Are Badlands Ahead for Higher Education? And Nonprofits?

By Barry L. Nazar

Harry E. Pence (2009) of SUNY examines this question in a paper published in the Journal of Educational Technology Systems. The term “badlands” derives from O’Hara-Devereaux’s book, Navigating the Badlands, wherein she predicts that our society is heading into a period of chaos, which she calls “badlands.” Her analogy is that we are moving from the cathedral to the bazaar. In the former, there are roles, rules, hierarchies, and one succeeds and leads by knowing and subscribing to these. In the latter, everything is flexible, leadership is not defined by hierarchies, information comes from social networks, and fixed references are few.

O’Hara-Devereaux develops four major themes in connection with her prediction. The first pertains to an intractability for organizational change. The music recording industry is an example wherein new methods of distributing products posed challenges; e.g., websites like Naptser and then peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa. Rather than adapt to these challenges, the established companies fought tenaciously, even threatening and suing their customers, but eventually lost. The one company that did adjust to the circumstances, Apple, Inc. via the iPod™ and iTunes™ is now the overwhelming dominant player in music distribution. Most high level executives refused to adapt, believing they could stifle the new technology. But, the technology only migrated or permutated relentlessly until it manifested its full expression.

The second theme is the want for new types of leadership. The landscape is filled with systems that are becoming ever more powerful. Those in charge, however, seem less and less able to understand this power. An example of this is the French company, Societe Generale, who lost $7 billion one day by the trading transactions of one 31 year old employee. Wall Street firms, too, periodically experience trading disasters precipitated by computer trading, or by complex computer generated instruments where the management is unable to adequately evaluate the risk. Taking a look beyond O’Hara-Devereaux’s thoughts, consider that such systems, more and more, are rolled out by government agencies and those in charge are a plural political leadership. The complexities loom larger still, not just for understanding this power, but also for the ability to act under competing goals and interests.

The third theme is globalization. It’s an emergent phenomenon also brought about by technology. Globalization changes the basket of demands for skills and knowledge. It also changes the competition for the supply of everything. Zakaria (2008) describes it as the “rise of the rest.” Where the US once enjoyed advantages in cheap energy, raw materials, and technology leadership, those margins are shrinking fast . And what plays well in the marketplace also changes more dynamically. There was always a “butterfly effect,” but it used to take generations or even centuries to unfold. Today, it could take only minutes.

The fourth theme is the strain on traditional social compacts. Globalization is both social and economic. Provincial social structures create a push-back against participation in globalization. So, while economic pressures bring it on, social resistances create frictions. There is a need, here and abroad, to advance skills for social adjustment in pace with the global and technological advances. To some extent, social media is evolving to fill this void. But there are vast pockets of Luddites (persons who eschew technical changes) for whom this remedy is unlikely to reach. In any given situation, diversity could be a strength, or it could be a problem. It all depends on the social competence of those involved and the frameworks for establishing a common basis for compatibility. At the moment, the future of Belgium is in question. The Dutch speaking and the French speaking sectors are pulling the country apart. While those tensions have existed for 170 years, this time around global forces (i.e., the EU economic union and large scale Muslim immigration) have pressed the frictions perilously close to a breaking point.

Pence amplifies the case for a coming “badlands” by drawing on the work of Clayton Christensen of Harvard’s Business School. Christensen points out that technology can be adapted at two levels. One level, “sustaining technologies,” is where the technology enables us to do the same things only more efficiently or effectively. Using PowerPoint, for example, is a technology that allows teachers to use the same teaching methods, but with a blackboard that is more adaptable. The other level, “disruptive technologies,” leads to new ways of doing things, or even new things altogether. The example about the music recording industry and the rise of Apple iPod epitomize the nature of disruptive technology. Once it appears, there is little that can stop it and when it has run its course, the landscape is indelibly modified in major ways.

The accelerating pace of technical development is providing a lot of “sustaining” innovations, but it is also, increasingly, leading to “disruptive” innovations. For the corporate world this fulfills economist Joseph Schumpeter’s model of “creative destruction.” Schumpeter saw this as mostly a good thing which keeps the economy from becoming stagnant and delivers increasing benefits and opportunities to consumers and entrepreneurs. But it can be “badlands” for select parties. Kodak was once the giant of photography. But today, Kodak struggles for its survival in a competitive world of “digital” photography. Similarly, America OnLine (AOL) was the giant of internet access when telephone dial up was the primary “on ramp.” But today with options for cable, fiber optics, satellite, WiFi, and cell phone connection, AOL is struggling for its survival.

Disruptive technologies rarely come about because of a single advancement. They are usually some combination of multiple advances. YouTube, for example, is the result of internet speed, cheap digital camcorders, cheap digital memory platforms, and, of course, a large body of enterprising amateurs in a free society. The pace of technical development is making these combinations for “disruptive” innovation ever more likely. They simultaneously make it ever less predictable because of their combinatorial origins. It is hard to know what is coming next.

So, what does all this have to do with higher education? And, for that matter, are there implications for the nonprofit sector? The National Research Council (2002) of the National Academy of Sciences studied the issues and reported:

“The extraordinary pace of information-technology evolution is likely not only to continue for the next several decades but could well accelerate. It will erode, and in some cases obliterate, higher education’s usual constraints of space and time. Institutional barriers will be reshaped and possibly transformed.” (2002, p. 2)

The report went on to describe the impact of information technology as “profound, rapid, and discontinuous” and that it “will continue to be for our other social institutions (corporations and government) and the economy.” And while the Council pointed out that procrastination and inaction are dangerous courses for colleges and universities, they were admittedly unable to prescribe what to do, beyond some general recommendations for developing in-house expertise among faculty and staff, forming alliances with outside organizations, and more or less keeping an eye on things.

What Pence adds to the Council’s scenario is the recognition of multiple other forces at work that further challenge the business of academia; viz., ability to undergo organizational change, cultivating enlightened leadership that understands complex systems, response to demands for teaching new and very different skills in a global context, and the cultural challenges to traditional social compacts. The revolution of the 60’s is a minor blip compared to the “disruptive” ideas on the way -- new ways of delivering education and even new ways of conducting science.

For several hundred years science has proceeded along a fairly consistent paradigm; ie., develop a model, test the model, accept the model, or reject and modify the model and test again. Anderson (2008) describes some recent developments that may portend something new. In what he calls the “Petabyte Age,” there is a vast amount of information. Google recently conquered the advertising world by analyzing this data store with dimensionally agnostic statistics. No models of human behavior, just applied mathematics. They don’t know why one page is better than another, they just know that it is. Advertising is a trivial example of the new method, but data mining approaches have utility in public health, genetics, ecology, and behavioral science. This approach is proving itself superior in many ways for uncovering heretofore unknown patterns in nature and human behavior, even new species. It’s currently something of a heresy to logical empiricism, however, because it is “correlation” and, therefore, deemed “inferior” knowledge (except for Google’s bottom line).

The academy is the epitome of the cathedral model. It is hierarchical and obstinately resistant to organizational change. As for responding to new learning demands, the Wharton School’s Russell Ackoff (1989) once noted that the University operates as though the purpose is providing the faculty with the quality of life they prefer. They teach what they want to teach, when they want to teach, in the way they like to teach it, and mostly the extent that they have to do it, as opposed to the other stuff they like to do (e.g., scholarly work to impress each other).

If we are headed to the bazaar, it is hard to imagine that the academy could survive as anything like its present form. Currently, US Higher Education remains our best industry. This is largely because the American systems still teach students to think, create ideas, and initiate entrepreneurism. But, will this stand in light of new skills that become relevant in a global market place? Pence suggests that extracurricular activities like FaceBook and MySpace may better prepare students for transactions in the wider world than experiences in the classroom.

As with the music industry, the early warning signs are present. There’s a rise in online certification and degree programs. There’s a rise in think tanks and other professional associations outside the academy. Governments at all levels have aggressive educational agendas (for better and worse). And there is an imperative to contain costs. These add up to a future that is not business as usual.

What can nonprofit agencies take from this? The same forces of change inevitably fall upon their path as well. Organizations typically try to avoid risk and uncertainty by establishing a negotiated environment. In the bazaar, the reference points for doing this become elusive. Instead of protecting the status quo, they should engage in conscientious self assessment that can support organizational change without falling apart. Existing routines need to be unfrozen to accommodate new repertoires. And, the relationships between agencies need to be redefined for more porous boundaries and a perspective of loosely coupled systems rather than isolated turfdums. All of these, of course, beg for new types of leadership. And the question for both academia and the nonprofit sector is, where will these new leadership skills come from?

Ackoff, R.L. (1989). Management in small doses. John Wiley & Sons: Hoboken, JN.

Anderson, C. (2008). The end of theory. Wired, 16, 108-110.

National Research Council (2002). Preparing for the revolution: Information technology and the future of the research university. Panel on the Impact of Information Technology on the Future of the Research University, National Academies Press: Washington, D.C. Retrieved June 12, 2010 from: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10545&page=R1

O’Hara-Devereaux, M. (2004). Navigating the badlands: Thriving in the decade of radical transformation. Jossey-Bass, San Fransisco.

Pence, H.E. (2009). Are there badlands ahead for higher education? Journal of educational technology systems, 37(3), 319-325.

Zakaria, F. (2008). The post-American world. W.W. Norton & Co.: New York.