I'm way biased...

The lack of instructional design in higher-education is pathetic. Old-school model is to get subject-matter experts to teach. Unfortunately, these people rarely have the ability to design a course... or teach it.

I believe it to be most effective to pair an instructional designer with a subject-matter expert to design/develop a course (or curriculum) that is very effective and high return on investment.
Source(s):
Master's degree in education (Instructional Design) and 15 years experience designing/developing courses and curriculum.

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I find it really disgusting that many tenured professors very rarely teach, and have their starvation-wage graduate students do it--but the students are charged premium wages.

Institutions need to get back into the old make-do mindset: no more multi-million dollar building projects--they no longer please the alumni, who see right through that. If the faculty and staff get raises at all, it should be at half the rate of inflation to make up for the last couple of decades when tuition was rising at more than the rate of inflation.

And perhaps we should start to consider that maybe everyone shouldn't be in college, so that all the kids who need remediation will land where they'll be much more happy, at lower expense to all involved.
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1. Get rid of the turf wars

Existing management practices often lead to educators and administrators focusing on expanding their span of control in order to get more resources for themselves or their departments. This is often more about internal politics than improving education.

2. Embrace Creative Commons

Make your learning materials freely available to all in electronic format. Never put learning materials into a closed repository or enter into a publishing agreement that prevents free electronic dissemination.

3. Embrace Open Standards

Break free from closed LMS, CMS, VLE systems. Communicate with students using web applications/open source software that supports open standards. Never put data into a system that only supports proprietary formats. Use standard group calendaring, project and task management systems. Use collaboration software that is aimed at the general market to benefit from economies of scale.

4. Collaborate and Participate

Actively and enthusiastically use Knol, Wikipedia, SlideShare, YouTube, Archive.org etc. to produce, rate, tag and store very granular learning materials. Share and develop these with other institutions.

5. Focus on Contact

Having created, selected and validated an extensive collection of learning resources, focus almost entirely on interactions between students and instructors. Shift staff effort from transmission to understanding and guidance. Build a culture where course materials are read and explored, and where contact time is spent questioning and debating.

6. Prioritize

Use Pareto analysis etc. to identify the most problematic elements of the curriculum and focus a deliberately disproportionate amount of resource on those.

7. Focus on the Customer

Decide which stakeholders you're serving and adapt to their priorities.

8. Be Cozy

Education is stressful. Remove unnecessary sources of stress that distract from the education process. Make sure your students do not have to worry about accommodation, safety, security, health, finance, IT support or any other non-academic elements under your administrative control. Warm buildings, fast networks, realistic schedules and friendly staff help a lot.

9. Treasure your Staff

They are your most important service differentiators. Treat them appropriately.
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