eventually recommendations arrive, and they are critiqued and modified by the vice president or president and finally become policy. Changes that frequently appear exceedingly modest to an outsider may have engendered earnest and outraged debate by those involved in the undertaking. More recently, postsecondary institutions have been hit with a wave of fiscal problems because of the Great Recession. Because states have had to cut their budgets, the postsecondary sector has had to respond to less revenue than had been anticipated. The response, however, has been incremental change rather than sweeping reform. Tuition has risen. Enrollments have been cut. Course size has increased. Summer sessions have been cut or eliminated. The Disruptive Future of Higher Education chapter one 22 what is the current landscape of higher education? More out-of-state students have been accepted because they pay more than instatestudents .Idonotmeantobelittlesuchactions,andIamfullyawareofthe belt-tightening that has occurred. But such responses are in keeping with the traditional ways that higher education has functioned. A downturn in the economy and, in turn, state revenue suggests to postsecondary leaders and the faculty that a few modest changes begrudgingly must be enacted. The changes will continue until the latest economicstormhaspassed ,andthenourpostsecondaryinstitutionscanreturnto business as usual. But what if the current state of higher education is the new normal? What if the changes that have been talked about as someday happening at some future moment when all of us are retired is about to happen tomorrow ? The purpose of this chapter is to begin an argument that Laura Perna and Zoë Corwin extend in their chapters: these changes are about to happen, or actually are happening now, and they are necessary if America is to remain competitive . The changes will impact everyone—from how students study to how teachers teach and what administrators do and oversee. I wish to consider how one particular aspect of higher education—social media—might be used to grapple with the new normal. What I mean by the “new normal” is my focus here. The point is less that administrators will need to use social media, although it is certainly true, and more that the technology of learning is undergoing a reformation. We now have the ability to go beyond the classroom, and to expand the modalities of how we teach. In doing so, our reach can be exponential. If learning, as the central activity of any postsecondary institution, is going to undergo revolutionary changes, then the infrastructure and administrative tasks and functions that support and surround learning of necessity will need to change. Current Constraints on the System Capacity and Fiscal Constraints The United States has, or soon will have, a postsecondary crisis on its hands. High-wage jobs demand an educated work force. By 2025, the country faces an estimated shortfall of 23 million workers with skills learned in college (Lumina Foundation for Education 2009). In a previous era, such a prediction might have led to an increase in the country’s existing public colleges and universities as well as plans to build new campuses. States, when in good economic shape, once sought ways to expand via new campuses and increased postsecondary the disruptive future of higher education 23 participation. In California, for example, in 2002 when the state was flush with funds and still thought in a traditional manner about the delivery of teaching, California State University (CSU) Channel Islands opened as the twenty-third campus in the...