Good evening, everyone. And welcome im bill kelly, the andrew w. Melon director of the Research Library and mitt pleasure to welcome you here. We are fortunate to have professor Cathy Davidson with us this evening. The author after its important boehm, the new education, how to revolutionize the the university to prepare for a world in flux. She is a director of kuynys never program shep head a chair and professorship and was the Vice President for Interdisciplinary Studies at duke university. He is the author or editor of more than 20 books. The cofounder and director of the worlds first academic social network, she serves on the board of the mozilla corporation, the developer, as you probe foreclosure of the fire fax web browser and underwriter of a Global Community of open Source Developers she was appoint by president obama to the National Council on the humanities, and was the 2016 rerecipient of the award for significant contributions to Higher Education. All of that you probably know and in any case, you can reality it in your program should you wish to refresh your memory. What is more important to understand about cathy his work is its range, its measure, its consequence. I loathe the word transformative a squall of qualifier debased, emptied of meaning by frequent misuse. I have foreworn its deployment expect when speaking to the grandson about robots that turn into trucks or dinosaurs or when im refusing to take him to a michael bane movie this. As close to religion as i get no michael bane movies. I note this bias to underscore the intensity for my feelings about congratulate wheres where work using the term transformative. Write that changes the way we think, see and believe, work that al tears our perception of its subject, and a lasting and fundamental fashion. She is, i would contend, an heir of the rich tradition of american practice pragmatism. What these thinkers have in common is a distrust of settled belief, truth for them is what happens to an idea, dialect, dialectic is the driver of successful process. Certainly the new education, congratulate any thys cathys book the state of american highed education, charts the lan cascade of americaning opinions of innovation and imagines a richer future ground it in, what if. This the descriptor transfer term applies to most of cathys work. The study of the rise of novel in the country. 36 views of mt. Fuji, an account of her experience and her teaching japan change they would way we imagine crossculturallen counter, their mysteries, their opportunities for selfinvention, closing the life and death of an american factory, taught us to see with new eyes the trailing of the commons. Both the future of thinking and now you seat in different ways, changed the way we think about how we live, work and learn in a digital age, in short, Cathy Davidson is an essential and indispensable mind, scholar who demand attention and great cued. I count it a privilege and enjoy to be in conversation with her this evening about the new education. She and i will converse for 40 minutes, 45 minutes or so, depending upon how selfish i feel, and then open the floor to questions. At the conclusion of the program, cathy will be signing books outside the room. I recommend it to you with great enthusiasm. So let me move over to sit next to cathy. [applause] and i didnt fall. Good evening. Thank you so much for being with us. Guest so embarrassed of its very hard to hear that about ones self. It sound lovely to hear it from somebody who i admire so much. Host thank you. Let me begin with where you guinn this wonderful book. By aligning college with all great quests. We have a long runway to the text. You make that alignment on the basis of college involves an obstacle to overcome, here we dragons. Students go to college and then graduates leaving the college environment, advisers to enter the world, the work force. Are these new dragons these students encounter or the same dragons that you and i and our friend inside the room experienced0 some of them, pay . Sunny think its a little of both. Some of the dragons are just the dragons of growing up and those are big muff dragons, going from being dependent on your family and being a child, a minor, to feeling like you can support yourself be a productive, responsible citizen of the world are thats a formidable challenge for all of us. Some people manage to go through it gracely. Didnt. I meant to know about you here. Its a formidable challenge and today thats even more for mettable. Our schools have being regimes of standardized testing which we know prepares you for nothing except doing well on standardized tests. Actually think the stress we put kids under now, where at a very early age we have to tell them they have to prepare for the best school 0 are or else their life is over if they dont get into the top performers some form of child abuse and we cede see this in our universities, an evergrowing part of university bug being used on health care and mental care for people who are anxious and worried and sure theyll be failures in the world. At the same time clearly we have done terrible things. If you complain about the tuition your having to pay par for you child now, especially in Public Education, ore voting did that to this world. We in a different generation, had gifts given to us as part of the public good of a society that our children dont have. Theyre graduating with tuition debt now. If youer going to college and graduating with tuition debt you of the worried and making different choices. What you study and how you study. Then if you feel like youre graduating debt free. So theres a lot of different burdens we have put on kid today, and i think the dragoon for met able. I defend indicate the book to millenials and all generations. Kids have been given a raw deal and its our fault and we have to change that. Host let me use your open language to amplify what yao just said you. Write, pundits are plane wrong about the millenial generation, google has not made them stupid. Their iphones dont maple thick lonely. College doesnt make them dumb or passive i. They want to know bet to world to lead is do a better job address major World Problems than their elders have done. You ask questions about them. You say, how can they accomplish the goals, train them to succeed in a world that changes to fast that no one can predict what will happen next . In some ways is that not the heart of this book . Trying to imagine an education that does better by its students than just preparing them to deal with the dragons you just described. Guest totally. So many of the solutions that people have proposed, we must reform education. Some of the discussions have been just theyre not commonsensical therapy. Stupid. Anyone who thinks about them knows theyre wrong. A time when i talk about Thomas Freedman in the book, our great journalists, saying that massive online open education where you take videos of famous professors on ending world poverty. Thats crazy. Who believes that technology can solve the problemmed of the world. Im technology person. Thats a misunderstanding of both learning and technology. Or thinking that we have to get rid of frills in education and only focus on skills and make sure that every child is just interested in stem and goes into a stem career. For some kids, some young people, stem is great. Science, technology, engineer and math, its great for others its a nightmare. Host you say stem isnt the problem and stem isnt the solution. Guest no. And in fact, what an impoverished way to tech about science, something that has nothing to do with humanity or what matters. Its insulting to science to think that you would get away with you would strip away from education as many states try to, all of the social, political, cultural aspects hey that low signs could abouted or climbed deniers are deny. Those are cultural issues not just scientific issues. Host let me take a step back before we talk about the kinds of solutions, the weapons to deal with dragons. One of the things that appeals to me most about this book, i alluded to fit introduction, is the got a historyize to recognize education agriculture, not nature. When we think of some think of Higher Education cass timeless, connected to the greeks, but what you argue is the modern research universities, a world in which those of us in education live or have lived, is a relatively new organization that arises in the United States. Itself has roots in berlin and humboldt and in europe more generally but arise news the u. S. In the 1860s. When you put a date to that in which things change you open the possibility imagining a different type of Higher Education. Could you tell us a bit or recap what you argue in the book about the history of american Higher Education. The elements that we take for granted about it, innovation that that tame could us in the late 19th century, earliest 20th century. Guest the clear u says i lighter education has not changed since socrates, and therefore it cant change. What i love about looking in detail, really looking in the archives to find out what Charles Elliott, the very young president of harvard, who went on to rule to rule to run and preside over harvard for 40 years host exactly. Both, both in. Guest pretty powerful. What is so great is to see how much detail and how much he is looking at the infrastructure of college and really change all of it themes are things i have a long laundry list of michigan that didnt exist and then did exist. Basically between about 1865 and 1925. And its everything from majors, minors, graduate school, professional schools, electives, school choice, paying salaries for faculty. Before that you were thawing to have a trust fund. So if you taught at harvard you were wealthy enough you didnt need a salary. Admissions exams. A long, long list of things that none of which has to be defined today because theyre all the same flux of our universities. Perhaps most important, they also invented the aye accreditation and ranking system bit which all universities today are still ranked, and guess what is at the top of the ranching ranking system, its harvard. We eave everything phenomenon Community Colleges and Land Grant School examination major Public Research universities, regional elite private universities, liberal arts college think ranking system still puts an infrastructure in place and every college is ranked according to that. That makes no sense. Each university, each college has a dived kind of student, a diskind of obligation to to the students. But theyre all competing with the shadow of what a university, great university, harvard, that has an entoyment so believe i i believe if the endowment were the gdp it would be the 18th 18th largest country to in the world. Howing a tiny college or Community College or Public University begin to compete with that, and why should it . Theres so many different kind way bogey student and part of the dragons students feel now irthats being told that only if they go to hard record or m. I. T. Or stanford will they succeed the world. Theres so many ways to succeed in the world, and that is terrible to make them one size fits all or make our universities one side fits all. Host the universities, if in fact being top of the table is the impulse university or arriving at some high place or a place in the u. S. News World Reports ranking so distorts the way in which colleges operate, that its impossible to think about ways of education that are outside that frame. Let me take you back to elliott. You picked tee title of your book from am article he wrote in 1869. Guest the new education. Host the new education. And elliott is a kind of double figure the is in book, as i read it. The author of system you find destructive for students, faculty forks the life of the mind in the United States. On the other theres a strong admiration for his ability to change a system. Why did you choose to name the book after this 1869 essay that Charles Elliott wrote in the atlantic . Guest well, it would be dishonest to say i had that title in mind when i wrote the book. This book had 20 different titles. That one struck me because i do believe we need a new education for the world were living in now. What elliott did that i admire at the welcome acome professor tetching at hard vair, theoretical checkist issue did not want to be a practical chim mist and his father lost everything in the panic of 1857. The the first gill Global Financial crisis, and elliott thought we would have to go into business and then his grandfather died and he got a little trust fund and was able to use that to go to europe and decided to study the european system. And many people, not just elout about many people in 1856 thought blamed the crisis on poor american education. Said that america led the morse code was transmitting information about the collapse faster than anyone could happen what was going only. One Financial Market after another collapses worldwide and they said americans were naive. Had become become technocrats and had an educational system that taught you to be a minister. So elliott believe that and went to europe to find out how european education change and he came back the United States and tried to figure out what would work in america at the time. Now, i dont exactly love the people that were his model but they were the most important theiriists at the time. So in standardized tessing, deviation from the means, standard deviation, sir james gaulton, cousin of darwin and a eugenist. And he believed in invented the bell curve believed that british acristocrats to be paid to produce and poor people should be sterilized. Host Teddy Roosevelt believed . No and the founder of the modern occasion. The tyranny of mary meritocracy, and its rooted in racist and class assumptions who is entitled to run the country. Host when he takes the presidency of harvard, 35 years old, a great surprise, he had written this kind of attack on american education, speaks well for the Harvard Corporation to take this chance. The inaugural address, features a line in which he said the question is not what to teach but how. Same question that were guest thats one of my admirations for elliott. Still the question. How you teach. Host still valid, that question . I think not only still valid, probably more valid now because many of the methods that were experimental and elliotts day have become frozen. The lecture method and also the typical seminar method where we know that in fact who speaks in a seminar room replicates the say yours kind of hiker, aty in society. So many bet progressive dewey, believed a more progressive activist education as did others and one of the thing is advocate is a method of learning where every student is a researcher and eve student is pushed to be curious and to follow their ideas, and to think about how knowledge comes together in complex ways rather than in the professionalized way that were perfect in 1890 because there werent professions in the same way then. Host one other point you make about elliotts midle and education in the late 19th 19th under is that he is training students not be class assists or ministers but preparing them to take positions in management. Guest absolutely. Host you align with charles taylor, talk about education as a kind of con pick conspicuous consumption. What is different about training students for jobs in a technological world than training them for jobs in a world that is still primarily agricultural and industrial . What different about what we what education what the new Education Needs to do for students now than what education needed to do in elliotts day. So Charles Elliott it basically creating the infrastructure, the educationals intellectual infrastructure for a new professional managerial class. That is running new institutions, new corporations, new professions. Almost all of those have been disrupted in pretty graphic ways in the last 20 years by technology. So that professions that people were sure could never be automated, are now being turned upsidedown, and education i simply prepare outside for a career and professionizes you for a career might get you a first job but might also get you helpless and obsolete ten years from now. I think about Something Like taxi drivers. Identify years ago nobody would have thought a taxi driver could become outmoded and now you cant go in any taxi in new york without somebody talking about what uber has done. How a whole different arrangement not Just Technology but a rearrangement of human labor has changed. Another one is service workers. You go to cvs and you dont need nearly the personnel you had before because you can the checking out is automated. There are many occupations which are not only automated but other 0 occupations which cant be automated but are terribly, tear my underresourced. So for example, people often talk about how College Students dont make as much money as they used to. One reason is 60 ofcome students are women and women tend by and large, statistically to go in the four socalled femmized professions that are terribly important and terribly underpaid. Teaching, social work, health care, librarianship. Those are horribly, horribly underresourced professions. You need a College Degree for those professions. And our society doesnt thats not an educational problem. Thats a social problem. A society is a so i think students need not only to learn how to think but how to think really critically about what the values of the society are that theyre entering itch want studented to be activists. Let me ask a more practical question. If we assume i think most people would agree with what you just said that training that a first job is just that, that