We do not hold ourselves accountable in higher education; time to admit it

If you have worked in education long enough, you will quickly learn that educators are full of flaws.

·         The industry is highly indiscreet, despite FERPA (FAMILY EDUCATION RIGHTS PRIVACY ACT)

·         People often work in silos without collaboration

·         We do not admit when we are wrong soon enough

·         ETC

Do not get me wrong, I love my industry and our hearts are in the right place, but real change is really scary for most, and often we do not embrace the change until it is forced upon us.

Issues with accreditation did not just happen overnight, this had to have taken years to build up. Accounting and solvency issues did not just suddenly appear, mistakes are going to happen when people get promoted into positions that does not necessarily suit them. Online technology has been growing for decades, so why then are we not trying to embrace things that can help more students?

So, what is the solution? Well there is no one solution and there is no simple answer because we are in a labor-intensive industry, where egos clash, and everyone is an expert.

At the very least, we need to PRACTICE WHAT WE TEACH. We teach some really good stuff in higher educaion, we change lives, we help people better themselves; but we do not always apply this learning to ourselves.

Businesses are expecting more from us and so are our students. We need to make sure we are not just preparing students to pass a test, but to be job ready and pass life’s test.

So, the answer to the question is actually another question: as an educator in higher education what are you prepared to do make real change and achieve real success for our community?

Dr Flavius A B Akerele III

The ETeam http://www.theeteamconsulting.com/home.html