"Remaking the Academy" by Jorge Klor de Alva, President of the University of Phoenix, Educause Review, March/April 2000, p. 32

"Higher education around the world must undergo a dramatic makeover if it expects to educate a workforce in profound transformation." (p. 32) "Rather than relying on brick-and-mortar factories and plants, successful companies today are leveraging people and brands into earnings power." (p. 34) "Critical in nature and specialized in practice, education is progressively becoming the sine qua non of our economic survival, maintenance, and vigorous growth." (p. 34)

"The contemporary disconnect between what traditional higher education provides, especially in research institutions and four-year colleges, and what society wants can be gleaned in part through a 1998 poll of the fifty state governors." (p. 34) "The top four items perceived to be most important were:"

• 97% encouraging lifelong learning
• 83% allowing students to obtain education anytime and anyplace via technology
• 77% requiring post secondary institutions to collaborate with business and industry in curriculum and program development
• 66% integrating applied or on-the-job experience into academic programs (p. 34)

"The four items judged to be of least importance were:"

• 44% maintaining faculty authority for curriculum content, quality, and degree requirements
• 32% preserving the present balance of faculty research, teaching load, and community service
• 21% ensuring a campus-based experience for the majority of students
• 3% maintaining traditional faculty roles and tenure (p. 34)

"…as Labor Department officials claim-an estimated 50 million workers, or about 40 percent of the workforce, change jobs within any one year. In manufacturing alone over the last decades, 10 to 12 percent of jobs have disappeared each year." (p. 35) "In an environment with this level of churn and organizational and managerial transformation, where the median age is in the mid-thirties and where adults represent nearly 50 percent of college students, a growing number of learners are demanding a professional, businesslike relationship with their campus-characterized by convenience, cost- and time-effective services and education, predictable and consistent quality, seriousness of purpose, and high customer service geared to their needs, not those of faculty members, administrators, or staff." (p. 35)

"Online enablers, the outsourcers who create virtual campuses within brick-and-mortar colleges, can provide potentially unlimited access to seemingly unlimited content sources." (p. 38) "By providing institutions a way to outsource the technological infrastructure that automates the administrative tasks burdening every institution and its customers, these portals can reduce both the technology costs and the transaction costs while offering students levels of convenience that were undreamed of until now." (p. 38) "The importance of the role played by portals and online enablers in the transformation of the traditional academy cannot be overestimated." (p. 38) "…many students will be able to replace or supplement their institution's courses with courses or learning experiences-which can be exchanged for graduation credits-derived from any other accredited institution, corporate university, or relevant database." (p. 38) "As long as local faculty members continue to control the curriculum, geography-centered campuses will have difficulty competing for new learners but they will also make it nearly impossible for these traditional-based virtual-campus conglomerates to reach their goals." (p. 38)

"…as education becomes a continuous process of certification-that is, a lifelong process of earning certificates attesting to the accumulation of new skills and competencies-institutional success for any higher education enterprise will depend more on successful marketing, solid quality-assurance and control systems, and effective use of the new media than on production and communication of knowledge." (p. 40)

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