Blackboard Blogs

What’s Next for Higher Ed: The Lion at the Gate

Posted by Gordon Freedman, Blackboard's Vice President Education Strategy

Although they may not mean to, universities orient societies in certain directions, just as much as schools prepare young citizens. Our education systems, in the words of the late New York University thinker, Neil Postman, don’t prepare students for life per se. They actually create “new publics.” They are the holders of the society in waiting, helping to create the young adults who will take over in time.

This view raises some interesting and disturbing questions. If I were among that public-to-be, as are my children, I would have some hard questions for my elders and their great institutions. Everywhere you look there are messes: finance, manufacturing, the world economy, the environment, addiction to fossil fuel, violence and bloodshed. And the list goes on. Where, I might ask, does the university play in this world?

Unlocking the Global Education Imperative: Why Education Matters More Than Ever

(Gordon Freedman, Blackboard’s Vice President Education Strategy, spent a year working with a team from inside and outside Blackboard to examine broad trends in higher education globally.  Earlier this summer, that report, titled “Unlocking the Global Education Imperative: Core Challenges, Critical Responses,” was released.  Freedman has spoken about these trends at a variety of global forums.  Below is one in a series of periodic, reflective posts by Freedman on the changing global education landscape.)

It is not particularly easy to write a report about what is occurring with education globally.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

First of all, who has the authority to write such a report and command respect for the outcome?  If a government produces the document, an international organization, a think thank, a labor union, a publication, a corporation or a university, each has its own perspective and, arguably, its own interests. 

So, why would a technology company venture down this road?  Certainly, there is a sales and marketing angle.  Then there is “thought leadership,” the new form of technology evangelism.  Corporations have credibility in this area because they can sum up what they see in the field far beyond what an individual institution or government could, and from a much more practical level.  In the case of Blackboard, an academic technology provider, the motivation for the research and interviewing that led to the “Unlocking the Global Education Imperative: Core Challenges & Critical Responses” white paper was somewhat deeper.   

From Christopher Columbus to Globalized Higher Education

(This entry is part of a series by Gordon Freedman, Blackboard's VP of education strategy, in which he reflects on technology and education as he travels around the world to meet with innovative education leaders and researchers, government leaders, and members of the Blackboard community who are experimenting in e-Learning and changing the education landscape.)

When the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (www.OECD.org) chose Santo Domingo for its site for the 2nd Global Education Forum, it struck me as unusual.

But when I recalled it was from these waters that Christopher Columbus searched in vain for a passage to India, it began to make sense.  The city’s safe harbor, first entered by the great European explorer in 1492, has been the site of centuries of global intrigue and then national independence in the mid 1800’s.  The Dominican Republic, all these years later, became the gracious host to this international gathering that looked for the new gold standard in today’s global village – education.   

It is hard to argue with an island nation that was the initial point of discovery for Europeans coming to the Americas as a venue for a global education conference in the 21st century.  In our fully globalized society today, education has clearly become the one similar resource by which all nations will measure themselves going forward.  And the OECD, a champion of economic development based on investments in the human potential of nations, is one of the very strongest organizational voices in the international arena.  It is dedicated to large-scale education improvement in both developed nation members and in its developing nation partners.