Conversations in higher education these days are all about innovation. Whether it is the growing concerns over student debt and access, tightening competition for “the best” students or finding a path in the face of declining resources, the most common solution seems to be innovation.  From the number of mentions in various higher ed publications, speeches and conference presentations, one might conclude that the vast ocean of colleges and universities in this country was churning with significant change.

And indeed, many schools are redoing the curriculum, altering teaching methods, tweaking the academic calendar and integrating some “next new thing” into a  2-5 years degree framework. Not to make light of these efforts, which often involve endless meetings, position papers, and continual invocations of the quality mantra, but too much of this innovation quest focuses on the what the institution wants and not on the results it could create.

Chris Messina’s brilliantly clever piece on AirPods situates Apple not as a tech company, but instead as a firm with a long-game focus, introducing and continually reinforcing our acceptance of technology apparatuses as fashion accessories, moving us toward the ultimate goal of a more personal, intimate connection between humans and computing. He includes a quote from Steve Jobs,“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology” that seems to be the antithesis of what is happening in higher education. In other words, if higher education is truly interested in innovation – and that is an empirical question in itself – why not start with the student experience and work backwards to the inputs? More importanly, if the larger goal is life-long learning in close relationship with a particular college, much like Apple is the cathedral for an ongoing most personal computer relationship, why isn’t every “next new thing” specifically designed to create a result of getting each student to active engagement as a life-long learner?  (The life-long learning goal, and its associated “next new thing,” is generally expressed as something you start doing AFTER you finish your degree.)

One of the best books on change leadership (IMHO) is Robert Quinn’s Building the Bridge as You Walk on It. He stresses that deep change comes when our question is no longer “What do I want?” but “What result do I want to create?”  If, as Messina argues, Apple is using design and engineering (he references Steve’s comment about technology and the liberal arts) to enable us to build the bridge while we move from our current state toward a future when our computing experience is deeply personal, then how might a college truly innovate, how might it create deep change, by enabling students to build the bridge to life-long learning starting with Day 1?  Not wanting to preempt any suggestions, but I think it would require a more radical approach than any of the current “next new things.”