The Innovative University - Part Five: Genetic Re-engineering

The Innovative University

By

Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring

Part Five:  Genetic Re-engineering

Part Five: Genetic Re-engineering in The Innovative University by Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring, describes three major threats to the traditional university:  obsolescence, disorientation and depersonalization.  As the authors point out, the traditional university must perpetually reinvent itself during times of change when it is often more difficult to make strong, strategic decisions in an increasingly technological world that is becoming more impersonal.  Throughout this final section of the book, Harvard is described as the “elite” university which most other traditional universities want to imitate.  However, caution is prescribed by Christensen and Eyring who clearly suggest that the extraordinary endowment maintained by Harvard puts it way ahead of the pack financially.  As an alternative, universities should consider online learning as a means to cut teaching costs and encourage an increase in the number of graduates who complete their undergraduate education on time.  The Carnegie Foundation academic classifications are noted as guidelines for colleges and universities to focus on their strengths (discovery, integration, application, teaching, and now community-engagement), as well as strategically identify the types and range of students that will be included in the institution, the subject matter (majors) to be emphasized, and a definition of scholarship.  Underlying all of this strategy should be ethics, strengthening of values and behavior.  The example highlighted by the authors, BYU-Idaho (formerly Ricks College), has this underlying strategy as a foundation.

One of the most useful and clear segments of this part of the book is the Table of DNA Alteration suggestions (Table 23.1) on page 386-387.  The table serves as a synopsis of Part Five and describes how traditional universities might alter traits to ensure successful change.  Institutional DNA, which includes program offerings, structures, systems and processes, and ultimately strategy, can be modified systematically by considering issues related to hybrid (online and face-to-face) instruction, values orientation, year-round operation, methods of fundraising, placing athletics in the background, and less selectivity for admissions, to name a few.   It’s a tall order and one that takes time and extraordinary leadership.  Christensen and Eyring point to Kim Clark of BYU-Idaho as the example where such strategy has engendered exemplary change. 

Part Five of The Innovative University is informative, but in spots hard to follow.  In addition, I kept questioning whether most traditional universities want to emulate Harvard.  Also, the term, “genetic re-engineering” has both a negative and a positive connotation:  positive related to change for a greater good, but negative if the meaning is manipulation for underhanded purposes.  Clearly, the innovative university and changing institutional DNA for wider and more inclusive education is the positive side of the definition.  The authors are optimistic.  As they state, “life students furthest and fastest and share scholarship most broadly” (p. 397).