What is the biggest thing that college leaders are doing wrong?
A. The biggest mistake is not linking the use of new technology to saving costs. There’s a huge cultural resistance in higher education to talking about costs and even to counting costs. I spoke to the dean of a teaching program, and she had just instituted this really cutting-edge Facebook-like platform for an online master’s degree in teaching, and I asked her how the cost plays out. And she said, “We haven’t done any cost comparison, and we wouldn’t, and I don’t think I would use the word ‘efficiency,’ because if you want a degree from our university, you have to pay our tuition.” I think that’s really shortsighted. I think in higher education there’s a moral imperative to cut costs because there is such a crying need for access. Q. What is the one take-away you want to leave people? A. Ideally, I hope this is a message of empowerment. I really think that the simplest and fastest thing that can change is for families and students to think differently about what higher education is a
