“Commencement” Is Your Prerequisite Reading Assignment

If the heft of something manifested in popularity, “Commencement” – the new education book by Kate Colbert, Joe Sallustio and Elvin Freytes – would be a best-seller. It runs an easy 529 pages. When my copy arrived, I thought an angry reader sent me a brick.

Size aside, the book may be a best seller anyway because after its release earlier this month, it became the indispensable touchpoint for what’s being said in, about and around higher education right now. A Dean or University President who does not have “Commencement” on her bookshelf is reliably missing the conversation.

The book includes excerpts and interviews with more than 100 college presidents and is the offshoot of the team’s long-running higher education podcast, The Ed Up Experience. The podcast has a voice and a theme – that higher education is in need of change or is changing. And that carries through to the book, neatly summarized by the subtitle, “the beginning of a new era in higher education.”

The authors clearly want education leaders to rethink the existing practices and policies of colleges and universities and, by extension, make some changes. It’s clear in the book that they want these things not because they’re selling anything, but because they earnestly believe some changes will be quite good for students, teachers, institutions and stakeholders.

But it’s not there that the book or its theme stand out. That’s all well and good. It’s in hearing from today’s academic institutional leaders, those who walk the halls and recruit the teachers and balance the books that makes “Commencement” especially valuable. As the cliché goes, journalism is the first draft of history and putting so many of today’s leading voices in one place will be – probably already is – a powerful tool in understanding what is happening, what people are thinking about and dealing with right now.

The authors are likely right about one thing – higher education is at or near an inflection point. It does feel as though something is going to break soon. I personally don’t think it’s the existing higher education model. My metaphoric money is on the changes taking place on the other side of the marketplace sooner and more dramatically, as has happened before.

If we’re both right – that some level of change is breaking in higher education, either in education itself or to those around it – “Commencement” will be an important artifact in understanding it. A decade hence, we will either say, “it was all right there, in that book” or “this is why we thought that way at the time.” Either way, we’ll be returning to it. And probably more than once.

Getting today’s education voices in writing and on the historic record is important. And in that, what Colbert, Sallustio and Freytes have done is nothing short of epic, easily befitting its volume. The work – the actual hours of labor – is immense to consider.

On their journey of securing, probing, recording and synthesizing many of today’s leading thinkers and thinking leaders, the authors suggest some thought-inducing ideas. They propose, for example, that the sought-after skills needed to lead a higher education institution will change. That respect and pay for part-time, adjunct or contract teachers will increase. They suggest that the value of a college degree, while seemingly under siege now, will rebound and that demonstrating competency will displace the credit hour as the dominant measure of educational attainment.

There is evidence to support those changes in our future. And good reasons to cheer for a few of them.

That’s even though, as the authors wisely concede, no one knows what the future of education holds, what it will look like in three years let alone 30. Few of the university and college leaders themselves were bold enough to offer measurable predictions. On most of these points, as important as they are, prediction is punditry.

In the meantime, it’s fun to hear the words of so many people who are actually doing the things so many of us merely speculate about. Peering in their offices, seeing the future through their glasses, however briefly, is a delight.

Henceforth, it will be exceedingly difficult and perilous to comment on or offer even punditry regarding the future of education, employment, skills, degrees, tenure – anything and everything in higher education without having at least read “Commencement.” It is already a class prerequisite. It’s required summer reading. It is an invitation to read the sheet music of the education symphony. It will be difficult to keep up if you miss it.

Like any good teacher, the authors say – you don’t have to agree with it. But you should understand it. It will probably be on the test.