How Fad Can It Get?

Professor Joel Best lists the following fads in the (higher) ed biz:

• assessment
• active learning
• cooperative learning
• distance learning
• service learning
• problem-based learning
• responsibility-based management
• zero-based budgeting
• broadening the general-education requirements
• narrowing the general-education requirements
• capstone courses
• writing across the curriculum
• affirmative action
• multicultural education
• computer networking
• the Internet
• critical thinking
• quantitative reasoning
• yada yada yada.
  

In my 32 years at the Collegium Excellens, I heard about the virtues of nearly every single one of these "innovations." In the end, it was a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. If this is (fair & balanced) cant, so be it.

[x CHE]
From Fad to Worse
By Joel Best

I have spent nearly 25 years chairing academic departments at three universities. Department chairmen attend many meetings where the future is unveiled, priorities are articulated, and innovations are announced. Over the years, I have been assured that our university — if not all of higher education — was about to be transformed by the Pacific Rim, assessment, active learning, cooperative learning, distance learning, service learning, problem-based learning, responsibility-based management, zero-based budgeting, broadening the general-education requirements, narrowing the general-education requirements, capstone courses, writing across the curriculum, affirmative action, multicultural education, computer networking, the Internet, water (don't ask), critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, and I don't know what else. I have gone on retreats; participated in program reviews; served on task forces; puzzled over mission statements; written five-year plans, three-year plans, and niche reports; and listened to proclamations from pro-vosts, assistant provosts, deans, associate deans, and wannabe deans.

Some of those much-heralded innovations are long forgotten. Others remain housed somewhere on the campus, but I think it is fair to say that higher education hasn't changed all that much, that none of these ideas proved to be as transformative as their advocates predicted. Compared to their advance billing, they all turned out to be short-term enthusiasms or — more bluntly — educational fads.

Of course administrators aren't the only faddists on campus. Scholarly disciplines have their own fads: Theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches, and substantive research topics arrive on the scene with great fanfare, flourish for a time, then fade as some new novelty grabs the limelight. If we step back a bit, it becomes apparent that fads are a standard feature of academic life.

Yet advocates of these changes can be counted on to deny that whatever change they're promoting will turn out to be a fad. This new thing is, they insist, the real deal, an innovation that will lead to a lasting transformation in our discipline or on our campus. That is, they predict that it will be a case of what social scientists call diffusion. Diffusion is the process by which innovations spread: Typically they start small, but then the number of adopters begins to rise rapidly to a peak where it levels out, so what was once rare becomes a widespread, lasting feature of the society. Electric power, indoor plumbing, and automobiles followed this path; once rare, they became ubiquitous.

When they begin, fads follow a parallel trajectory — not many people have hula hoops at first, then the number of people using hula hoops rises rapidly to a peak, and then decline begins. This pattern defines fads: A fad is a short-lived enthusiasm. At the beginning, diffusion and fads look much alike — until they peak and their paths diverge. This means that, while any novelty is spreading, it is always possible for its advocates to insist that this innovation will endure. In many cases, they will be wrong, victims of the illusion of diffusion.

This illusion is hardly limited to academe. It is found in medicine (where there are fad diagnoses and fad treatments), in elementary and secondary education (faddish teaching methods abound), in business (consult your bookstore for titles explaining this month's revolutionary management scheme), and in most serious institutions. All display fads.

Academics — like physicians, educators, and managers — are smart, serious people. Why do they get caught up in faddish enthusiasms? This question can be answered on three different levels. And at each level, we can see patterns in the larger society replicated in higher education.

At the broadest level, our culture accepts and celebrates change. We not only believe in progress, we aspire to perfectibility: Americans declare war on drugs and pledge that our schools will leave no child behind. These are not fantastic beliefs; we know that progress is a real phenomenon. Each of us can recall how some new invention — cellphones, personal computers, television — transformed everyday life. We know that smallpox and polio have been largely eradicated. Oh, we may worry about the future, but our everyday experience teaches us that things can change for the better. This means that our culture features a bedrock receptiveness to change, a willingness to entertain claims that innovations can fix our problems. In contrast to cultures that place higher value on tradition, ritual, and stability, our society is relatively open to people promoting new ideas.

Most academics believe that ideas matter, that research and education can improve the world. As a general principle, we hold that the more people know, the better off they will be. We view knowledge as cumulative, and most of us probably agree that our disciplines are advancing, developing increasingly better understandings of the world. Even those who worry that troubling trends, such as global warming, threaten the future hope that catastrophes may be avoided, if people will just heed the warning signs and bring our knowledge to bear.

At a second, intermediate level, it is important to appreciate how our institutions contain social networks that foster the spread of novelties. Contemporary institutions — medicine, business, and the like — depend upon connections among their members and, in particular, upon the flow of information about those members' actions. Specialized communication channels, such as professional associations and trade publications, exist to convey this information. Obviously, the most valuable information concerns recent developments; the very word "news" highlights what's, well, new. The growing ease and speed with which information — including news of novelties — can spread is one of the defining characteristics of our age.

Again, academe's networks display the patterns found in other institutions. Each of us belongs to academic networks through which news travels via the campus Web site, professional journals and newsletters, e-mail, electronic discussion groups, conferences, and so on. We need to keep up, if only because we know that our students and colleagues are following what's going on in the larger world. Often we borrow ideas, not just from our colleagues but from other disciplines, or from other sectors in society, although the information doesn't always arrive in a timely manner. In Management Fads in Higher Education, Robert Birnbaum observed the tendency for higher-education administrators to adopt management schemes that originated in government and business; however, he found there was often a lag, so that these ideas began to spread on campuses around the time they were being abandoned in those other institutions.

Finally, at an individual level, people get caught up in change. They find various advantages in adopting novelties. There are emotional satisfactions — some enjoy the sense of being on the cutting edge, ahead of the crowd, while others clamber aboard the bandwagon because they fear being left behind. Often there are careerist benefits: Allying yourself with a rising innovation demonstrates that you're up-to-date, with it, not part of an old guard mired in the past; and those who reveal a willingness to change may be assigned new responsibilities, promoted ahead of those slower to enlist in the new cause.

W ithin academe novelties create important opportunities for individuals. The ever-higher expectations for tenure often force junior scholars to catch whatever the current wave in one's discipline may be. Studying a hot research topic makes it easier to land financing, and papers that explore the newest theoretical paradigm or adopt today's fashionable analytic techniques are more likely to find favor with journal editors or conference organizers. Think of how shifts in federal agencies' priorities drive research agendas in the natural sciences. Or consider literary analysis's dependence on new theoretical frameworks: Shakespeare won't be writing any more plays, but it is always possible to view his work from a fresh perspective. In the last century, psychoanalysis, Marxism, existentialism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism had their moments — is there any reason chaos theory can't be next?

Our society — and higher education in particular — encourages innovation, the adoption of novelties. Experience tells us that many of these changes will be short-lived, yet people carefully avoid using the F-word. Serious people don't want to enlist in some silly new fad; they want to be part of important, paradigm-shifting changes. Thus, novelties are packaged as transformative, as breakthroughs, as the newly arrived future. When department chairs are gathered to hear where their campus is headed, there may even be confident declarations: "[The current panacea] is no fad."

If anything, the pace of innovation seems to be picking up. Campuses offer many examples. The increasingly efficient resale market for used textbooks forces authors and publishers to churn out new editions at a faster clip (the public rationale is the need to make sure that the content is up-to-date, but does the knowledge base for introductory calculus actually change every couple of years?). Greater pressures to publish ensure that scholars will write enough papers to fill an ever-growing number of journals and conference programs but also guarantee that scholars will be able to follow only a dwindling proportion of what is published in their fields. In general, the life cycle of institutional fads has been growing shorter; the process of emerging, surging, and then purging takes less time, as attention shifts to some newer new thing.

Although institutional fads are promoted as hardheaded, practical improvements, often little is known about how well — or whether — they work. This explains how heavily touted novelties — think of boot camps for young offenders, school uniforms, or quality circles — can gain wide acceptance before there has been time to thoroughly study their effectiveness. Typically novelties spread on the basis of anecdotal evidence, news that well-known, high-prestige figures have adopted the innovation. Hearing that Harvard or Stanford is rethinking general education can send hundreds of campuses scurrying to catch up. If other people — particularly people we admire — are adopters, they must know what they're doing, and the innovation they've chosen must represent an advance. A whole set of motives kicks in: desires to be viewed as one of the leaders, or to at least be like the leaders; to avoid missing out on the promised benefits; to avoid being seen as lagging behind; and so on. It takes time to study the effects of any change; it might take years to determine whether some new management scheme actually improves organizational performance. Who has time to wait for hard evidence that the novelty actually delivers the promised benefits? After all, would those other folks have adopted this change if it didn't work?

Interestingly, this lack of information continues, even as fads fall out of favor. Often people abandon an innovation with no better evidence that it doesn't work than they had proof of its efficacy when they became adopters. Once again emotion trumps evidence. Institutional fads fall — just as they rose — when the collective mood shifts. What once seemed novel is now familiar, what was fresh has become stale. It no longer carries much cachet, its careerist advantages no longer seem as clear. And, of course, the social networks are humming with news of other, newer developments; there are signs that the world is turning in some different, far more promising direction, and that there may be fabulous opportunities for those daring enough to enlist in the newest cause.

On the one hand, institutional fads can be viewed as a familiar form of social comedy. At one time or another, we've all gotten caught up in novelties that didn't prove to have the lasting impact we imagined, and we may find humor in looking back on our misplaced enthusiasm. We may also enjoy sitting back and observing the spectacle of others frantically paddling to catch the newest wave.

But institutional fads carry real costs. Adopting an innovation often requires that people spend time, energy, and other resources on making the change. The novelty's proponents insist that the benefits will be well worth the price, that these are investments in a better future. But those forced to participate may be excused if, in the aftermath — once the enthusiasm has faded — they feel a certain cynicism about the process. Department chairs know that feeling.

Those of us in higher education, like our counterparts in other institutions, hope for progress, and that means that we have to be willing to change. But being open to change doesn't require that we buy into every novelty that pops up, nor does it mean that we have to be among the first adopters. Even if some new development might — might — transform all of higher-education administration, it probably wouldn't ruin our campus to wait for some evidence that it actually works. After all, waiting would give all of us more time to keep up with those fast-changing developments in our scholarly disciplines.

Joel Best is chairman of the department of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware. He is the author of Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads, published this month by the University of California Press.

Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

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