Kevin Carey’s The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere is a provocative look at a possible future for higher education. A policy expert and writer, Carey is convinced that the current state of affairs for academia is failing and that wholesale changes are just around the corner. The book argues that while learning and credentialing will continue grow in demand and importance, the underlying collapse of higher education as currently practiced is inevitable due to unsustainable business models.
Higher education in the future, Carey believes, will be flexible and based on specialized skills and credentials for jobs and career advancement. It’s a hybrid of what we have now. And while Carey is not exactly sure what models will stick, he has lots of ammunition about what is wrong with higher education today. That’s much of the book.
Carey did his homework. To explore new models, he took online and competency based courses. He went to colleges, universities and other institutions to see what people are doing and what models might or might not be successful. He talked with quite a few “disrupters” – thinkers and innovators that are using technology in the hopes of creating different structures for learning.
One of the benefits of The End of College is that it offers an alternative perspective on higher education. Simply through his questions and research, Carey undermines the isomorphic tendencies that so many institutions of higher education pursue. Every university should not aim to be another Harvard or Princeton. Every college should not set it sights on Williams or Amherst. Nonetheless, elite institutions with endowments in the billions tend to function as academic benchmarks, reasonable or not, for the public and much of higher education.
Undermining the book’s claims are Carey’s over the top enthusiasm and odd mixture of personal experience without context or critical analysis. He waxes rhapsodic about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), for instance, but does not fully explore or appreciate why so many students find them unsatisfactory. It has little to do with the technology and more to do with how many people prefer to learn. Similarly, he is keen on the Minerva Project, an ambitious technology, infrastructure and support-system learning environment being underwritten by some very wealthy tech gurus. It’s still to early to know whether or not it will have legs. We do know, though, that thanks to massive investments, Minerva will be getting better – and the press will be positive, whether it is sustainable or not.
Carey consistently discounts the many ways that institutions of higher education are changing and adapting. More importantly, when institutions hold on to particular models or features of operation, the decision is not necessarily coming from fear, politics, or an inherent resistance to change. Many of us in education know that not all students effectively learn all subjects from screens.
The arguments in the book probably sound familiar. We have seen variations on this theme. Carey and other critics are correct: there are multiple problems and shortcomings in higher education. The business model is expensive and more change is certain.
Much of the challenge stems, I think, from a lack of appreciation of the wide range of functions that higher education performs and the many ways that a college education can transform students’ lives. It can be about jobs and careers, of course, but it’s also about community, identity, social capital and human agency. Those are not functions easily achieved without time and in-depth interpersonal interaction.
Carey’s The End of College will make one think. It’s also a good reminder: finding fault with the present comes more readily than predicting the future.
David Potash