On April 2, Lloyd Jacobs, the new president of the University of Toledo, gave a state of the university address titled “Re-Engineering the Undergraduate Experience, or Mass-Customization in Higher Education.”

SOS considers excerpts.

… Higher education is failing in America. It is on a collision course with bankruptcy and its failure, ultimately, threatens our democracy. Furthermore, Robert Schoenberg in the Journal of Metropolitan Universities asks rhetorically and pessimistically, “Undergraduate Education: Can we get there from here?” [List, list, o list to the voice of the new university president. He introduces his big changes to the undergraduate program at Toledo -- which involve making the place a vocational school, and putting its students in front of computers all day -- by scaring the shit out of us. Failing! Bankrupt! Collision course! But that's nothing! It's even fucking up our democracy! If we let our universities open the floodgates to fascism, we'll never forgive ourselves. ... But SOS wonders -- Why do people from all over the world come to the United States for their education? Why, with all its problems, is our higher education system the envy of the world? Why does the United States dominate all international rankings of schools? ]

What’s the problem? We are victims of our successes. Colleges and universities, particularly the state institutions, have mass-produced the middle class. They have, for the first two and most formative years especially, unwittingly and unknowingly, borrowed from Henry Ford’s assembly line technology and built an educational assembly line. Note the evidence of that: a lock-step curriculum, including remedial course work so that everyone may get on the conveyor at the same point, prerequisites for many upper-level classes, and an absolutely hidebound sequence of grade school, high school, college and professional school, which is broken only with occasional “special programs,” which are strongly resisted by administrators and faculty alike. [Our higher education system is destroying the foundation of our country because of its inhumane efforts to enlighten all students according to established standards of cultural literacy.]

Listen again to Robert Schoenberg: “…baccalaureate education in the United States seems unable to break out of curriculum and institutional modes that were established in the 1950s and earlier… disciplinary subject matter – as opposed to intellectual skills development tends to control the curriculum.” Note the words “control the curriculum” as in “control the assembly line.” [Yes. It's the incredible coercion of our undergraduate schools that strikes you. Processing our students like cars, and if they complain they better shut up about it.]

There is a notion that will allow higher education to make a quantum leap [Cliche.] forward: the notion of “mass customization” or “extreme student centeredness.” [The man is very fond of new phrases and of jargon, as we see here, and as we will see in what follows.] In many areas of business [Business being the model for university education.], mass customization is the new paradigm that replaces mass production, which is no longer suitable for today’s turbulent markets, growing product variety and opportunities for e-commerce.

Dell computers may be the exemplar of mass customization most familiar to you. Customers describe the computer they want. [Just as Toledo's students will describe the education they want. Toledo will provide a computer to that end.] The number of possible combinations is staggering – nearly 16 million for desktop models. Dell begins assembling a computer only after it receives an order and ships within a few days.

A second example of mass customization is emerging in health care. When I attended medical school, an approach to diagnostics was taught that emphasized uniformity. We were told to “do the following” in exactly this order every time. And we did. A new concept has emerged – interestingly, once again as a result of modern information technology, including the information derived from the encoding of DNA.

Each person’s unique genetic patterns can be read from his/her DNA and customized screening and diagnostic sequences can be developed. Every person is different. An elegant information-based patient centeredness has begun to guide modern medicine and will sweep, I predict, the developed world in the next decade. For example, women with unique genetic patterns undergo higher resolution and more frequent screenings for breast cancer.

Already, specific genetic markers predict the behavior of an individual’s tumor, and specific therapies are selected or modified based on this predicted responsiveness. Every treatment plan is different; each is customized to the patient. Every patient is individualized. [Just as each student will be individualized so as to save their intellectual lives, one at a time.]

Michael Cox, chief economist of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, observes, “Things used to be made to order and made to fit. But they were labor-intensive and expensive. Mass production came along and made things more affordable, but at a cost – the cost of sameness, the cost of ‘one size fits all.’ Technology is beginning to let us have it both ways. We’re moving toward mass customization. Just as mass production was the hallmark of yesterday’s industrial age, mass customization promises to dominate the modern stage of America’s economic revolution.” One could paraphrase: Just as mass production was the hallmark of yesterday’s higher education age, Mass Customization or extreme student centeredness promises to revolutionize education and allow Americans to compete in a world market. [Extreme student centeredness is an amazing phrase, sharing with mass customization the most spicy Orwellian aroma SOS has sniffed in awhile. ESC involves throwing the students in a big room and letting them play by themselves on computers. Mass customization is a contradiction in terms.]

Extreme student centeredness founded on the principles of mass customization is the single best strategy for higher education and for the persistence of an educated and participative populace in America. Extreme student centeredness constitutes the best single tactic to implement the chancellor’s strategic plan.

What would an institution committed to mass customization look like? How would extreme student centeredness be manifested? [Dead language, plodding transitional questions: Leonid Brezhnev, 1970.]

Individual needs of underprepared students would be met in a way that doesn’t disparage, but concentrates support in time and place.

Students with unique ways of learning, such as visual learners, aural learners and persons with attention span uniqueness [Attention span uniqueness -- another winner.], would have customized learning available early and supportively through innovative uses of technology. For example, Kurzweil reading machines would be ubiquitous.

Degree completion requirements for every student with an associate’s degree will be custom-made; each student will understand the shortest, most frugal path from where he or she is to their desired goal. Computer-assisted instruction and peer instruction [When they get tired of staring at screens, make other students teach them.] will become widespread and automated as evidence continues to accumulate that many students learn best where those tools are utilized. [If I were a professor at Toledo, I'd be asking myself questions at this point about how we came to utilize one particular tool.]

Students with unique intellectual accomplishments or gifts will be attracted to The University of Toledo by its commitment to customized programs that allow them to proceed at a pace that is intellectually rewarding to them.

Think about the governor’s ‘senior to sophomore’ program, our own Honors Program, and multiple programs which over the years attempted to reduce the eight-year sequence of college and medical schools. But note well: This plethora of programs, this multiplication of models, is what gets mass production into trouble. Very differently, the concept of extreme student centeredness treats every student individually and eliminates the need for many special programs. Every student is special. Every student becomes an individual case. [Again, notice the Orwellian split between what he's asserting -- in one cliche after another -- about how special each individual is, and what he's actually going to do: Take away the curriculum, shove students in big rooms with computers, and make them teach each other.]

Now, I expect that some of you are thinking that mass customization and extreme student centeredness are incompatible with excellence. If students are allowed to choose, some argue, they will choose easy courses and course modules, and the value of a baccalaureate degree will be diluted even more. I agree that there is a real danger of mass customization leading to a kind of solipsism where nothing but one’s own satisfaction is of value.

The best preventative for this scholastic solipsism is assessment. Increasingly, Virginia Keil in our own College of Education and others working on assessment here at The University of Toledo in the field of educational methodologies are recognizing that assessment will need to be strengthened under any scenario whether we embrace extreme student centeredness or not. Therefore, one of the most important segments of the chancellor’s strategic plan speaks of assessment and commits all Ohio universities to participate in the voluntary system of accountability, an assessment system developed by a consortium of universities across the country. The most important part of this system is the CLA, the College Learning Assessment, which measures student learning outcomes in critical thinking and written communication across all academic disciplines.

The University of Toledo will emerge quickly as an early adaptor of the chancellor’s plan for participation in the College Learning Assessment. Thus, any potential dilutional effect of student centeredness will be countered by a rigorous assessment methodology. The emphasis on assessment will inform choices by student, parents, as well as policy makers, faculty and staff. [We'll test them! Rigorously! It's going to be tricky, since we don't have a curriculum, so there isn't any material to test them on beyond what -- in their extreme student-centeredness -- they've figured they'd like to do. We're going to have to think long and hard about what such tests -- customized for each mass-customized student, of course -- would look like... And how you'd fail any of them.]

Extreme student centeredness is an adaption of mass customization principles to higher education. Implementation will be difficult, but must be undertaken forthwith. Shortly – we will.

1. A new focus on modules, algorithms and the customer interface will begin immediately. The main campus provost, with her staff, in consultation with appropriate stakeholders, including the faculty, will organize all undergraduate courses into modules and algorithms that correspond exactly to the themes and capstones where significant work is already under way by leaders of our faculty. The most important module will be the “de facto” common (core) curriculum; the eight to 10 courses taken by more than 95 percent of students. This common module will be the common experience shared by every student. Additional modules will be gathered into traditional majors and minors. Clear, well publicized and constantly available algorithms will be provided to every student, faculty member and advisor. [Sounds like a contradiction at first -- a core curriculum -- but keep in mind that it's all about customer interface, the fashioning of a few shared courses around what the customer wants.]

This customer interface, as the customer interface at Dell Computers, will require significant improvement in technological support. All modules and algorithms will be available online and their immediate availability will make the current notion of “degree audit” obsolete.

The customer interface as vested in the current “professional advisers” will be organizationally moved to the Provost’s Office while daily work and work sites will remain in the individual colleges. Greatly improved training and communication for this group are essential.

2. Faculty development will be the responsibility of a vice provost. The Center for Teaching and Learning will be strengthened and will move organizationally within the Provost’s Office. This fall (August ’08) all new faculty will be required to attend a more thorough orientation. That orientation will include significant emphasis on peer instruction and on computer-assisted learning. [And it's required, baby.]

All classroom time in the renovated Memorial Field House will be assigned to maximize the use of computer-assisted learning. An educational incubator, emphasizing the principles of peer instruction and computer-assisted learning, will be created and will be housed in the third floor of the renovated Memorial Field House. [Gotta love the language. Incubator.]

Our capability in computer-assisted learning (CA) and distance learning (DL) will be greatly enhanced. We are already a leader in this regard. This effort is consistent with the chancellor’s strategic plan. The concept of extreme student centeredness suggests we meet students where they are – increasingly they are to be found in cyberspace. To that end, we will move CA and DL into the Provost’s Office. [This is philosophically interesting. We don't exist as a university to which students go -- As in, you know, leaving their familiar surroundings and joining a new community of scholars and students who talk to one another about ideas... No, in our extreme student-centeredness we simply ask ourselves Where are they? Where are these students of which we have heard? They are on the computer. Let us go there and meet them! And let us build our own computers so that they can stay there! ... I mean, it's philosophically interesting because it provokes questions having to do with reality. Where is the university? It has gone to cyberspace to play with its students. So what is the university? Just what President Jacobs describes: A big room with computers in it.]

W will hire a CIO with education as a prominent part of her or his portfolio. We will consider housing the CA and DL function in a component 501(c)3 organization to give greater flexibility.

We will perform a formal “make vs. buy” decision analysis to examine whether purchased CA and DL might be branded with the UT brand and be cheaper and more flexible.

W will gather all CA and DL from across the entire University to maximize the critical mass and utilize power of a single or minimum number of platforms.
We will develop quality and capacity, which will make it reasonable to offer CA and DL services to all members of the Northwest Ohio Higher Education Consortium, allowing each institution to brand its own service and retain appropriate resources. Much of the future of extreme student centeredness will be dependent on information technology. Significant capital expenditures will be necessary.

3. We will create a new entity within the University to organizationally house many of the functions essential to extreme student centeredness This new entity may perhaps be called The Center for Individualized Learning, but for today, at least, I will refer to it as NewEntity…. [Of all the amazing language in this document, NewEntity is, SOS thinks, the most amazing. Total 1984.]