Educational leaders, if they wish for their institutions to remain healthy, must  think about the future differently from past generations.  Indeed, they must think about and reassess the very nature of education.  This is not to say that the pedagogies and methodologies of the past are irrelevant, but that there are more people seeking education from backgrounds and situations that would not have needed formal academic education in generations past.  The older methods of abstract academic education, memorization, and lecture suited best for the industrial age still work for the same types of students, yet in the face of changing demographics and changing needs of the populations that our colleges serve, those particular students are becoming a smaller ratio compared to the type of non-traditional, first generation, and/or older students that are increasingly demanding more from our colleges.

But how do leaders think differently about an institution that is not only slow to change, but steeped in a thousand years history and tradition?  Most leaders, even the younger leaders in Generation X, went through school before (or just as) the internet began disruptively changing the very nature of the knowledge economy.  What proves to be the most difficult prospect of planning for the future is that there is very little in the past that informs the strategies and technologies that may be instrumental in a few years.  In order for education to survive, there needs to be a deep and concerted effort to come to terms with what education actually is, what purpose it serves, and what what outcomes it hopes to achieve. A diploma can no longer signify that you survived a process and learned how to jump through some arbitrary hoops, but must indicate that you have a particular set of competencies and skills that have been demonstrated in an objective and impartial manner.  

In such a re-examination and re-envisioning of higher education, core concepts that are taken for granted must be assessed.  An example of one such cornerstone of education that is rarely discussed is the purpose behind an education that is based on units.  Generally, most, if not all, reputable institutions rely on the number of contact hours to determine minimum standards for degree completion.  "Minimum contact hours" makes sense in a pre-technological society where an institution can use a blunt measurement such as contact hours as a substitution for minimum exposure to a subject or skill.  If you assume that in a particular population, 50 hours of contact will result in a certain level of mastery for a significant portion of the population, then you can use it as a crude measurement to equate different courses on an equal basis, that is, a 4 unit anatomy course can then be given equal weight to a 4 unit chemistry course.  Yet, this unsatisfactory for vocational education and adult learners who may have considerable experience in comparison to a 17 year old high school student, or are required to master a particular skill before moving on.  One of the chief problems with the unit model is that it artificially assumes a population of students that are all, essentially, starting at the same place.  If such a system were turned on its head, and outcomes became the operative goal, then an educational leader might conclude that an outcomes based system might be of better service to our current population: a system where instead of a pre-determined number of hours is no longer relevant, but demonstrated mastery of a particular objective is required.  In such a system, one student who can write 1,000 words a day may breeze through freshman composition in a week or two, while spending several months mastering chemical formulas in chemistry.  Classes become more like laboratories focused on achieving certain results, rather than focusing on particular number of hours.  While this model might seem strange for higher education, consider whether or not it makes sense for a 45 year old, who never went to college, but worked herself up in management at a local business and then started her own business, and then decided to go back to college to get a degree, should be required to take the exact same courses and hours that is required from an 18 year old with no "real-world" experience.  They are in two different places, and though receiving the same information, receiving  two completely different educations.

Another example of a blind spot facing education that is illustrated in Kamenetz (2010) "DIY U: Edupunks, edupreneurs, and the coming transformation of higher education," is the issue of instructor grading.  Western Governors University (WGU), an accredited online university, challenged the notion of instructors grading their own courses as an issue of conflict of interest.  In one sense, Instructors are ranked by their student's successful passing of the course, and their primary purpose is to facilitate, instruct and guide, but all of the grading of the assignments that are directly tied to the course outcomes, are graded anonymously by impartial graders (who are also instructors, but from other courses in the discipline and  specifically trained on grading criterion for their respective outcomes).  This conflict of interest highlights a major blind spot in higher education today: instructors are judged on their effectiveness, yet they are also the ones that assess their students and, in effect, determine the pass/fail rate of their courses.  Even the most honest of faculty may still be subject to expectation bias. 

For higher education to remain relevant, it will be important to not only increase retention, but also to ensure that students who do graduate, walk across the stage with skills appropriate to the classes and programs with which they were engaged, with little doubt that they have the skills and didn't just "do the time."  Such changes, however, may necessitate the killing of more than a few sacred cows.  But, the real challenge is that many of these sacred cows are so embedded in the culture that they are essentially invisible and may need strong iconoclastic leaders to uncover.