www.threejoy.

com

A Whitepaper for Effective Action

Transforming Higher
Education Without
Tears
David E. Goldberg
ThreeJoy Associates, Inc.
deg@threejoy.com
Transforming Higher
Education Without
Tears

Introduction
For many years, the urgency of change in higher education has been recognized in a string of
reports and white papers. Meetings have been held. Whole new departments and programs
have been started. Funding agencies in countries around the globe allocate millions of dollars,
euros, pounds, yen, yuan, pesos, and reals to bring about what is widely recognized as
substantive and substantially overdue change. Yet, despite the talk, despite the expenditures,
and despite the widely recognized urgency of the matter, as the French say, plus a change, plus
c'est la mme chose, the more things change the more they are the same. The purpose of this
whitepaper is to outline an approach to maximize the success probability of transformation
efforts through the adoption of deep transformative change methods.
In the remainder of the whitepaper, we start by examining why change is being undertaken
now and why normal change efforts fail so often or are otherwise disappointing. The whitepaper
continues by considering deep transformative change at the level of organizations and deep
development at the level of individuals in three phases. It then examines two foci of deep
change: (1) the fundamental mechanism of unleashing, and (2) the Goldberg-Laffer curve
describing the economics of student engagement. The whitepaper concludes by examining why
the change support services needed for effective transformation are so often lacking in a
university context.

Why Change, Why Now?

There are many reform efforts underway around the world, but in a certain sense, this is a bit
puzzling. The university is an old institution, dating back to 1088 with the founding of the
University of Bologna. Being a professor is an old and venerable profession and in many ways
there has been a long consensus about the role of such experts in the creation of knowledge, its
transmission, and the vetting of new experts. Why all the fuss now about reform and change?
The short answer is that the whole notion of expertisein both the classroom and in the
laboratoryis being challenged by resources available on line. For example, 14-year old Jack
Andraka (http://bit.ly/WzLblv) was able to invent a pancreatic cancer detection strip by himself
starting from work in his high school biology class and continuing with reading of papers online,
only because information is so widely accessible to so many through the power of the web.
When he sought the help of a professor, he needed only that profs lab space and equipment,
not the professors expertise.
The stunning and rapid growth of MOOCsmassive open online coursesthrough EdX,
Coursera, and Udacity, to name a few, is also challenging the usual notion of professor as expert
lecturer everywhere in almost every subject.
Given that higher education is led by a certain kind of trained expert to educate a certain
kind of disciplinary trained expert, the stunning reduction in information asymmetry that is now
attacking the very notion of expertise should be expected to upset the applecart for students,
professors, administrators, and other stakeholders alike. Moreover, these forces are working
very quickly, at rates the usual organizational apparatus in universities is largely unable to
accommodate. This difficulty is briefly addressed in the next section.

1
Transforming Higher
Education Without
Tears

Why Normal Change Fails: The Tick-the-Box Change

Response
Many efforts have been made to fundamentally change higher education and many, if not most,
of these have failed to bring about the desired reform. This section briefly examines the ways in
which normal change is initiated and how the reaction of those steeped in the current culture
resists that call for change.

Fundamental conundrum of normal change. The fundamental difficulty in transforming an

organization successfully performing a routine task is that the bureaucracy assumes that normal
bureaucratic procedure or minor modifications to that routine procedure can be used to modify
the organization. This assumption is false. Bureaucracies are largely adept at making small
changes to routine procedures and have difficulty responding to calls for large change.

Typical result: Tick-

Tick-the-
the-box change response. When a
bureaucracy attempts to use normal change procedures
for large-scale transformative change, this works (a)
hierarchically, (b) through extant chain of command, (c)
from the top down, and (d) through the issuance of largely
uni-directional change orders.
Upon receiving orders that exceed the capacity of the
organization to change, lower level actors in the system
respond rationally by first recognizing that the probability
of success in achieving the changes through normal
change methods is very low, and second, by spending
large amounts of energy and time trying to show how the
existing status quo or minor modifications to the existing
status quo satisfy the change order.
The resultant is what we call the tick-the-box or check-
the-box change response in which lower level actors devise
sophisticated reporting schemes to map the status quo or
somewhat modified status quo to the articulated elements
of desired results of the change order. The result is an
increased reporting effort to show that orders have been
complied with. In such circumstances minimal compliance
is the order of the day, the spirit of the transformation is
largely ignored, and even the changes that are realized,
are much less than was imagined and often at risk of not
being sustained. Result: Most transformative change
efforts are disappointing and yield much less real change
than desired at the outset.

2
Transforming Higher
Education Without
Tears

From Tick-the-Box Deep Change

Thus, the culture of an organization is like an immune system, viewing change orders as
something of a harmful infection, and without a systemic approach to change, change efforts,
even those with the best of intentions, are likely to disappoint.

Deep Transformative Change. To make deep changes, we must recognize that the existing
bureaucracy cannot be relied upon alone to implement the change. Moreover, we must
recognize that the process, unlike normal change, is not only a rational process, but that it
fundamentally depends on emotional, cultural, structural, and institutional factors at two levels
(see below).

In particular, to make the kinds of change

necessary, there must be both training of
individuals to prepare them to play
different roles than previously, what we
call deep development, and a change in
the organization to support the activities
of these actors in their new roles, what
we call deep organizational change. The
good news is twofold: (1) transformative
development is well understood in the
burgeoning practice of executive
coaching, and (2) transformative
organizational change is well understood
in the growing practice of corporate
change management. Challenge:
Academic institutions have evolved
incrementally since their establishment
in the 11th century. Universities have
little or no culture of organizational
development, coaching, or training in
practice.

Solution. Successful transformative change in higher education must be undertaken with

processes sufficiently complex and rich to move both individual mindsets and organizational
culture to the new position. Moreover, these processes should be informed by a deep
understanding of the academy by change agents with experience in successful transformative
change. To highlight the difficulty, we contrast normal change with deep transformative change
in the table below:

3
Transforming Higher
Education Without
Tears

Table 1: Comparison between Normal & Deep Transformative Change

Normal Tick-
Tick-the-
the-Box Change Deep Transformative Change

Change, even transformative change, is believed to Change, especially transformative change, is

be possible within existing system. believed to be beyond the capability of existing
bureaucracy.

Change is primarily a list of desired learning Change requires reflection on both learning
outcomes or competencies. outcomes and the process for bringing about
change, both.

Change comes from the top. Change is initiated anywhere and is ultimately
embraced throughout.

Change is usually one-shot of planning followed by Change involves planning, effectuation, and
open-loop execution. iteration from pilots, followed by scale up.

Change is strictly a rational process. Change is a complex combination of rational,

cultural, emotional, & institutional processes.

Change involves administrators & faculty alone. Change involves all stakeholders.

Change is driven by external factors. Change is driven by external & internal factors, & is
inherently reflective.

Change is attempted within existing reporting lines Change is accompanied by new structures that are
& organizational structures. necessary to incubate, pilot & diffuse
transformation.

Change is performed at scale from the get go. Change is a series of little bets that are scaled
after they prove out.

Change is controlled top down. Change is collaborative and is diffused middle out.

Change is viewed as largely bureaucratic and can Change is viewed as complex organizational and
be performed by existing personnel with existing individual process in which new personnel may be
training. needed and existing personnel may need to be
retrained.

Change focuses primarily on content & curriculum. Change in content & curriculum flow from the
possibilities of unleashed learners.

Change in what teachers do is most important. Change in what students do is most important.

Change in pedagogy is viewed as a set of Change in pedagogy is viewed as a deeply held

techniques & tricks to be mastered. personal set of beliefs that helps faculty learn to
trust students & believe in their resourcefulness,
creativity, & wholeness as human beings.

4
Transforming Higher
Education Without
Tears

These differences are significant, and to a certain extent the failure of normal change is one of
attempting to accomplish something complex, too simply, and this recalls Einstein: Everything
should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Successful transformative change
requires additional complexity over normal change, although we would like minimal additional
complexity and a path toward adding the needed elements.
Fortunately, effective transformative change can be accomplished in a straightforward way
with appropriate sequence and emphasis of activity. ThreeJoy Associates, Inc. brings experience
in deep academic change going back more than 20 years with recent assignments in the US,
Asia, South America, and Europe. The next section summarizes the phasing required for
effective change.

3 Phases: Initiate, Effectuate &

Activate
3 keys to effective transformative change are as
follows:

Initiate. Spend time upfront building culture,

community, and individual & team capacity.

Effectuate. Develop new courses, content & program

elements thought small pilots and opportunistic
experimentation (effectuation).

Activate.
Activate. Progressively scale & activate permanent
program elements following successful incubation
pilots.

These phases can be rolled out in parallel for all years

of the curriculum, sequentially from first to fifth year, or
some combination of the two strategies.
A common difficulty of tick-the-box change in the
context of educational reform is that the effort rushes
headlong into content-curriculum change without
adequate emotional-cultural preparation and without
adequate understanding of the ways in which the current situation is not serving stakeholder
needs, particularly students, employees (past students) & employers. Without adequate cultural
reframing, the effort is likely to replicate past inadequacies. Without adequate understanding of
the ways in which current efforts serve and dont serve key stakeholders, the effort is likely to
direct significant resources at areas that wont substantially improve educational outcomes.
Proper phasing of the effort starts by laying the groundwork at the level of individuals and
the organization by getting emotional and cultural factors moving prior to programmtic elements.
This sets the stage for (1) design of programmatic elements with the right stuff for high levels of
student engagement and (2) the ability of current faculty and staff to execute those plans from a
place that believes in students.

5
Transforming Higher
Education Without
Tears

An effective effort continues by recognizing that the current system has limited or no
experience generating the kind of unleashing experiences needed for effective educational
transformation. Thus, the ability to predict the educational outcomes of planned reforms is
limited, the process is inherently uncertain, and requires a prototyping phase that deals well with
uncertainty. As such, the usual process of planning is replaced by a more entrepreneurial
process of effectuation, couched in small-scale pilots and systematic incubation.
Finally, efforts developed successfully during the second phase are scaled economically to
the whole curriculum. This requires a method that achieves significant student engagement and
intrinsic motivation without large new investments in faculty size. In research-engaged
institutions this can be particularly difficult because of the tug-of-war on a faculty members time
to both (1) teach effectively and (2) bring in research funding and write peer-reviewed research
publications. This requires a brief discussion of student engagement and the economics of
scaling.

The Fundamental Mechanism of Student Unleashing

There is a tendency in the literature of student engagement to speak in code words, words such
as active learning, experiential learning, problem-based learning, and so on, and there is
nothing wrong with these discussions; properly done these techniques for student engagement
can unleash students, enriching their self-efficacy and ability to learn on their own.
Having said this, however, the idea that these methods are rationalistic procedures
misunderstands the fundamental emotional mechanism by which these methods work. A
student becomes unleashed in a particular sequence of emotional events. First the student is
trusted by a teacher, parent, or even him or herself. The student then believes that he or she is
trusted. The student then has the courage to take action repeatedly until he or she succeeds.
The key formula here may be written as follows (where S = Student):

Trust S S believes he/she trusted S gains courage S takes iterated action

The key point to take away is that the good

stuff in a 21st century education comes about,
not mechanistically, but through a complex of
emotional interactions, interactions that must
be genuine to be effective. A key focus of
change efforts needs to bring about individual
and organizational change to support the
necessary trust & courage.

6
Transforming Higher
Education Without
Tears

The Economics of Student Engagement

One of the problems of achieving high student engagement is that many of the techniques that
are known to work well, scale poorly. This is illustrated below in what has come to be called the
Goldberg-Laffer Curve. In the 1980s, economist Arthur Laffer suggested that at ever increasing
rates of taxation, governments tended to collect less revenue. Whether this is true or not is not
of concern here. Taking the shape of Laffers famous curve as a starting point, we replace
government revenue vs. percentage taxation with the axes of faculty cost and percentage
student engagement as shown below.

In the usual low student engagement setting,

the traditional professor or sage on the stage
goes into class with 20-year old course notes
and delivers lectures to largely disengaged
students. In response to low engagement,
administrators ask the sage to become the
guide on the side by adopting problem-based
learning (PBL), active learning, or some other
pedagogical method. The faculty member
perceives that should he/she comply that this
would result in an increase in faculty prep and
other time, which the faculty member
perceives as a cost, C. Faced with this
increased cost, the faculty member has 3
choices. He/she can reduce the highly valued
research activities rewarded by the university,
work more hours, or simply ignore or evade
the administrations request. Although there
are some who take the request for reform seriously, the usual case is stiff resistance to such
calls, in part, because of the economics of the situation.
Scalable solutions to this problem recognize that as student engagement increases,
students can take on more of the costs of their education. Ideally there exist a place on the
cost-engagement curve that is neutral with respect to faculty time, and the learner with fervor is
achieved at no net increase in faculty cost with substantially higher student engagement.
In practice, such boosts in student engagement have been achieved, and doing so requires
attention to the fundamental mechanism of unleashing discussed earlier. It also suggests that
scalable solutions will almost always involve a higher degree of student involvement in the
transformation effort than is tackled in normal change approaches.

7
Transforming Higher
Education Without
Tears

Supporting Your Change Initiative

In the corporate world and the world of government, it is routine to have large organizational
development (OD) staffs to help with coaching, training, and change management. Moreover,
the rise of executive coaching over the last two decades is a global phenomenon and it is the
rare leader in industry who has not received the aid of a trained coach (http://coachfederation.
org). As such, these organizations are well positioned to deal with new challenges as they arise,
and existing OD or human resources (HR) departments can help the organization respond
quickly and effectively.
The situation in academic circles is much different. Human resources departments in
colleges and universities tend to concentrate on routine employment and benefits matters with
little or no focus or capability in training, coaching, or facilitation. During the nearly 10 centuries
of relative stability in the academy, especially given its individualistic nature, this approach has
served reasonably well; however, during the upheaval of the current era, the continuing lack of
investment in organizational development is starting to hurt.
Given the lack of change knowledge inside the university at present, and without robust
internal external resources to draw upon, it may be helpful to hire external consultants and
coaches to assist with a deep change effort. The worlds most dynamic organizations are
supported by these kinds of resources and as higher education works to reform itself, it will be
increasingly common to turn outside the organization to support effective transformation. Broad
categories of services that may be helpful include the following:

Strategic & tactical change management consultation, planning, and

execution.

Communications, social media, and inspirational speaking.

One-on-one coaching for effective change leadership.

Team coaching for change team effectiveness and high performance.

Team building & facilitation for building team best practices.

Culture and program assessment to understand situation & change

dynamics.

Specialized training programs for personal and organizational change.

There are many firms that offer these kinds of services, although the number of firms with
experience in higher education is small. Furthermore, the challenge of bring effective change
management from the strict hierarchy of the corporate world to the mixed administrative-faculty
governance model in the university requires special attention to the institutional and cultural
differences of academic life.
To discuss the issues in this whitepaper as well as success possibilities for your change
initiative, contact Dave Goldberg at deg@threejoy.com or by phone +1-217-621-2645.

8
Transforming Higher
Education Without
Tears www.threejoy.com

David E. Goldberg
David E. Goldberg is a leading speaker, author, strategist, trainer, and coach with experience in
helping to bring successful change to both academic institutions and academic careers around
the globe. Toward the end of a 27-year distinguished academic career in which Dave achieved
renown for his path-breaking work in artificial intelligence, he founded the iFoundry incubator for
educational change at the University of Illinois. iFoundrys success in unleashing students was so
startling, that in 2010, Dave resigned his tenure and a distinguished professorship to start
ThreeJoy Associates, a change consulting, training and coaching firm for transforming higher
education. Work at Illinois, Olin College, NUS (Singapore), UFMG (Brazil), and other innovators led
to the development of the SmoothChange method for transforming higher education, featuring
rapid innovation and respect for faculty governance.
In 2012, Dave founded Big Beacon as a non-profit organization for transforming higher
education. Today, Big Beacon gathers students, innovators, and employers together to learn from
each other and to advocate for transforming higher education. In 2014, he co-authored the
groundbreaking book, A Whole New Engineer: The Coming Revolution in Engineering Education,
available in hardcover and all major e-book formats.
Dave maintains an active correspondence with many of the worlds top thought leaders in
educational and organizational change; he is constantly on the look out for new ideas, thinkers,
and practices that lead to success in transforming higher education. He is co-host of Big Beacon
Radio, Transforming Higher Education, a regular radio program on VoiceAmerica.com.
Connect with Dave Goldberg on Linkedin, www.linkedin.com/in/davidegoldbergphd, write
him at deg@threejoy.com, call him at +1-217-621-2645, or make an appointment to discuss
change at your institution or in your career at www.MeetWithDaveGoldberg.com.
Graphic design by Gonzalo Ruiz Navarro