Abelard to Apple

The vast majority of American college students attend two thousand or so private and
public institutions that might be described as the Middle--reputable educational institutions, but
not considered equal to the elite and entrenched upper echelon of the Ivy League and other
prestigious schools. Richard DeMillo has a warning for these colleges and universities in the
Middle: If you do not change, you are heading for irrelevance and marginalization. In
Abelard to Apple, DeMillo argues that these institutions, clinging precariously
to a centuries-old model of higher education, are ignoring the social, historical, and economic
forces at work in today's world. In the age of iTunes, open source software, and for-profit online
universities, there are new rules for higher education.DeMillo, who has spent
years in both academia andin industry, explains how higher education arrived at its current parlous
state and offers a road map for the twenty-first century. He describes the evolving model for higher
education, from European universities based on a medieval model to American land-grant colleges to
Apple's iTunes U and MIT's OpenCourseWare. He offers ten rules to help colleges reinvent themselves
(including "Don't romanticize your weaknesses") and argues for a focus on teaching
undergraduates. DeMillo's message--for colleges and universities, students,
alumni, parents, employers, and politicians--is that any college or university can change course if
it defines a compelling value proposition (one not based in "institutional envy" of
Harvard and Berkeley) and imagines an institution that delivers it.