Access Today Abelard To Apple: The Fate Of American Colleges And Universities Authored By Richard A. Demillo Accessible In Kindle
other industry has their key workers ask "What are you going to do this summer" DeMillo presents a good summary of the issues of organization that confront the modern university.
This is a book about higher education reform by the Dean of Engineering at Georgia Tech, It focuses on the tension between the tendency of academics to be selfcontained and slow to change on the one hand and the pressures on universities to adapt to significant changes in technology, world economic markets, government policies, etc.
The author sees most universities as in the "middle" between the well endowed prestige private universities and the flexible and dynamics proprietary new universities on the other.
He favors a policy of being more responsive while focusing on branding and reputation to protect a university's assets and help it stand out from the crowd.
Overall, the book is well informed and well written and the author focuses in a real problems and tensions facing universities today matters that most people, even highly educated ones, don't appreciate.
Because of his background, the author is especially informative on technology issues,
To the author's credit, no simple solutions are offered and the policy recommendations while certainly in the right direction do not come across as very new or substantial.
Like many books attacking current crises, this book is a chapter or to too long, Identifying a problem/crisis is not the same as
fixing it,
Even with such limitations, this is a reasonable and useful book and I will recommend it to my colleagues.
Professor DeMillo's critique of universities "in the Middle" is well taken, but comes off as a bit shortsighted.
He seems to argue for the rise of online, forprofit universities in taking over the role of higher education without any significant evidence that claims that students from such institutions are better suited in the professional market than those who studies in more traditional universities.
Other research has debunked the assumption that open access tools to educational content necessarily equates to an education.
Nonetheless, DeMillo's text is worthy of debate among educators, university stakeholders, and the public at large.
In Abelard to Apple Richard A, DeMillo does not deliver on his promise to give readers a wellreasoned and logical set of recommendations to save the,colleges and universities in the United States that are somewhere between the Elites and the Forprofits.
In other words, they are in the Middle, However, the book has so many flaws that I'm not sure where to begin, DeMillo was Dean of the Computing College at Georgia Tech for ten years, Before that, he worked in industry for most of his career, He stepped down as dean inand picked up a white paper that he had prepared on the future of higher education and he began expanding it.
This book is the result, And grandiose it is, too, In the prologue, Mr. DeMillo urges the reader to read it through like a novel, because each chapter will build upon the previous one, leading us to a thoroughly convicing set of recommendations by the end of the book.
This does not happen. Mr. DeMillo is fond of digression, He goes off on marginally relevant tangents, The book ispages and it could have beenor, The author simply wanders through various topics that interest him with regard to higher education, At the end of the book he offers ten recommedations, none of which will have one iota of effect.
Some of his advice is obvious Don't try to be Harvard, some would be impossible to take Cut your budget in half and he definitely does not make an argument in the preceedingpages that these steps will have any effect on the success of a college or university or its students.
I read this book because it was discussed at a conference I attended, I would have stopped reading it after the first couple of chapters if it hadn't been assigned reading.
He lost me when he started praising Forprofits like University of Phoenix, holding them up as models for the rest of us to follow.
In order to bolster his argument that they are the epitome of studentcentered institutions, focused on recruitment, retention/persistence, and career placement none of which is true, he cites an outofdate bookand the president of University of Phoenix.
I guess Mr. DeMillo missed the wellpublicized news about the failure of Forprofits to market fairly, graduate students, or place graduates in their career choices.
Many thoughtprovoking and interesting books have tackled the significant challenges facing higher education this is not one of them.
This really did read as an A to Z of issues in higher education, Some of them were more relevant to Australia than others, I skimmed the last quarter about tech, CMS and MOOCs, as that's really been covered elsewhere in more useful ways.
In the end there was no real argument given, Will middlerange universities continue or not Is an educational revolution coming Will the market decide the future of higher ed There are no clear answers in this book or anywhere, I guess.
As someone who works in a community college and sees daily the impact of academic policy on students, this book was a useful look into the inner workings of college and university administration and policies.
Demillo examines the historical role and development of the American higher education system, including stories of shady dealings and political maneuvering, the development of the idea of a "multiversity," the questions of whether universities are set up to serve students or faculty.
The book does drag on a bit in the middle, but the closing chapter is very useful for anyone who is in a position of visioncasting.
Highly recommended for anyone working in higher ed today, With historical context and advice for sweeping ranges of institutions as they face disruptions, it's a riveting, engaging, and more than slightly unnerving read.
A wakeup call is the best way to describe the book I just finished, Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities by Richard Demillo professor at Georgia Tech and Director of its Center forst Century Universities.
Its a mustread for any stakeholder involved with higher education institutions or for those with a keen interest in the direction that higher education is going.
The book should come with a warning though, it may cause elevated blood pressure, anxiety or even feelings of distress for anyone working for, or with a middletier college.
Middletier universities, as defined by Demillo are schools that make up the majority of higher education institutions in the United States, not the elites with large endowment funds, or the proprietary for profits, but all the rest.
Read the full review on my blog: sitelinkmy link text This Abelard to Apple's trajectory was set when Thomas Friedman asked the author, "What is the value of a university in a world that has been flattened by technology and economic interdependence" What results is something Friedman himself could have written: one geewhiz story after another, until you are numbed into accepting any conclusion laid before you.
The author was a Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech, and his basic answer to higher ed's troubles is wait for it.
. . iTunes. If you think a question like "What happens in a growing market when you are losing market share to your competitors who are building capacity" is the key to thinking about the purpose and direction of higher ed, then this is the book for you.
What's more, you can read it in any order you like, as each chapter has no connection to any other.
I read this book as a possible commonread for my NERCHE Assistant Deans Thinktank group, DeMilloÃÂÂs writing is engaging and he presents many interesting ideas about how we got to where we are in Higher Education.
In many ways it feels like a SWOT analysis, I like it because it is not hysterical like so many books of this genre, One thing that he neglects to discuss unless I forgot this portion of the book was the impact the Federal Government now has on Higher Education aside from funding research and how regulations will further encroach on the way we ÃÂÂdo businessÃÂÂ.
The author was really hard to follow, If you are looking for a good history book on Higher Education I would point you to John Thelin's "A History of American Higher Education.
" The vast majority of American college students attend two thousand or so private and public institutions that might be described as the Middlereputable educational institutions, but not considered equal to the elite and entrenched upper echelon of the Ivy League and other prestigious schools.
Richard DeMillo has a warning for these colleges and universities in the Middle: If you do not change, you are heading for irrelevance and marginalization.
In "Abelard to Apple," DeMillo argues that these institutions, clinging precariously to a centuriesold model of higher education, are ignoring the social, historical, and economic forces at work in today's world.
In the age of iTunes, open source software, and forprofit online universities, there are new rules for higher education.
DeMillo, who has spent years in both academia andin industry, explains how higher education arrived at its current parlous state and offers a road map for the twentyfirst century.
He describes the evolving model for higher education, from European universities based on a medieval model to American landgrant colleges to Apple's iTunes U and MIT's OpenCourseWare.
He offers ten rules to help colleges reinvent themselves including "Don't romanticize your weaknesses" and argues for a focus on teaching undergraduates.
DeMillo's messagefor colleges and universities, students, alumni, parents, employers, and politiciansis that any college or university can change course if it defines a compelling value proposition one not based in "institutional envy" of Harvard and Berkeley and imagines an institution that delivers it.
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