The Abundant University

Description

Why our current system of higher education is financially and morally unsustainable and how to address the crisis with the creative implementation of digital technologies.

For too long, our system of higher education has been defined by scarcity: scarcity in enrollment, scarcity in instruction, and scarcity in credentials. In addition to failing students professionally, this system has exacerbated social injustice and socioeconomic stratification across the globe. In The Abundant University, Michael D. Smith argues that the only way to create a financially and morally sustainable higher education system is by embracing digital technologies for enrolling, instructing, and credentialing students—the same technologies that we have seen create abundance in access to resources in industry after industry.

The Abundant University explains how we got our current system, why it’s such an expensive, inefficient mess, and how a system based on exclusivity cannot foster inclusivity. Smith challenges the resistance to digital technologies that we have already seen among numerous institutions, citing the examples of faculty resistance toward digital learning platforms. While acknowledging the understandable self-preservation instinct of our current system of residential education, Smith makes a case for how technology can engender greater educational opportunity and create changes that will benefit students, employers, and society as a whole.Preface: Scaling the Ivory Tower vii
Part I: Admissions
1 The Unjust University 3
Why It’s Hard to Foster Inclusivity in a System Based on Exclusivity
Part II: Orientation
2 The Education Factory 21
How We Got Our Current System and Why It’s Such an Expensive, Inefficient Mess
3 Seating Arrangements 39
Why Limited Classroom Space Leads Rich Parents to Bribe Their Kids into College
4 Masters of None 53
Why We Standardize Our Teaching Even Though We Know Our Students Are Unique
5 The Noisy Classroom 71
What College Diplomas Signal–and the Resulting Distortions
Part III: Instruction
6 Open Enrollment 89
Why–at Last–We Can Do Things Differently
7 The Digitally Powered Ivory Tower 103
How Digitization Is Creating Abundance in Access and Instruction
8 Getting Down to Business 135
Why Abundance in Access and Instruction Hasn’t Changed Higher Education
9 Structural Disruption 151
Why Big Changes Are at Last on the Horizon for Higher Education
10 Hello, Google State 165
The New World of Credentialing and Skills-Based Hiring
11 Objections, Objections 181
Understanding and Moving Past Our Resistance to Change
Part IV: Commencement
12 Rediscovering Our Mission 205
A Summation–and a Path Forward–for Educators
Acknowledgments 217
Notes 219
Index 259Included in Forbes‘s Best Higher Education Books of 2023 list

Winner of the Phillip E. Frandson Award for Literature

“If you’re looking for a book that challenges higher education’s status quo, questions its basic business model, and argues for a complete transformation to create greater, more affordable access to advanced education, Michael D. Smith’s The Abundant University: Remaking Higher Education For a Digital World is a great place to start…The Abundant University is sure to stir up a storm. It threatens many of higher education’s cherished assumptions and traditions. It encourages major innovations in how advanced education is delivered and to whom. And it foresees and even encourages a dismantling of the credentialing monopoly that colleges have long protected. Get ready to hear some howling from the ivory towers…With a straightforward, conversational style, Smith succeeds in portraying the current problems bearing down on higher education and offering a set of bold solutions for a future where he envisions a college education becoming “more open, flexible, inclusive, and lower-priced.” The Abundant University is a provocative book that should be read by higher ed insiders as well as those in the general public who care about expanding the reach and the impact of higher education.”
—ForbesMichael D. Smith is J. Erik Jonsson Professor of Information Technology and Marketing at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Public Policy and Management. Smith is coauthor of the book Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment (MIT Press).US

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