Arthur Levine - The Great Upheaval: Higher Educations Past, Present, and Uncertain Future

Praise for The Great Upheaval

On the subject of higher education, Arthur Levine is astonishingly prescient, spotting trends on the horizon long before they come into focus for the rest of us. In this thoughtful and engaging book, he and Scott Van Pelt offer a clear-eyed assessment of the changesand the potential disruptionfacing colleges and universities. An indispensable guide to rethinking our assumptions about learning and preparing to thrive in a transformed educational landscape.

Rafael Reif, President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This clearly written book will be of interest to a broad spectrum of readers, including educators, policy makers, nonprofit professionals, students, and families. Levine and Van Pelt focus not only on colleges and universities, but on the challenges and opportunities of the larger postsecondary world, as they explore the dramatically different future of higher education and proposed actions to shape it.

Freeman A. Hrabowski III, President, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, author of The Empowered University: Shared Leadership, Culture Change, and Academic Success

A crisp, cogent case for the future of higher education in America. Levine and Van Pelt argue that technological change is empowering consumers in new ways and offers innovative ideas about how higher ed can address these changes. Bravo to the authors for being clear-eyed instead of overwrought, suggesting a positive way forward for a critically important institution.

Deborah Quazzo, Managing Partner, GSV Ventures

With tectonic shifts underway in higher education, The Great Upheaval could not be more timely. Levine and Van Pelt smartly outline the challenges facing the industry and suggest ways for institutions, policy makers, and funders to respond. A well-researched, well-written, and measured analysis fueled by a burning urgency to see higher education reclaim its central role in the American promise of opportunity and social mobility for all.

Paul J. LeBlanc, President, Southern New Hampshire University

An easy read on a complex topic. Levine and Van Pelt reject the forced choices for higher education of Stay the course! or The sky is falling! They claim higher education is undergoing significant transformation and argue the well-being of the nation is tied to the health of higher education. We had better get it right.

William G. Tierney, author of Higher Education for Democracy: The Role of the University in Civil Society

Levine and Van Pelt provoke us to reimagine higher education as a dynamic learning-driven enterprise capable of harnessing the nations talent to achieve far better and more equitable outcomes for the generations ahead. They make the compelling case that sustainable positive transformation must leverage the best lessons learned from the intersecting forces of the status quo and whole-scale disruption.

Martha Kanter, CEO, College Promise; US Under Secretary of Education (20092013)

At a crucial moment for American higher education, this erudite, clear, and witty book asks and answers the big question: Where do things go from here? It employs a historical framework to predict changes that are big, digital, structural, and good for students. Leaders of the system of todaytake this to heart now!

Chris Gabrieli, Chair, Massachusetts Board of Higher Education

Levine and Van Pelt make the compelling case that higher education must urgently shift its focus to prepare learners and workers for an increasingly fractured worldone where subjects and disciplines are less important than enhancing our human traits and capabilities and contributing to our shared social, democratic, and economic well-being.

Jamie Merisotis, President and CEO, Lumina Foundation

THE GREAT UPHEAVAL

Higher Educations Past, Present, and Uncertain Future

Arthur Levine

and

Scott Van Pelt

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS | Baltimore

2021 Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt

All rights reserved. Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

Johns Hopkins University Press

2715 North Charles Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363

www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Levine, Arthur, author. | Van Pelt, Scott, 1988author.

Title: The great upheaval : higher educations past, present, and uncertain future / Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt.

Description: Baltimore, Maryland : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021003075 | ISBN 9781421442570 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781421442587 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Education, HigherAims and objectivesUnited States. | Education, HigherUnited StatesHistory. | Educational changeUnited States.

Classification: LCC LB2322.2 .L49 2021 | DDC 378dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003075

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

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To our children and grandchildren.
The future belongs to them
Ian, Isaac, Jamie, Linnea, Nate,
Rachel, and Torin.

This is a book about the future of higher education in a time of profound, unrelenting, and accelerating change of a magnitude and scope unequaled since the Industrial Revolution. The United States is hurtling from a national, analog, industrial economy to a global, digital, knowledge economy.

We decided to write this book for four reasons. First, the transition makes higher education more essential than ever before. It is the engine that powers the global, digital, knowledge economy by producing knowledge, preserving knowledge, and disseminating knowledge. In contrast to industrial economies, which are rooted in natural resources and physical labor, knowledge economies are fueled by minds and information. They have an endless hunger for research and demand the most highly educated citizenry and labor force in human history.

Second, higher education will be transformed in the course of the transition just as it was during the Industrial Revolution. The reason is that todays colleges and universities, like all of the nations social institutions, were built for the passing industrial era. In the emerging knowledge economy, they work less well than they once did; to some they appear to be broken. The incongruence between the industrial era model of higher education and the needs of the emerging knowledge economy will increase over time. Higher education will need to be refitted for the global, digital, knowledge economy. This can be accomplished either by renovating the existing institutions or by replacing them. It may entail institutional adaptation to changing conditions or the changes may be of such magnitude that they disrupt the existing institutions, rendering them obsolete and making room for new actors. Regardless of the method by which change occurs, higher education will be transformed in the years ahead.