Imperatives for Change in Higher Education
Part Two: Responding to Change
Nine Cues for Campus Planners

In the same way that the need for a personalized educational system has resulted in the creation of new paradigm schools at the K-12 level, so also, elements within the American higher education system have responded with actions and plans to deal with the changes in their world.

In the following segment, I will focus on the kinds of positive changes that are needed and already occurring in many areas within the college and university system in response to the pressures discussed above.

1. Adopting Student-Centered Models: While higher education systems have traditionally boasted a higher level of “personalization” than the K-12 world, the American campus remains very much an instructor-centered place. It is important that universities begin to integrate the idea of multiple intelligences and brain-based learning in the way many schools have already done. That means not only building more flexibility into core curriculums, but also offering many different ways in which students can earn college credit. For example, the requirement to attend lectures may be dropped in favor of a system where students are offered online guidance both from instructors and peers. In this regard, The Pew Charitable Trusts has already funded an initiative at several universities that will deliver high enrollment introductory courses online. The success of this venture could lead to a rethinking of the very idea of large lectures – a mainstay at most universities.
   
   MIT’s Aerospace Research Laboratory showcases how it is possible to create campus environments that are driven by the research about learning process. The factors that influenced the design of this facility include the belief that learning occurs all the time, that direct experience decisively shapes individual learning, that individuals learn by establishing and reworking patterns, relationships and connections and that change in the environment is stimulating. According to Randall Fielding, in his article “Personalized Learning in a Global Context, “From these premises, the team developed an organizing model that included spaces to Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate.” (Fielding 2002)
   
   At the MIT facility, which permits a highly individualized hands-on program, various media can be used both to deliver instruction and measure learning. The proliferation of such innovative learning strategies will provide an impetus for universities to move away from test-based assessments and toward portfolio-based systems. At the same time, the focus will begin to shift from what students know to what they can do. Of course, all these changes will have dramatic impacts on the way the campus itself is organized and that may be one reason why colleges will move slowly toward this idea of true customization of the learning experience for all students.
   
   
2. Becoming More Market Driven: There is an old joke that an MBA is the process of making common sense difficult. While this is obviously an exaggeration, there is some truth that four-year degree programs include a lot of superfluous material not essential to the field of study or specialization. The idea of educating the “whole person” is good in theory, but it fails when such curriculums are made compulsory and become a requirement for graduation. Learning alternatives in the private sector, on the other hand, are market driven. They offer only what is needed to gain a particular skill that has current value in the world of work. That is why certifications from companies like Cisco Systems and Microsoft are often valued in the computer industry above a generic computer science degree from a good university.
   
   With the certification model, education becomes truly a lifelong endeavor, one that does not end with the awarding of the degree. This is a model that the Department of Engineering Professional Development at the University of Wisconsin employs very successfully. The market driven courses they offer both onsite and in other parts of the country are in great demand. Not only does UW benefit lifelong learners by employing this model, but it is also improving its own bottom line. Developing programs that builds this kind of currency of learning skills is what the higher education establishment needs to do more of.
   
   
3. Developing “Centers of Excellence”: In the K-12 world, large comprehensive high schools have already discovered that the two things wrong with them are that they are large and that they are comprehensive. A way of getting around the problem of anonymity of large, amorphous organizations is the idea of creating smaller, specialized “schools-within-schools” or, better still, independent “signature” programs, as with the School of Environmental Sciences (Zoo School) in Minneapolis or High Tech High in San Diego.
   
   Colleges and universities are also realizing that they can no longer be all things to all people and still retain their competitive edge. That is why the concept of providing “signature” programs is gaining strength within higher education. The Society for College and University Planning notes that the Center of Excellence concept is now in use in Tennessee and other states (Society for College & University Planning, National Planning Roundtable, 2002). Here’s what they have to say, “Taking into account factors like historical mission, strengths and unique opportunities, Tennessee allocates resources to institutions to maintain or create distinction in certain programs. As a result, one institution has the Center of Excellence in the Creative Arts, another the Center of Excellence in Manufacturing, and so on. Oregon has similar Center of Excellence programs and also, a Targeted Investment Model that directs resources to selected university programs in an effort to achieve national status.”
   
   
4. Being a Good Neighbor: Beyond the obvious need to garner local support to sustain government funding, higher education institutions are finding out that community and business partnerships are good for business and good for learning. By offering courses of interest to local community residents at times when the facilities are least used, a dual goal is met. One, the relevance of the institution is increased within the community and two revenues are increased without adding to infrastructure costs. Similarly, local businesses, as well as government and private institutions like hospitals, schools and day-care centers offer the higher education establishment many opportunities for mutually beneficial partnerships. Students can gain authentic learning experiences from such partnerships even as the institution strengthens local ties while increasing opportunities for philanthropic contributions and grant funding.
   
   
5. Integrating Technology -- Distance learning: Distance learning is only now coming into its own as a legitimate adjunct to the traditional on-site delivery of educational programs. With Internet II, already a mainstay at many campuses across America, will come unprecedented power to transfer information across global networks with full video and audio capabilities. Distance learning represents one important slice of the fast growing information and telecommunications technologies that have already changed the way we learn and the fundamental organization of business and industry.
   
   By accessing information from anywhere in the world and dispensing it to its constituents instantly, the university or even the local community college can broaden and strengthen its resource base by making it more immediate and dynamic. Needless to say, the global outreach afforded students and staff allows local colleges and universities to develop world class partnerships and be competitive with the best universities in the world.
   
   
6. Integrating Technology – Wireless: Interestingly, the need for ultra high-bandwidth connections to support sophisticated technologies and high-fidelity video and audio transmissions across the world comes at the same time that there is an explosion in the spread of relatively low-bandwidth wireless appliances. Students in campuses across America are now enjoying the benefits of wireless connectivity. With the recent approval of a new high-speed wireless standard (IEEE 802.11a) , there is no question that, eventually, campuses that do not provide wireless connectivity will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.
   
   Wireless is also a technology that will have a direct impact on the way campuses are physically arranged and used. With anytime, anywhere access to information comes an increase in student-directed learning and independent research. Such learning and research can now occur in the nooks and crannies of the campus as well as in libraries and labs, and this is something campus planners must be very cognizant of.
   
   Even as wireless extends the reach of learning opportunities beyond the boundaries of the classroom, it also changes the way the classroom itself is conducted. In the meantime, we are now in a period of transition in which the old and new paradigms of learning dwell uncomfortably side-by-side. Consider this excerpt from a recent New York Times piece on the effect of wireless computing in a typical lecture situation, “In a classroom at American University in Washington on a recent afternoon, the benefits and drawbacks of the new wireless world were on display. From the back row of an amphitheater classroom, more than a dozen laptop screens were visible. As Prof. Jay Mallek lectured graduate students on the finer points of creating and reading an office budget, many students went online to Blackboard.com, a Web site that stores course materials, and grabbed the day's handouts from the ether.
   
   But just as many students were off surfing. A young man looked at sports photos while a woman checked out baby photos that just arrived in her e-mailbox.”
   

MIT's Aerospace Lab, an organizing model that includes spaces to Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate

Facilitating social interaction:
"Learning Street" at Peel Education and TAFE Campus, Mandurah, Australia, Spowers Architects

For another example of a learning street, see the award-winning Canning Vale campus in Western Australia, planned by Prakash Nair at: Canning Vale

7. Designing for Flexibility: It is not yet clear to what extent distance learning and wireless technologies as discussed above will affect the total gross floor area needed on the campus. It is clear, however, that flexible building strategies need to be evaluated to account for the rise in new media and electronic instruction that are already beginning to replace traditional classroom instruction.
   
   Emerging and growing fields like Tissue Engineering and Robotics may place new demands on facilities that are hard to envision today, but we know that buildings will be around a lot longer than transient technologies and today’s curricular offerings. We have already seen how MIT has solved this problem by using the CDIO (Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate) Model to design its Aerospace Research Laboratory. This is a very robust model that will remain viable even as technology and equipment changes. Other concepts such as the design of open plan, sub-floor systems which permit infinite variations of the workspace, interior partitions and interior equipment need to be evaluated. Today, technology is often an afterthought in buildings and tends to be superimposed after the fact. Good planning from the ground up will allow buildings to “bend” and be better prepared to accept new and emerging technologies.
   
   
8. Facilitating Social Interaction: As technology takes over many of the so-called “formal” learning functions, universities will find themselves more and more a center of social interaction and other forms of “informal” learning opportunities. This will increase the need for plans to provide for lounges, meeting rooms, plazas, reading cafes, green zones and other attractive open areas for informal interaction and exchange of ideas. In the design of the award-winning Canning Vale campus in Western Australia, I stressed to our architects the importance of the “spaces between buildings”. That campus was designed with several “learning neighborhoods” organized along a “learning street” where much of the informal learning would take place.
   
   
9. Implementing New Accountability Measures: Reforms in all the above areas has the added benefit in that they provide improved opportunities for new accountability measures. They address goals that are important to elected officials and the public but they do so in a manner that preserves the fundamental purpose of higher education – to provide the best opportunities for a relevant, high quality education. Higher education institutions have to show their constituents that they are not just a “community of learners” but a “learning community” whose benefits accrue to local neighborhoods and the region in which they are located. Such benefits need to be measured not only in economic terms, but also in terms of the increased social and cultural value that accrues to local communities from the presence of the higher education institution.

Conclusion: Despite an anticipated national growth in higher education enrollment of about 1.5 million over the next 15 years, there is no anticipation that hundreds of new campuses will be born in the United States during this period. Therefore, the challenge for campus planners everywhere will be to preserve America’s rich tradition of excellence in this period of growth while responding innovatively to the inexorable forces of change discussed here.