next decade, this 30 million will grow to 100 million. To meet this staggering demand, a major university needs to be created each week" (1996). 
"Our ancestors sailed across a vast ocean, one third of the earth's surface, and to accomplish this great feat they needed the vision to see islands over the horizon, the ability to plan intentional voyages of discovery, the discipline to train physically and mentally, the courage to take risks, and a deep sense of aloha to bind the crew together during the voyage. These are Hawaiian values but they are also universal values. They worked in the past and they will work today" (
instead of seeking radically new opportunities to develop school-as-it-can-be" (Seymour Papert and Gaston Caperton, in 
matter. What matters to me is the determined space and time where determined tasks are accomplished. Social historical and political tasks, not only individual ones. . . . The two main tasks of the school: to get the already known knowledge and to produce the knowledge not yet in existence" (In Seymour Papert's 
and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to breaking down barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity" (
Last week, April 7-11, the Britannica Blog did a series called “Are Newspapers Doomed? (Do We Care?): Newspapers & the Net Forum.” This series is an example of the power of blogs. It’s a landmark in the sense that it raises the value bar for blogs. The individual articles and the reader discussions that follow demonstrate the power of blogs in generating dialogues on critical issues. The entire series is a reader’s dream. Eye-opening as well as entertaining.
The series kicked off with an excerpt, “The Great Unbundling: Newspapers & the Net,” from Nick Carr’s The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (2008). Here’s a quote from the end of the excerpt: “Speaking before the Online Publishing Association in 2006, the head of the New York Times’s Web operation, Martin Nisenholtz, summed up the dilemma facing newspapers today. He asked the audience a simple question: ‘How do we create high quality content in a world where advertisers want to pay by the click, and consumers don’t want to pay at all?’ The answer may turn out to be equally simple: We don’t.”
So, what are the implications for colleges? Well, beyond the obvious value of blogs as a dynamic medium for serious discussion of issues, I found the concept of unbundling very enlightening and relevant to the way colleges ought to perceive themselves. The notion of a campus as a bundle of courses, programs, and services is becoming increasingly less viable in a web-driven world where students can go directly to the part (individual classes), bypassing the whole (college). Zooming into the classroom, we’re already seeing that the professor’s lecture is being unbundled by students even as she/he speaks. While he drones on, students are online, googling ideas he’s presenting, sharing comments on the topic with classmates sitting a few feet away, etc. The question for us is, How do colleges and professors function in this rapidly unbundling world?
List of forum participants and their articles:
Monday, April 7: Nicholas Carr: “The Great Unbundling: Newspapers & the Net”; Clay Shirky: “What Newspapers & Journalism Need Now: Experimentation, not Nostalgia.”
Tuesday, April 8: Jay Rosen: “Newspapers & the Net: Where’s the Business Model, People?”; Jon Talton: “When I Hear the Term ‘Citizen Journalist,’ I Reach For My Pistol!“
Wednesday, April 9: Charles M. Madigan: “Why Almost Everyone is Wrong About Newspapers & the Internet“; Mary Stuckey: “How Technology and Online News Saved Political Rhetoric.“
Thursday, April 10: Colette Bancroft: “Reading Ain’t Dead: Books, Newspapers, and the Net.“
Friday, April 11: Caryle Murphy: “Foreign Correspondents & the Information Revolution“; Jennifer Saba: “Look at the Numbers: Why Print Will Continue to Matter to Newspapers.“
Additional Reference: David E. Sumler, “Unbundling the campus; this month’s contributor sees big changes in the way we educate and in the survival of the campus – Viewpoint: University Business,” bnet, Jan 2004.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: britannica blog, colleges, David E. Sumler, Martin Nisenholtz, Net, New York Times, newspapers, Nick Carr, The Big Switch, The Great Unbundling, unbundling, Unbundling the campus
