Book Review: Old School, New School, No School: Re-Calibrating Higher Education

What is needed to survive in today’s world keeps rapidly evolving? We need lifelong learners to cope with this constant change. Unfortunately, most higher education institutions are teaching students as they have for decades. It is a method dominated by lecture. The lecture method is not well suited to a world that is rapidly changing. Instead, students must learn how to derive solutions based on their own research. This is one of the messages that Deborah Snyder and John Duhring stressed in their book, Old School, New School, No School: Re-Calibrating Higher Education.

Old School, New School, No School is 170 pages long focusing on the major themes highlighted in their title. The book is spread across 24 chapters and a couple of appendices. Throughout the book, the authors include QR codes as a way to introduce other media into their writing.

In their book, Snyder and Duhring pointed out that higher education is falling short of their desired purpose. The workforce needs employees who know how to work in teams, are creative, are self-directed learners, know how to network, and are resilient. Graduates need to know how to apply what they are learning. They need to practice applying the content. In many cases, higher ed falls short in this preparation. There are also other issues:

• “The root word for ‘education’ is to educe, or to ‘draw out’” (p. 16). Lecturing content that can be discovered through a Google search is not an effective way to truly learn. Learners must wrestle with the content to draw out their own conclusions. To learn, one must enter into a dialogue. Lecturing is often a one-way conversation.
• Students and parents are becoming frustrated with the value they are receiving for the amount they are paying.
• Employers are frustrated with the skills of the educated workforce. Graduates are lacking the necessary skills to become immediately productive.
• Students have nothing to show for their time in college except for a diploma.

“Students want to do things, make things and be known for things” (p. 28). According to Snyder and Duhring, colleges need to be more like incubation centers, where students are challenged to develop networks, create products that can be displayed in a portfolio, and develop as lifelong learners.

One of the discussions that I found to be very interesting revolved around textbooks. At one time, colleges could differentiate themselves based on their curricula. Now, many of the introductory courses are standardized because they are often supported by the same textbook. I believe this has suppressed creativity and critical thinking in the classroom. Why is this standardization necessary when we need to foster more entrepreneurial thinking?

Not only is learning achieved through dialogue, but it is also achieved by working through a challenge. Failure is a powerful tool for learning. Unfortunately, in many cases, higher ed only provides one opportunity, e.g., typical assessments. Learning would increase if students were challenged to work through failure.

“As more colleges provide hands-on, team-oriented curricula that address real-world problems, their students will put into practice as professionals what has brought them success in college” (p. 47).

I agree with the authors that students need to create projects that have application in the real world. For example, students in a composition class should be able to walk away from the course with a published book of compositions. A business class should have students work with small businesses. For the last class I taught, I had students write a chapter for an OER book on multimedia development. In an upcoming class, students will apply instructional technology skills for an assigned client. It will be challenging and messy but rewarding in the end.

College should be an opportunity for students to develop their portfolios so they will have something to show for potential employers.

Old School, New School, No School will cause you to rethink our approach to education. We are in need of lifelong learners who have to be creative and resourceful as we enter the “gig economy” dominated by artificial intelligence and robotics. Higher education is not agile enough to stay pace with this rapidly changing world. Thus we must change education to one of creation rather than consumption. Definitely a recommended read.

Additional Reading

• Book Review: Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
• Book Review: Democracy and Education
• Book Review: John Dewey and the Future of Community College Education
• Book Review: Why School?: How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere
• Book Review: In Defense of a Liberal Education
• Book Review: Redesigning America’s Community Colleges

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