University Design|Perpendicular Futures: A Footlights by David J. Staley
I define perpendicular change as an unexpected deviation from the assumed trend line, usually a 90° shift from the presumed direction the future is headed. If it taught us nothing else, the COVID pandemic revealed that change is not always gradual or predictable or linear—it can be sudden and disruptive, moving at a sharp angle […]
University Design | Rethinking the Major: Building a Resilient Education by David J. Staley
Ned Scott Laff and Scott Carlson, Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn’t Matter—and What Really Does (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025). Andrew S. Hanks, Shengjun Jiang, Xuechao Qian, Bo Wang, Bruce A. Weinberg, “Do double majors face less risk? An analysis of human capital diversification,” NBER Working Paper Series, Working Paper 32095, January 2024 Many, […]
University Design |The Plasticity of the University by David J. Staley
Jessica Riddell, Hope Circuits: Rewiring Universities and Other Organizations for Human Flourishing (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024). As a theorist of higher education, I am very interested in imagining new forms of the university and have long been fascinated by the challenge of institutional transformation. Innovation in universities, as in any complex system, requires a willingness […]
University Design | Reading Gestures: The Power of Nonverbal Communication in Education by David J. Staley
Susan Goldin-Meadows, Thinking With Your Hands: The Surprising Science Behind How Gestures Shape our Thoughts (Basic Books, 2023). As an educator, I am exquisitely sensitive to the information students are sending me with their gestures and body language, such that I am certain many find my pedagogical style a little unnerving. I recall a class […]
University Design | Distributed Academic Leadership: The DAO University by David J. Staley
An old friend of mine–we were both big soccer fans–once told me that the main job of a soccer head coach is to be fired. I never quite believed him when he told me that some 10 years ago, but now I don’t think I can deny the truth of the statement. When the team […]
University Design | Relationships vs. Programs by David J. Staley
I don’t mean to single out Wittenberg University, our neighbors to the west of us here in Columbus, but their recent decisions signal a disquieting trend in higher education. As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wittenberg plan to deal with a debt crisis and other similar problems affecting small liberal arts colleges by […]
University Design | Educational Well Being by David J. Staley
Martin Betts and Michael Rosemann, The New Learning Economy: Thriving Beyond Higher Education (Routledge, 2023). The philosopher Roberto Unger defines “the most advanced practice of production” in the world today as the knowledge economy, and Martin Betts and Michael Rosemann place learning at the center of this knowledge economy. Incumbent institutions of higher education could […]
University Design | A Question-Centered Theory of Higher Education by David J. Staley
Pia Lauritzen, Questions (Reflections: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023) I teach an upper division history course that draws a majority of non-majors. We are at the point of the semester where they must declare the topic of their research papers. I also ask them to identify the question that is directing their research. This last […]
Reimagining the Ivory Tower: A Fresh Take on ‘Alternative Universities’ and the Call for Imagination By David J. Staley
Mariya P. Ivancheva, The Alternative University: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela (Stanford University Press, 2023). Bryan Penprase and Noah Pickus, The New Global Universities: Reinventing Education in the 21st Century (Princeton University Press, 2024) David J. Staley, Alternative Universities: Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education pbk.(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) When I wrote “Alternative Universities” […]
University Design. The Idea of a Student. David J. Staley.
Michael S. Roth, The Student: A History (Yale University Press, 2023). Michael Roth has written an interesting history of higher education through the lens of “the idea of a student.” He demonstrates that over time and across diverse places, there have been different ideas about who a student is. In describing the diverse meaning of […]