Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities  
Richard A. DeMillo
The MIT Press
The vast majority of American college students attend two thousand or so                 private and public institutions that might be described as the Middle--reputable                 educational institutions, but not considered equal to the elite and entrenched upper                 echelon of the Ivy League and other prestigious schools. Richard DeMillo has a                 warning for these colleges and universities in the Middle: If you do not change, you                 are heading for irrelevance and marginalization. In Abelard to Apple, DeMillo argues                 that these institutions, clinging precariously to a centuries-old model of higher                 education, are ignoring the social, historical, and economic forces at work in                 today's world. In the age of iTunes, open source software, and for-profit online                 universities, there are new rules for higher education. DeMillo, who has spent years                 in both academia andin industry, explains how higher education arrived at its                 current parlous state and offers a road map for the twenty-first century. He                 describes the evolving model for higher education, from European universities based                 on a medieval model to American land-grant colleges to Apple's iTunes U and MIT's                 OpenCourseWare. He offers ten rules to help colleges reinvent themselves (including                 "Don't romanticize your weaknesses") and argues for a focus on teaching                 undergraduates. DeMillo's message--for colleges and universities, students, alumni,                 parents, employers, and politicians--is that any college or university can change                 course if it defines a compelling value proposition (one not based in                 "institutional envy" of Harvard and Berkeley) and imagines an institution                 that delivers it.