by Ken O’Donnell, Vice Provost, California State University, Dominguez Hills
If you’ve been attending the NASH series on the Big Re-Think over the last few weeks, then you’ve enjoyed some mind-expanding conversations about where public systems of higher education might want to go, and how we’d get there. The initiative isn’t timid: topics have included overturning the budget model, how accreditation would need to change, and who leads the transformation. A recent session delved into complex adaptive systems theory, and how a sprawling ecosystem like ours can intentionally create space for its own evolution.
If I have a boat, then this is what floats it.
But it also makes me wonder about the change in leadership we’d need on our campuses – at all levels – to take advantage of a context that actively encourages its own adaptation. That would be unlike the world we work in now, and which many of us have found a way to flourish in.
I’m reminded of an obscure TV executive named Fred Silverman, who in the 1970s got so good at a particular kind of programming that he wound up on the cover of Time Magazine.
Back then, you had three channels, or in big media markets maybe five or six. And since this was when few TVs had remote controls, let alone DVRs and streaming, the tendency was to pick one channel for the evening and then nestle in.
In that world, running a winning network meant playing the weekly line-up like a board game, and this was Silverman’s genius. Yes, he was also good at cultivating mainstream, inoffensive content, ideal for a universe where one size better fit all. But his real gift was for putting his best shows against the best the other two networks were offering that night, and then sustaining his lame ones with that invisible glue binding cushion to tush. He was the acknowledged virtuoso of programming strategies like tentpoling and hammocking, creating reliable servings of TV comfort food for each night of the week. If anything unsavory found its way onto your screen, was it really worth the walk to the channel knob? In another half hour you knew you’d get something palatable.
That era had mostly passed by the end of the century, and with it Silverman’s heyday. By then we had infinite channels, a wireless stick in hand to change them with, and a lot more say over which shows to watch and – crucially – when. If he’d come up in television in this century instead of the last one, he may have found another way to stand out, or maybe – and I’d say likelier – we’d simply never have heard of him.
Which brings me back to the likes of you and me.
Participating in the Big Re-Think webcasts persuades me our sector is going through a similar disruption. Our colleges and universities are losing their grip on credentialing, as employers and others look beyond the degree for evidence of proficiency. College as the four years after high school is the experience for a dwindling minority of students. Our reluctance to embrace workforce relevance is catching up to us.
For those looking to enter the middle class, we may still feel like we’re the only game in town. But so did network TV.
It will be interesting to see, over the next decade or so, what NASH and the rest of us can really do about this. Our department chairs, tenured faculty, and even vice provosts came up acculturated to certain rules of engagement, which we now use to our advantage. We know just how far our colleagues can be cajoled, and the limits of our collective bargaining agreements. We can throw down a semester lineup of rehearsals, labs, and lectures that Silverman would recognize as inspired. It’s like Olympic gymnasts, but in regalia.
To judge from thinking on display this month, by people who are clearly at the top of our field, some of those skills may go the way of hammocking. The rules we live by will shift, and our context will evolve. Spaces like those in NASH give us a pretty good shot at evolving with it.
It’s exciting.