David Staley: 3 Questions about COVID-19 and the Future

David Staley, Director of the Humanities Institute at The Ohio State University and Associate Professor in the Department of History, is the author of Alternative Universities: Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education (Johns Hopkins, 2019), which describes ten alternative models for higher education. Having read the book recently, EDUCAUSE President and CEO John O'Brien posed some questions to the author about these alternative universities in the current COVID-19 times and about what he sees in the future for higher education.

O'Brien:
It seems that the charm and the curse of higher education is its profound sense of history and its glacial speed of change, but even your forward-looking book couldn't see COVID-19 coming, could it?

Staley:
Well, I did describe such a scenario in Chapter 10 of my book, although not its specific effects on higher education. And two years ago I imagined a scenario in which the world encounters a global pandemic similar in scale and impact to the influenza outbreak of 1918.¹ It is very likely that the COVID-19 outbreak will draw attention to the need for and importance of strategic foresight in higher education. My sense is that in contrast to other industries I have consulted with, where foresight is a vigorous practice, higher education institutions do not generally engage in strategic foresight. This is different from strategic planning: strategic foresight is an always-on process of scanning the environment for trends and thinking about their implications so as to better position the organization to leverage these trends.

O'Brien:
Have responses to COVID-19 been genuinely innovative, or are they just transactional changes to delivery-at-scale under duress? Do you think the changes forced by COVID-19 will result in the acceleration of digital transformation, or do you think there will be a backlash that will reverse our progress? Will the emergency move to online teaching "poison the well"?

Staley:
I think that at this stage, the responses have been transactional changes—the solutions necessary to keep institutions operating in the short run. But as the days progress and we start to return to something that looks like the status quo ante, there will very certainly be an assessment of the efficacy of online delivery as the principle means of teaching classes. Administrators will look at what this means for their institutions; they will look at the successes and the failures of their institutional bootstrapping in the spring semester. If they determine that online classes worked, there might be an incentive to continue these practices. We might see institutions shift to being primarily online, with a bricks-and-mortar presence. More institutions might start to look like Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) or Western Governors University. But at the same time, administrators will also be assessing their institutional infrastructure—not only technological but also pedagogical. They might find that they are already equipped to move to online-only. Or they might discover that their IT infrastructure is not ready for the new paradigm.

In the months to follow, faculty too will be assessing online instruction. It is no secret that faculty have long been hesitant to engage with this mode of delivery. They may find out that, having been forced into it, they actually enjoy and prefer online teaching and will continue to do so after the crisis has ended. Or they may feel that online teaching was fine as an emergency measure but that they are unwilling to continue with it in the future—creating a backlash.

It will be very important to observe the reactions of students. Many more students—including at my own institution—are taking online courses, but at the same time they tell me that they prefer face-to-face classes. Online courses better fit their schedules, but the experience leaves many of them wanting more. This moment might represent a tipping point when students will simply accept online delivery as the state of affairs and expect this form of delivery going forward. Indeed, there might be an eager group of people looking to take classes from home. It is also possible students will find some of the cobbled-together approaches so off-putting that they will reject online education. Indeed, there are some early indications that students may not return to campus in the fall if classes are chiefly online, since they want and expect a face-to-face experience. (I've had one parent say to me quite directly that she will not pay the tuition we charge at Ohio State for her daughter to "merely" take classes online.)

I think it will also be critical to consider potential interventions by legislators and activist trustees. Looking beyond online delivery as a stopgap measure, they may insist that their institutions pivot to online delivery, integrating practices put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic into the mission of the college or university.

I have recently been following a trend that I am calling the "Future of Mobility."² When we use the word mobility today, we are usually referring to the efficient and sustainable movement of people in space: getting people from point A to Point B through mass transit or scooters or electric cars or Uber. In the future, we will define mobility as "bringing the world to us." We are already living in a delivery culture, where online orders can be easily delivered at home via Amazon or Instacart. Experiences are also being moved into our homes: Uber Eats and DoorDash are bringing us restaurants and a Peloton cycle brings the gym to us. Rather than having to go out into the world, we can have the world delivered to us. Finally, the "Future of Mobility" will very likely continue to bring another experience to our homes: that of higher education.

O'Brien:
Will the relative isolationism of the current US administration and of the health crisis result in less innovation and a return to an insular, backward-looking idea of the walled university?

Staley:
Yes, indeed. I wonder about the future of global education. Many institutions depend on international students to help meet their enrollment targets. After the 9/11 attacks in the United States, we saw a drop in international student enrollment, although those students eventually returned a few years later. But recently—even before the current administration—we have seen another decline in international students coming to the United States. I can only imagine that those numbers will drop further if travel restrictions remain.

I also wonder what the lingering effects of social distancing might mean for colleges and universities. We might find that after the crisis has waned, we will retain the habit of "de-densifying." This could mean that students will want to stay away from large universities and instead look to smaller, more isolated colleges. It is possible, I suppose, that small liberal arts colleges—usually sequestered in small towns and rural areas—will find that they are attractive locations for those seeking shelter from large crowds. One of the scenarios I explored in my book was the idea of "microcolleges." These are colleges that have, say, 20 students and 1 faculty member. We may see more colleges that look like Flagstaff College. Being small and isolated therefore becomes a strategic advantage, and the large, dense campus becomes a strategic liability. At the same time, I fear for many small colleges and the economic and enrollment shocks they will likely suffer as a result of this pandemic. I wonder how many will be able to survive.

Another result of COVID-19 will very likely be the launching of new academic programs. There will no doubt be a renewed interest from students in healthcare and the health professions. But I also wonder if there will be an interest in foresight and strategic thinking as an area of concentration. Given that so many organizations failed to anticipate the COVID-19 outbreak, there may a demand for futurists or those who have developed strategic foresight. One of the chapters in my book is called "Future University," which describes a university whose mission and curriculum attracts students looking to become futurists, strategists, visionaries, activists, thought leaders, and entrepreneurs. The curriculum at Future University is divided into pure and applied futuring: pure futuring involves exploring the future as a possibility space, like pure mathematics. Students create and explore possible worlds. Applied futuring involves exploring the future for practical ends, such as for developing corporate strategy, visionary entrepreneurship, or social activism. Applied futuring means not just studying the future, but making the future happen. Such an innovative university—one that lives in the future—could be the ultimate result of the COVID-19 pandemic for higher education.

Notes

1. David Staley, "What If There Were Another Global Pandemic?" Columbus Underground, June 5, 2018. ↩
2. David Staley, "The Future of Mobility," Columbus Underground, December 11, 2018. ↩

David Staley is Director of the Humanities Institute at The Ohio State University. He is an associate professor in the Department of History—where he teaches courses in digital history and historical methods—and is a higher education strategy consultant.

John O'Brien is President and CEO of EDUCAUSE.