Book Club Session 5 - Key Points from Book
Working definition of structural disruption from the book (Chapter 9, pg 156)
Structural disruption is what happens when multiple technological shifts converge to disrupt each of the sources of market power that previously had allowed a firm to thrive and maintain its market leadership. Those sources of power tend to involve the control of scarce resources, but in a structural disruption, all those resources become abundant, and then a new set of scarce resources becomes the source of market power— one that the traditional big players no longer control.
Author's thoughts on scarcity (Chapter 9, pgs. 159-160)
… a university degree is still the credential that matters most in the workforce today. And therein lies the rub. As long as you need a degree to get a good job, the university system is safe from disruption.
Things are changing, however. There are strong signs that in the world of credentialing, we’re now moving from scarcity to abundance. And that, in turn, suggests that conditions are at last ripe for a structural disruption in higher education.
Author's thoughts on educational experience and the variance between how students, parents, and higher ed define it. (Chapter 11, 184-188)
In The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money (2018), Bryan Caplan, George Mason University, argues that there’s surprisingly little evidence of a causal relationship between increased education and increased critical-thinking skills. . . That line of thinking drives a lot of people who believe in the intangible value of the liberal arts crazy. It even rubs me the wrong way at times because I’ll admit to being as attached as the next professor to the idea that what I teach has not only practical but also social value. But the problem, as I see it, is that regardless of what we tell ourselves as faculty, a lot of students and potential students just aren’t interested in acquiring abstract skills of critical thinking that will help them become more informed members of the body politic. They’re mainly interested in acquiring credentials that will get them a job. For example, according to surveys conducted by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute in 2019, 84 percent of incoming college freshmen listed “to get a better job” as “very important” in their decision to go to college, compared with just 50 percent of incoming freshmen in 1975.
. . . One could argue that these survey respondents are just narrowminded and shortsighted about the true value of a college education. Maybe so. But if that’s true, we need to accept our culpability in encouraging those shortsighted views. After reading the promotional materials colleges have sent to my three children over the last six years, I’ve seen firsthand that—whatever my colleagues and I might believe about the broader personal and societal benefits of critical thinking skills and a liberal education—the way universities sell a college education to parents and students is based almost exclusively on plush campuses, luxury accommodations, and good-paying jobs.
I suspect these marketing messages aren’t accidental. Rather, they’re based on a careful understanding of what we know students and parents are looking for from the college degree. Whether or not we like it, a lot of students really do think of themselves as customers in search of a high-paying job. If they can find ways of acquiring credentials and finding a job that involve far less time and cost less money than the way we do things now, they’re going to pursue them.
At this point, I’m frequently asked: “Wouldn’t this be bad for society? . . . Is a residential college education the only way to prepare young adults—and lifelong learners, for that matter—to thrive in the world? Does preparation for the workforce really require four years of time on campus and hundreds of thousands of dollars of expense, and should it be disproportionately available to the wealthiest classes of society?
*** There’s a strongly held view in higher education that whatever the inequalities created by our current system of higher education, online education will create even more. This third objection is an argument worth considering seriously.