Education Innovators: Preaching (as Usual) to the Choir - Jeff Selingo, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Michael Crow, the ubiquitous president of Arizona State University, opened the Education Innovation Summit here this week by giving his views of what ails higher ed. He called it “filiopietism,” or the excessive veneration of tradition. Not enough students are coming into the system, he said, and not enough are completing a credential to reach national goals. Quoting his father, Crow called this a “piss-poor performance.” I’ve seen Crow give similar keynote presentations to graduate-school deans and college presidents in recent months, although those speeches didn’t seem as hard-nosed as this one. He admitted upfront that this audience probably would be more sympathetic to his message of what’s wrong with higher ed than those other two were. Before him were 800 people, mostly educational entrepreneurs, CEOs, and investors, who more than outnumbered the contingent of college administrators and educators at the conference, which is now in its third year.