After attending Newman’s session at the UCEA conference, we arranged an interview with him in which he gave us an overview of The Futures Project, now in its second phase and heading for its third phase. We asked him about his claims that higher education is far more competitive and shaped by the market today, and less by regulation. We also asked if higher education, in general, has been slow to respond to the demands of society.

The first phase of The Futures Project looked at, in part, whether or not the competition from for-profits programs and the impact of technology and market forces on education was growing as fast as many educators had been estimating. "Turns out that in every phase, we were underestimating it," says Newman. "There were more for- profits; there was more competition; there was more interest in market forces."

The second phase is currently addressing what institutions need to be doing in light of this. Number one, we need to figure out "what kind of policies would make sense?" says Newman. Number two, "what kind of institutional strategies should we recommend? The third thing is we think there needs to be a serious debate in which academic leaders and political leaders actually talk to each other."

The third phase will recommend what policies and strategies institutions and political leaders need to consider. As part of these now-in-draft-form recommendations, Newman explains how The Futures Project believes "that the nature of higher education’s commitment to serving the people has eroded, and what we need is a rebuilding of the basic contract between the public and higher education." The erosion comes from a number of places, including marketing forces themselves, such as corporations having more control over university research and publications, and an intercollegiate athletics system that has "run amuck" in their emphasis on television dollars and high salaries for coaches, as opposed to building student character and health-oriented extracurricular activities that do not take precedence over academics.

So what does all this have to do with online learning? This is a market force that gives students more choices. No longer does one have to take an introductory core class with let’s say 800 students in one auditorium-sized, impersonal class at a large university when that same class can be taken online with a class of about 20 like-minded students who interact with each other and learn more, says Newman. "This is a competitor driving change, and the student is the force of the change."

However, change "can be both good and bad," he adds. "It depends on what you do; therefore it is time to be thoughtful and think our way through this and do something intelligent." For example, inside classes such as those in the legal field or in teacher education, where socialization into the profession can be a key driver of sound learning, how can online learning achieve effectiveness and be sound pedagogically? "It is easy for online operations to not do that and focus entirely on skill development," says Newman, adding that he also thinks that "it is perfectly possible to build social relationships online. . . We know how to make learning exciting, (however) we just don’t do it."

Finally, Newman says that, overall, higher education is in a period of enormous opportunity as well as enormous risk. "As technology gets better, you can not only hold courses online, but you can build really good modules and do simulations and other interesting things and use them online or inside a classroom, which makes for better learning in both places. It will make online learning and classroom learning much closer to each other."

On the other hand, "all these forces are easy forces for corruption and contamination and getting us off track. If we end up like intercollegiate athletics. . . I would say that we took this wonderful period of opportunity and we blew it. So, what we are saying is let’s all wake up; let’s have a big debate; and higher education, you have to lead your way back to a compact with the public."