Interne : De l’inertie universitaire

Un article d’opinion assez long de Ann Kirschner, doyenne de la City University à New York, sur la résistance aux changements dans le monde universitaire. Cependant, il touche à tellement de dimensions dont nous traitons récemment dans notre veille que la lecture m’en apparaît importante… Ne serait-ce qu’en guise de synthèse.

Partant du discours sur l’innovation qui est omniprésent dans le monde académique, Kirschner constate néanmoins que de nombreux ouvrages récents traitent plutôt du besoin de réforme de l’institution universitaire (Christensen et Eyring, 2011; Arum et Roksa, 2011, etc.), Elle s’en prend à la lenteur des transformations dans les universités, notamment quant à…

l’intégration des technologies (« Although e-learning has been around for nearly 20 years, technology in and out of the classroom is at the discretion of the professor, with rare institutional support or enthusiasm. Online learning has about as much credibility on some campuses as global warming at a Tea Party rally. »);
le développement de la formation en ligne (« Technology[…] bridges the gap between how our students experience their college curriculum and how they learn everything else. Nearly one-third of all college students have chosen to take at least one online course. When they graduate, they will find online learning already fully integrated into the workplace… »)
l’internationalisation (« Some institutions have indeed begun ambitious expansions with overseas branch campuses or partnerships, but they are merely transporting the old model to new physical space abroad. »; « Only about 14 percent of American college students study abroad, and few of them are students of color or low income. »)
l’évolution de la pédagogie (« Imagine if improvements in outcomes through teaching became a significant factor in the tenure process, and if faculty were required to attend professional-development training. »)
la modification des programmes (ses pistes de solutions : « streamlining pathways to degrees, redesigning models of instruction, competency-based programs, better advising, shutting down or consolidating underperforming programs, and more comprehensive and efficient support services focused solely on getting students to graduation »)
etc.

Elle accuse un certain réflexe corporatiste du personnel enseignant, mais s’inquiète du fait les changements ne proviendront d’aucuns autres acteurs du milieu universitaire (ni des diplômés, ni des agences d’accréditation, ni des cadres supérieurs).

Évidemment, elle écrit dans le contexte de l’explosion des droits de scolarité américains («About the only thing within academe that has moved rapidly is tuition. »), de la baisse du financement par les états, de la compétition des institutions à buts lucratifs, du faible taux de diplomation, du marché de l’emploi catastrophique et de la récente sortie du Président Obama contre les institutions d’enseignements supérieures trop onéreuses. (« Higher education is hardly to blame for the collapse of the economy, but we should be held accountable for our inability to control costs, our inadequate graduation rates, and our students’ lack of preparedness for the modern work force. »)

Là où elle m’apparaît la plus percutante cependant, c’est lorsqu’elle explique que la principale menace à l’université provient de ce qu’elle appelle la « désagrégation du diplôme ».

« Running like a vein of gold through much of the recent writing on change in higher education is the comforting theme that universities are more important than ever, since society needs educated citizens more than ever. Only we can issue an accredited degree, the precious entry ticket to the knowledge economy.

We will not have that advantage forever. The value of the diploma is symbolic, backed not by gold but by the graduate’s sense of its worth and the employer’s willingness to accept it as the currency of competency. Sometimes symbolism is simply too expensive.

The ultimate threat to universities could come from the disaggregation of the degree, as students take advantage of the growing availability of open-source learning networks to present evidence of competency to prospective employers. It is already true that more than one-third of college students attend multiple colleges, cobbling together credits from various places. The infrastructure to facilitate the creation of a personalized degree is not yet in place; students still end up with the last institution’s name on the diploma. The transfer process is often a nightmare, as one faculty committee may reject a course taken elsewhere, even if the course is taken from another fully accredited institution—sometimes even from an institution within the same university system. Some disciplines have already begun “tuning” and standardizing their majors à la Europe’s Bologna model. But an even more radical change is on the drawing board, courtesy of entrepreneurs who will force our crazy quilt of half-hearted articulation agreements to give way to an international network of course and credit exchanges.

Open-source courseware from traditional universities is already widely available. […] [Ici, on cite MITx et d’autres initiatives.]
…Most measures of prestige in higher education are based on exclusivity; the more prestigious the college, the larger the percentage of applicants it turns away. […] In the last 18 months, Khan [Academy] had 41 million visits in the United States alone. It is using the vast data from that audience to improve its platform and grow still larger. TED, the nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, just launched TED-Ed, which uses university faculty from around the world to create compelling videos on everything from “How Vast Is the Universe?” to “How Pandemics Spread.” Call it Khan Academy for grown-ups. The Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun‘s free course in artificial intelligence drew 160,000 students in more than 190 countries. No surprise, the venture capitalists have come a-calling, and they are backing educational startups like Udemy and Udacity.

All of those are signposts to a future where competency-based credentials may someday compete with a degree. » [les emphases et les hyperliens sont les miens]

Intéressant aussi de lire les commentaires dithyrambiques ou assassins que ce texte suscite.

Source :

Kirschner, Ann, « Innovations in Higher Education? Hah! College leaders need to move beyond talking about transformation before it’s too late », The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8 avril 2012.