Are we missing the boat?

I just read an old article, with some very fresh ideas. It was Paul Michael Privateer's (1999) article called Academic Technology and the Future of Higher Education. I liked many of his ideas about how technology should create a new pedagogy, but I especially liked the following analogy, borrowed from Hickey, Ouimette, and Venegoni (1996)

"The railroads died not because of interstate highways, airplanes, trucks or buses, but because the people who ran them really liked "choo-choos." Those people forgot they were in the transportation business.... By analogy, hospitals are operated by people who are fascinated with huge white buildings ... (having) forgotten that they are in the healthcare business and not in the business of building and expanding more impressive hospitals. (1996, pp. 12-13)"

I think he's right on. In education, we've forgotten that we're about preparing students for careers and life, not creating smarter, wiser faculty and the "university experience." Perhaps higher ed isn't the sacred cow it thinks it is and should refocus its efforts on better preparing students for a new world.

But the eternal question is how?