Academic Freedom/Not

The headline in The Denver Post this morning read, “Colleges: Free us or fund us.” For a minute I thought the local college presidents were asking to become private, entrepreneurial entities, an idea that excited me quite a bit. Basically, I think that government agencies, by definition, don’t work. And I indulged briefly in a humorous fantasy about the sluggish, bureaucracy-laden colleges trying to become fast-moving, customer-oriented private industries.

Then I read the rest of the article. It seems that the college and university presidents are miffed about being told by the state how much they can raise tuition rates even when the state refuses to fund them at what they consider adequate levels. One university president said, "I understand money that comes with strings, but strings without money I don't get." They don’t want freedom (and the responsibility that comes with it) after all.

Oh, well. After the economic fiascos in the private sector last year, I’m not sure we can trust the private sector any more than the public. What does that leave? For the record, my current favorite colleges include one public institution: Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey, and one private, non-profit, online school: Western Governors University.

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Most Creative Minds of Education

Two of the 12 most creative minds of 2008 named by Fast Company magazine come from the field of education. Both are mavericks who come from outside the mainstream.

Before Michelle Rhee was appointed superintendent of the Washington, D. C. public schools in 2007, she “had never led a school, let alone a school system with 10,000 employees and a budget of nearly $1 billion.” After teaching for three years in Baltimore, Rhee founded the New Teacher Project, a non-profit organization which works with school districts to recruit and train new teachers.

Last month, Rhode Island School of Design selected John Maeda as its next president. The former associate research director of MIT's famed Media Lab, was by all accounts a stunning choice. A technologist, who is also an artist, designer, and author could only have been hired because the search committee “decided to be open” to somebody outside the norm.

According to the magazine, “Hiring a maverick is always risky…. but perhaps only an outsider -- and someone who may be just a little bit crazy -- could set in motion the fundamental change needed to transform a creaking bureaucracy.”

Rhee is on her way to doing that. She has closed schools, cut administrative staff and fired teachers. Now, she is pushing a revolutionary contract that may simultaneously kill the entrenched seniority hiring system and make Washington's teachers the highest paid in America.

Maeda is expected to use his corporate contacts and technical sensibilities to forge a new commercial focus without losing the school’s well-known avant-garde eccentricity.

If these two are successful, maybe more educational institutions will follow their lead and seek ideas and leadership from outside academia. As Tom Peters noted, "Most good (neat, innovative, wild, woolly) ‘stuff,’ large and small, happens in the boondocks, far, far from corporate headquarters, corporate politics, and corporate toadying."

Not that there is any of that in education.

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Some Assembly Required

Here’s a simple way to determine whether you are primarily a visual, auditory or kinesthetic learner. When you buy or receive something labeled with the three scariest words in the English language, some assembly required, how do you react?

Do you look at the diagrams, read the instructions, or just dive right in and try to figure it out yourself?

If you look at the diagrams, you are a visual learner.

If you read the instructions, you are an auditory learner.

If you dive in and figure it out for yourself, you are a kinesthetic learner. You’ve heard the expression, when all else fails, read the instructions, right? Strong kinesthetic learners won’t read the instructions even when all else fails. If they have to, they might have someone else read the instructions and then tell them what to do.

Of course, the smartest people are the ones who find someone else to put the thing together for them.

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