Certain trends in educational institutions that seem to counter neo institutional arguments. I want to consider them for a moment, because I think if we reflect on them a little bit we can see how neo institutional theory as a theory needs to change, or possibly how it can help explain these new phenomena that just haven't been articulated well enough yet. One of the interesting paradoxes in education right now involves No Child Left Behind and educational policies that strongly rely on inspection and accountability since the centralization effort in accountability, right? Recoupling. On the one hand, No Child Left Behind and policies like it increase inspection. So much so that they seem to challenge this notion of loose coupling within education, and it forces teachers to conform, and it places greater power and responsibility in the administrators. At the same time, the reform creates greater pressure for conformity to a particular myth of the real school. And the appropriate elements a school should reflect, it calls into question these myths as well, other myths in spite of reinforcing one. So now the ritual categories are more focused innovation and methodology is minimized and conformity is imposed by a testing regime so test scores develop by rationalizing agents like testing services and academics become standard bearers. Their test scores indicate whether one school is successful or another is not despite of all this other things that could be a sign. Kind of efficacy or efficiency. What happens then is that teachers teach those tasks. And some cases they even cheat so as to sustain appearances of adhering to that particular rationalizement. But you kind of end up wondering if this is a clear sense of what works better and whether we've really confronted whether learning is more efficient and desirable in this new form. I think there is a sense of this, but it's conveyed to the lens of a test and interesting the Bryk article that we read very early in the quarter could be interpreted as a strategic management effort to do recoupling, to counter loose coupling. And changes in that regulatory environment led to strategic responses, like those described by Bryk. And we saw that the system adapted and conformed, but it wasn't clear that it had become more efficient and successful than before. Teachers felt deprofessionalized and their motivation began to wane, so it wasn't clear that that had really succeeded. So it's not clear whether recoupling and centralization render organizations any less reliant on rationalized myths. They just seem to focus them on certain standard bearers more than others. Ambiguity and uncertainty remain and only one facet of the intuition environment and currently a dominant one is being linked to and aligned with. In some ways this recoupling has kind of called into question other rationalized myths that schools are really serving a variety of purposes. And we have this debate now about the legitimacy of testing even. So, whether that identifies certain communities and schools as failures is even valid or ethical in some cases, so we have this ongoing debate, it hasn't been resolved but it is interesting to think how the recoupling of the educational institutions shift away from the loose coupling argument that our founders and the institutional theory had applied to educational institutions. Another conundrum for neo institutional theory is the creation of massive open online courses or moocs, and what they mean for the organization of universities. Could mooks threaten the rationalized myths upon which the modern university is constructed? Does Coursera challenge the common script of universities or the institutional conceptions of organizational fields like education? How? I mean it's a big question. Why might a mook lack environmental legitimacy? How do mooks challenge myths of schooling and question the legitimacy of higher education institutions. What will mooks do to community colleges? What will they do to the University of Phoenix, say, and what do they do to the actual classroom experience itself? What if superstar teachers can effectively convey material online, and students can learn it almost as well as if you were here with me in person, but at a fraction of the cost? What does that do? What if Coursera, and other platforms like it, begin to offer a degree, or They can show that it's just as effective or almost as effective as an actual credential university degree or course. What would that do? What might happen to educational organizations as a whole? That's a big question, and I think a lot of us are grappling with it right now. And I think a lot of us online, I'm going to make sure this is a forum post this week, that we have a lot of opinions about it or thoughts about it. It seems to be that the whole societal apparatus seeks credentials as standardized language by which exchanges can be made across institutions. So whether you get a degree as someone that's substitutable worker in your firm, right? With an MBA or the like. With Coursera, this kind of success and credentialing might not be a scarce commodity. So a lot of people who can't get into Stanford, might get the same credential or accomplish the same course. Does it mean that the credential is illegitimate at Stanford? Could be. It kind of calls into question whether that myth is rational or not. The market would be flooded too with lots of people who have the same skills, since Coursera has real. For far more people in Stanford could ever help. So, as a result, you'd have these employers with little room to hire some people, they just, who would want to do janitorial work if everyone was overqualified and was willing to be a manager, right. Who would standout as being able to do complex task if so many people were substitutable and had that level of skill. And what if the credential is associated with tons of variance like a Coursera certificate might belie the fact that there was. Tons of variability in how people performed, right? [INAUDIBLE] raise a lot of questions about the legitimacy of one of our most central societal institutions and the rationalized myths upon which it rests. For example, what if my course online is about 50% as effective as my in class experience, but it's free? This calls into question why bother with the classroom experience to some extent. It may be more efficient and effective. But per dollar, it's not necessarily clear to me. So I think a lot of issues we have to work out in the Stanford side by offering materials free, some of those students feel it's belittled the value of the content. It's not longer a scare resource to some degree. So we have similar Issues of legitimacy going on in the opposite direction. So we're trying to figure this out. And we're trying to think of ways to make the in class experience of value to the students here, as well as providing this product to the rest of the world, in a way of maybe bringing everybody up. And affording access to these kinds of things, those are wonderful ideals. But in the process it kind of calls under question whether classrooms are needed. What if I can do advance pedagogical kinds of exercises online? It's feasible. Maybe next year. But that also means more and more of what's unique to the classroom experience could be done at a scale. What if we can deal with cheating far easier over time, so that it can be recognized? And I think we will. We're already getting pretty good at it. What if that's feasible? That's going to make it more and more possible that a credentialed degree is affordable. So I think all of these things will occur. In addition, what if Stanford gets very successful at these kind of courses? What does it mean for the survival of all the local institutions and other faculty? Who needed jobs and by killing their jobs by offering this at scale. So there are all these questions we're not sure what it means or what will happen but I think it's extremely interesting from an organizational standpoint and part of the reason why with my students and my class here they are constantly thinking about it and trying to think of ways on how to theorize or make sense of it. I encourage you to do the same on the forum this week and I think we will have a wonderful discussion. Thank you.
