A New Design Build for Higher Education?

Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University, is one of higher education’s most influential leaders. ASU has accomplished tremendous improvements under Crow’s tenure, growing enrollment, student successes, and an international profile as a global research institution. It is an institution constantly innovating and many look to ASU for ideas. Crow is a doer, a thinker and a writer. There may be no better guide to understanding how he perceives higher education than his 2015 book, Designing the New American University.

Written with William Dabars, a research professor at ASU, Designing the New American University is long, thorough and detailed about the many challenges and problems facing research universities – especially public research universities – in the US. The critique here of what has and has not been successful in academia is cogently argued and insightful. The authors know their material well. Even when they cover familiar material, they make it fresh and relevant.

The book opens by framing the contemporary educational landscape and then locates research institutions within a broader historical context. Recurring themes, which adduce to a powerful argument, include consistencies in universities’ organizational structures that stifle innovation, isomorphic pressures that drive institutions to all want to be the same, and unchecked filiopietism that gives way too much credit to what has happened in the past. Balancing these challenges are the great discoveries, advances and impact of research institutions, engines of the economy and our country.

Crow and Demars shift gears with the next two chapters, one on institutional design and the other on pragmatism as an operating philosophy for research institutions to employ to help save the earth. Both could stand on their own.

The book concludes with what has happened at ASU under Crow’s leadership, which is in many ways, the most interesting story. However, the chapter is more descriptive than analytic and left me with more questions than answers. I found it is somewhat difficult to untangle the ideas from the execution from the press release language. Was it new thinking that made these improvements happen? Or new ideas? New circumstances? Or simply Crow’s brilliance as a university president? Leadership is always situational. Institutional changes over many years are mixtures of commitments, strategies and tactics. Everyone wants to be efficient and it might be that ASU has been more efficient than most. It also may be that the pursuit of access and excellence can provide more opportunities.

I understand where the authors are coming from – this is not an institutional history. Instead, it is the application of concepts and principles – especially organizational design – to a university. Organizational changes, relentless tinkering, and the embrace of technology are offered as a way of creating the resources to advance additional changes. Also, the authors are clear that the model advanced here would have to be altered significantly were it to be pursued in a different state or with different institutions. Much rests on the happy alignment of Crow in Arizona at the right time with the right environment. That may not have been an accident but it certainly was not foreordained. All that said, the chapter raises many questions and I, for one, would have welcome much more information about the sausage making of institutional change at ASU.

Designing the New American University is most helpful in providing the framework to comprehend how and why ASU is different. It gives great insight into the kinds of changes research institutions may have to pursue to remain relevant. And it is extremely effective in highlighting the limitations of current structures and thinking. It may not be the book that answers all questions about the research university of the future, but it certainly helps to answer some important ones.

David Potash