Reinventing Higher Education: The Promise of Innovation ed. by Ben Waldavsky, Andrew Kelly, and Kevin Carey (review)

Reinventing Higher Education: The Promise of Innovation, edited by Ben Wildavasky (Kauffman Foundation), Andrew Kelly (American Enterprise Institute) and Kevin Carey (Education Sector) presents a range of interconnected essays focused on responses to several overarching questions based on issues that confront the U.S. higher education community today. These include, "Must universities change?" "How might they change?" "Can they change in significant ways on a broad scale?" (p. 239).

The editors selected authors for each chapter who are well known in their respective fields of research. Each of the authors formulated their responses by extrapolating the most critical elements important to the current discussion on change and innovation in today's U.S. higher education system. Their chapters offer readers a wide range of possibilities from multiple perspectives, working toward resolving questions, and overcoming the various challenges that change presents within the larger higher education community.

The editors clearly state the impetus behind the creation of this text in one of their parting statements, "Much will be lost if the United States squanders the opportunity provided by today's economic and political environment to rethink important aspects of U.S higher education" (p. 245). They further expound their belief that there is a significant window of opportunity for innovation and change, and much will be "gained" if we "seize" this season in our culture and create new and innovative educational systems to meet the demands of current and future generations (p. 245).

Ben Wildavasky, Andrew Kelly, and Kevin Carey organized their book around several important themes, reflected in the eight chapters—all central to the discussion of innovation and reform in U.S. higher education. The themes highlighted provide various examples of innovation and reform that span the entire spectrum of the higher education community, including, for example, barriers to change, best practices that are currently being employed, and future possibilities using the framework of a nontraditional higher education paradigm.

Each of the chapters represents a multitude of topics outlining the demands for change that institutions face daily including the need to expand access, increase quality, cut costs in an environment of heightened competition, the quagmire of issues posed by emerging technologies, diminishing funding availability, faculty productivity, changes in employment within the faculty ranks, and the shift from a traditional teacher-centered to student-centered learning models. The editors also express their concern that, when innovation does occur, it is extremely limited and slow moving. As a result, significant transformational change is severely lacking and inadequate at multiple levels.

In Chapter 1, "Barriers to Innovation in U.S. Higher Education," Dominic Brewer and William Tierney provide a basis for viewing innovation in higher education throughout the text from a business theory model, reflected in their definition: "Innovation is a new method, custom, or device—a change in the way of doing things. It is generally understood as the successful introduction of new thing or method" (p. 15). Throughout the chapter, the authors express a strong belief in a need for "greater innovation," noting that the current external demands, including the diversity of demographics, economic and fiscal realities, and emerging technological advances, will not be going away any time soon, and that the "traditional" manner of conducting higher education in the past will no longer sustain higher education in the future.

Brewer and Tierney articulate their concerns: "We remain troubled by an industry that all too frequently seeks answers to difficult problems by aping what it has done in the past rather than thinking about how it might do things differently in the future" (p. 30). They believe that expanding innovation is an imperative but that it will not happen without a thoughtful discussion about reshaping regulatory systems. They also discuss the role that states must take to secure the safety of students, provide appropriate incentives, meet fiscal imperatives, allow newly designed structures to enter the...