Elliot Maxwell
Harnessing Openness to
Improve Research, Teaching and
Learning in Higher Education
The rise of the Internet and the digitization of information are affecting every cor-
ner of our lives. In a series of reports, we have examined how these two changes are
increasing the “openness” of information, processes, and institutions.
The degree of openness of information, Par exemple, can differ dramatically.
To the extent that people have access to information, without restrictions, que
information is more open than information to which people have access only if
they are subscribers, or have security clearances, or have to go to a particular loca-
tion to get it. But accessibility, quite similar to the concept of transparency, is only
one aspect of openness.
The other is responsiveness. Can one change the information, repurpose,
remix, and redistribute it?
Information (or a process or an institution) is more open when there are fewer
restrictions on access, utiliser, and responsiveness.
The Internet, in particular, has vastly expanded openness. It is changing the
nature of information, processes, and institutions by making them more accessible
to people next door and around the world. It also makes information more
responsive—capable of being enhanced, or degraded, through the digital contri-
butions of anyone interested enough to make the effort, be they experts, devoted
amateurs, people with an ax to grind, or the merely curious.
In this report we examine higher education through the lens of openness. Notre
goal is to understand the potential impact of greater openness on colleges and uni-
Elliot E. Maxwell advises public and private sector clients on strategic issues involving
the intersection of business, technologie, and public policy in the Internet and E-com-
merce domains. He is a Fellow of the Communications Program at Johns Hopkins
University, and Distinguished Research Fellow at the eBusiness Research Center of the
Université d'État de Pennsylvanie.
The full report by the same title from which this paper is derived is available at
http://www.ced.org/images/library/reports/digital_economy/dcc_opennessedu09.pdf .
© 2010 Elliot Maxwell
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Elliot Maxwell
versities. Like other service industries such as finance or entertainment, higher
education is rooted in information—its creation, analyse, and transmission—and
the development of the skills required to utilize it for the benefit of individuals and
society.
But finance and entertainment have been transformed by greater openness
while higher education appears, at least in terms of openness, to have changed
much less. We aim in this report to identify some of the potential gains from mak-
ing higher education more open. We also make a series of concrete recommenda-
tions for policymakers and for
institutions of higher educa-
tion that should help harness
the benefits of greater open-
ness.
Unlike traditional printed
educational materials, digital
materials have the valuable
characteristics of allowing
teachers and students to know
what parts of the materials
have been reviewed and
providing immediate feedback
on what the learner has done
with the material.
Higher education is a com-
plex arena with many different
institutions serving many dif-
ferent audiences. Colleges and
universities are,
in part, le
products of their own societies
and reflections of hundreds of
years of practice in teaching
and learning, recherche, et
service to the community.
Reasonably slow to adapt, par-
ticularly in their core methods
of teaching and learning, col-
leges and universities have
been faced in the last decade
with significant trends: the rapid increase in globalization, the arrival of students
who were “born digital” and who may never have experienced an educational insti-
tution without the Internet, and a transformation of the Internet itself from a
curiosity to a means for gaining access to information, and now to being a funda-
mental element of a more “participatory” culture that encourages everyone to
make their own contribution. The research function of the university, which aims
to produce and disseminate new knowledge, has become so intertwined with the
Internet that it is almost difficult to recall what research was like before the World
Wide Web. Colleges and universities are also beginning to use the Internet to
strengthen ties with their various stakeholders and communities, as well as to
improve their internal management.
OPENNESS AND TEACHING AND LEARNING
For hundreds of years, personal interactions between teachers and students and
printed texts have been at the heart of teaching in colleges and universities. Mais
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Harnessing Openness in Higher Education
changes in the openness of the educational materials being used and in the vehi-
cles for the delivery of these materials have the potential to fundamentally reshape
teaching and learning.
Unlike traditional printed educational materials, digital materials have the
valuable characteristics of allowing teachers and students to know what parts of
the materials have been reviewed and providing immediate feedback on what the
learner has done with the material. One can easily determine how successful the
student has been in achieving the learning outcomes that the materials are
designed to produce. The potential gains from using digital materials for both
learners and teachers—as well as for the authors of educational materials and for
the learning-sciences community in general—have often proven elusive. But the
development of more open digital materials known as “open educational
resources” (OER), combined with our growing experience with digital materials,
suggest the possibility of far greater gains in the future.
The most familiar examples of OER are the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW)
materials that were adapted from existing MIT courses and posted on the Web,
available free to anyone anywhere who had an Internet connection. MIT’s
OpenCourseWare initiative was part of the first generation of OER—putting old
but highly regarded educational wine into new digital bottles. Like other informa-
tion available via what has become known as Web 1.0, they were accessible but stat-
ic. But newer OER reflect Web 2.0 and its participatory nature. Par conséquent, ils sont
far more open. They are created by a far broader range of authors—faculty, stu-
bosses, literally anyone interested—from around the globe. Not only can anyone
create an OER, they can come in all shapes and sizes—a course, lecture, game, sim-
ulation. They are freely available to all, and anyone can modify an OER in order to
customize it for a particular purpose, langue, setting, technological platform,
culture, or skill level.
With the extraordinary connectivity provided by the Internet, we can, en utilisant
OER, provide free digital educational materials to millions of people in institutions
of higher education and to the many millions more unable to attend such institu-
tion. Everyone has the opportunity to participate in a global effort to improve and
extend these materials, to customize, even personalize, eux. We can incorporate
new knowledge into digital learning materials more quickly and make those mate-
rials immediately and broadly available. We have the potential to collaboratively
create materials that are student centered and that reflect our growing understand-
ing of the importance of group effort in learning.
Web 2.0 has redefined the relationship between experts and amateurs in, pour
example, the creation of encyclopedias such as Wikipedia. It has altered the
mechanics and economics of the production and distribution of videos as in
YouTube. It is altering the way people interact via social networks such as
Facebook.
In the world where OER offers the possibility of new relationships between
teachers and learners, will the old paradigm of a teacher as the “sage on the stage”
remain dominant? We think not.
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Elliot Maxwell
We do not expect OER to simply replace more closed, proprietary educational
materials, which themselves are increasingly becoming digital. And there are many
issues that must be addressed if OER is to live up to its potential. OER has been
supply driven, with creators posting whatever interests them regardless of how or
even whether it is used; to be successful, OER must meet the needs of users. Nous
need to know how OER is actually being used, how effective it is, particularly in
comparison with existing materials, and what impact it has on learners. We need
to rethink our copyright rules to allow increased non-commercial educational uses
of copyrighted materials beyond the traditional classroom in order to facilitate the
further development of OER. Just as new approaches to sustainability are being
developed to support open-source software and open-access scientific journals, nous
will need to see if there are ways to sustain the development and distribution of
free, high-quality, academically rigorous, and pedagogically sound OER that take
full advantage of its digital nature.
We make a special effort to understand the potential implications of greater
openness for community colleges.
These institutions face extraordinary challenges. They serve almost half the
undergraduate students enrolled in higher education in the United States. Their
student bodies are far more diverse than those of four-year institutions, with vast-
ly different aspirations and backgrounds and levels of academic preparation. Encore
community colleges are given fewer resources to accomplish more different mis-
sions than four-year institutions; they have, until recently, received far less atten-
tion and recognition than they merit, given their critical place in the entire scheme
of higher education.
How might greater openness benefit community colleges? Access to informa-
tion is one of the central aspects of openness. But there is far too little data collect-
ed and analyzed on the progression of students from high school through college
and then into the workforce to allow valid judgments about what works and what
doesn’t. This is not surprising given that community colleges are often funded
based on enrollments, not on their results. Funding mechanisms that reward
achievement of specific educational outcomes would provide more appropriate
incentives and stimulate efforts to find the most effective ways of achieving these
résultats.
Putting more information about course selection and degree paths online so
that students—many of whom work full time and support families—can better
understand the requirements they need to fulfill and how they are progressing
should be helpful. Providing more support through online counseling and tutor-
ing, including by their peers, would increase openness and be of particular benefit
for those who need the most help.
OER could certainly benefit resource-starved community colleges. Using OER
and online education would allow them to offer a wider range of courses and meet
the needs of students who want more specialized instruction. Online simulations
and immersive environments (potentially as OER) could provide educational
experiences that would otherwise require expensive laboratory facilities. OER
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Harnessing Openness in Higher Education
could also help reduce textbook costs that now rival the cost of tuition at some
community colleges.
Community colleges serve today as the focal point in higher education for
workforce training. Greater openness would encourage closer relationships
between community colleges, students seeking training or retraining, and local
employers. Businesses should make clear their expectations in terms of skills and
knowledge and alert community colleges to emerging workplace needs; communi-
ty colleges should develop educational aims and learning outcomes as part of
short- and longer-term educational programs that will meet the needs of potential
employers and students. Better integration of educational policy and basic skills
training with workforce preparation and economic development policy would
help students, employers, and the country as a whole, particularly as we struggle
through today’s trying economic times.
National policy should support increased broadband connectivity for commu-
nity college computing centers and supplement community college training facil-
ities with new open “fabrication labs” to provide students—and members of local
communities such as laid-off workers—with exposure to powerful, and increas-
ingly software-controlled, tools.
OPENNESS IN RESEARCH
Research has been revolutionized by the digitization of information and the con-
tinued extension of the Internet. New models of networked research, such as that
embodied in the Human Genome Project, are characterized by vastly increased
collaboration, often on a global scale, and by the rapid public disclosure of research
results rather than holding them for later publication in scholarly journals or by
academic presses. This more open model of research is consistent with the research
mission of the university to create and disseminate knowledge—and appears to
lead to both broader and deeper research while increasing the pace of innovation.
Collaboration is not new to colleges and universities—it is in their DNA. Mais
the scale of today’s global collaboration and its pervasiveness were unthinkable
until relatively recently. Universities have long had to learn how to recognize the
scholarly achievement of research collaborators. Now they (and governmental
grant makers) face the challenge of finding ways of evaluating and rewarding more
open research, the results of which are publicly disclosed without being subject to
a peer-review publishing process (but which are subject to the immediate scrutiny
of the global scholarly community). It seems likely that new forms of recognition
for tenure, subventions, etc., will be required for today’s digital age. En même temps,
new Web-based, open-access journals, peer reviewed and freely available to all
without subscription, are emerging as threats to the business models of even the
most prestigious proprietary journals and academic presses.
Another manifestation of greater openness in research is the rise of digital
repositories. There is ample precedent in the sciences for researchers to voluntari-
ly deposit their research results in an electronic archive that is accessible by all, mais
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it is only recently that major research universities have begun to adopt policies
requiring researchers to place copies of their research in institutional digital repos-
itories. MIT’s faculty, Par exemple, recently voted unanimously for such a policy to
make a statement that they stand for the free flow of ideas. These repositories fur-
ther the research mission and allow scholars everywhere to learn about and build
upon previous work. But work needs to be done to ensure that they are interoper-
able and user friendly.
Congress has greatly advanced openness in research by passing legislation that
dramatically increases access to research funded by the National Institutes of
Health (NIH). A condition of NIH support now is that results must be deposited
into Pub Med Central upon acceptance for publication and be made publicly avail-
able within 12 months of publication. This policy is being vigorously opposed by
publishers who claim that their intellectual property (IP) interests are being
infringed upon by the open access requirements. Not only do we believe that the
NIH policy is consistent with copyright law and good public policy—to increase
the pace of innovation and avoid making the taxpayer pay twice for taxpayer-fund-
ed research—but we believe that the public-access mandate should be expanded.
Recently introduced legislation would extend public access to research funded by
le 11 federal agencies that each provides more than $100 million in support. We also support increasing access to data collected by the government, such as for reg- ulatory purposes. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has already moved in this direction by establishing a policy that any scientific and engineering data funded by NSF must be made broadly available and useable. Yet another example of the conflicts between IP rules and greater openness is being played out in a battle over the digitization of the world’s books—one of the most exciting opportunities for increased openness since the invention of printing. The Google Book Project, the Internet Archive, and the Open Content Alliance, entre autres, have been engaged with major libraries, including university libraries, in important and praiseworthy efforts to digitize books and to make them globally accessible. Google has been sued in a class action by publishers and authors who allege that copying and digitizing the books and displaying even small portions of them without the specific permission of the copyright owners are copyright violations. A proposed settlement has been crafted and is being reviewed by the court overseeing the case, as questions have arisen about the impact of the proposed settlement on broader access to “orphan works” (those whose copyright holders are unreachable), on the online marketplace for digital works, and on the privacy of readers. We are not in a position to make a judgment about the pro- posed settlement but we think the goal of public policy should be to obtain the greatest possible access to copyrighted works, in particular “orphan works,” and to stimulate competition, consistent with the need to provide incentives necessary for creativity. We would encourage university libraries to join in these important efforts at digitization and to expand their attempts to preserve surprisingly fragile digital materials. 160 nouveautés / printemps 2010 Téléchargé depuis http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/5/2/155/704644/inov_a_00019.pdf by guest on 08 Septembre 2023 Harnessing Openness in Higher Education The intellectual property arguments that have been invoked to oppose public- access mandates for government-funded research and the digitization and partial display of the world’s books suggest to us the need to recalibrate our intellectual property rules for the digital age. Intellectual property rules should serve not only those who first create a work (and subsequent rights holders) but should also rec- ognize the needs of users who often are follow-on creators. When the application of existing intellectual property rules appear to regularly have perverse effects— electronic books having text-to-speech capabilities turned off to the detriment of the visually impaired, or university presses, created to increase the accessibility of scholarly materials, invok- ing copyright protections to have their material removed from the globally accessible Web—it is time to step back and revisit not only the specific applications of the rules but the rules themselves. Given the complexity of these issues, universities should be forceful propo- nents for greater openness in legislative debates about IP, and should be educating their faculties about their intellectual property rights. The growing use of e-portfolios by students should facilitate greater openness in teaching and research. Students can use them to deposit their digital work, both finished and in process. Ce … provides a mechanism for students to demonstrate their accomplishments to other schools and potential employers. The drive for greater openness also raises ques- tions about the technology transfer activities that have spread throughout higher education since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, which aimed to encourage patenting and commercialization of federally funded university research. The research mission of the university is to create, preserve, and disseminate new knowledge. Technology transfer offices, on the other hand, have been created to spur the commercialization of university research and to generate funds for the support of university activities. Very few technology transfer activities generate significant funds. Their prac- tices regarding technology transfer can be inconsistent with the research mission, particularly if their drive to maximize revenue results in licensing practices that unnecessarily restrict access to university research. Universities should examine the practices of their technology transfer offices to ensure that there is an appropriate balance between generating funds and the broadest possible dissemination of new knowledge. nouveautés / printemps 2010 161 Téléchargé depuis http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/5/2/155/704644/inov_a_00019.pdf by guest on 08 Septembre 2023 Elliot Maxwell In a related area, universities must be vigilant to protect the openness (and quality and integrity) of university research from commercial limitations; a strik- ing example of such threats are licensing restrictions imposed by providers of genetically modified seeds that have prevented land grant universities from con- ducting research comparing the effectiveness of genetically modified seeds with other seeds. We believe colleges and universities should carefully review the terms of commercially supported research to guard against inappropriate restrictions and maintain sufficient reporting requirements to identify possible sources of con- flicts of interest by university researchers. The growing use of e-portfolios by students should facilitate greater openness in teaching and research. Students can use them to deposit their digital work, both finished and in process. This allows improved faculty review and assessment and provides a mechanism for students to demonstrate their accomplishments to other schools and potential employers. These e-portfolios might be maintained past graduation, serving as a repository for a student’s work throughout his or her life- time and as a life-long link to one’s alma mater. OPENNESS AND RELATIONS WITH VARIOUS STAKEHOLDER COMMUNITIES Colleges and universities are adopting the open tools of social networks to strengthen relationships with applicants, incoming students, parents, alumni, and other stakeholders—although nowhere as quickly as their students have adopted them. But these tools can also be used invidiously for monitoring the past and present activities of those who participate in these networks. We believe that insti- tutions of higher education should initiate conversations with members of their communities about the privacy implications of online disclosures as well as how the institutions themselves are making use of them. Increased access to the Internet has created an opportunity for colleges and universities to rethink and expand their role in continuing education—often con- sidered tangential to their mission to teach undergraduates. The Internet also allows colleges and universities to share the extraordinarily rich array of intellectual activities taking place on campus with local communities, as well as those a world away. Given this potential, we would encourage institutions of higher education to change the “default setting” from “Why should we make this activity available on the Web?” to “Is there any reason why we should not make this activity available electronically to all?” In the same spirit, we are encouraged by new efforts to open students to the global community in which they will work and live via study-abroad opportunities and Internet-facilitated links with institutions beyond U.S. borders. OPENNESS AND UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION A new form of software development, community-sourced software, has produced some innovative products useful for university administration, such as the SAKAI 162 nouveautés / printemps 2010 Téléchargé depuis http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/5/2/155/704644/inov_a_00019.pdf by guest on 08 Septembre 2023 Harnessing Openness in Higher Education course-management system and the KUALI financial systems. Such open-source systems may be particularly helpful in areas where proprietary software is not effi- ciently and effectively meeting the particular needs of institutions of higher edu- cation. Universities should seriously consider using open-source systems like these and establishing information and communication technology procurement requirements that favor greater openness and interoperability. The rise of the Internet should also lead colleges and universities to reconsid- er the enormous amounts being budgeted for improvements and expansions of their physical facilities. In a world of constantly expanding bandwidth and connec- tivité, will “place”—the particular geographic location of a college or university— remain as critical? Should investments in bricks and mortar continue to play such a role on capital budgets? We think there may be a potentially persuasive case for shifting investment over the next decade to less capital-intensive information and communications technology tools that enable greater openness. We discussed the tensions between openness and IP rules in the context of research, but they are being felt in another area by college and university adminis- trators. The Higher Education Opportunity Act requires colleges and universities to take steps to diminish unauthorized use of copyrighted materials by students using institutional networks, and to participate in alternative mechanisms for legally obtaining downloadable music, movies, and videos. The potential price is a loss of federal aid. We believe that institutions of higher education have an obligation to educate their students about their IP rights and responsibilities, including their responsi- bility not to misappropriate the intellectual property of others. But these institu- tions that rely so much on openness and trust in their teaching and research mis- sions are ill suited to serve as enforcement agents for private parties in commercial disputes under threat of severe federal penalties. OPENNESS AND CERTIFICATION, ACCREDITATION AND TRANSPARENCY There is also important work to be done to provide real meaning for degrees and certificates. We may know how many credit hours are required to obtain a degree or certificate, but we know little about the educational objectives and outcomes that underlie these supposed demonstrations of student competencies. In the absence of such information, it is impossible for employers, Par exemple, to make meaningful cross-institutional and cross-border comparisons. We need better information to allow individuals to compare the educational objectives and outcomes of different institutions and to measure the value added that an institution provides. The absence of such information inhibits genuine competition among institutions of higher education. At present, potential appli- cants are asked to make decisions comparing educational institutions around the world using ratings based on inputs, such as the test scores of their matriculates, nouveautés / printemps 2010 163 Téléchargé depuis http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/5/2/155/704644/inov_a_00019.pdf by guest on 08 Septembre 2023 Elliot Maxwell Recommendations This report makes several recommendations that would help institutions of higher education move in the direction of greater openness. The following high- lights some of the key initiatives. Governments should: • Establish standards for the nationwide collection and reporting of data track- ing student progress from high school to post-secondary institutions and then on to the workplace, focusing on educational outcomes and factors that favor or impede student success. Such data should be broadly accessible and useable and subject to rules to protect privacy and security. • Fund research on the comparative effectiveness of digital educational materi- als, including OER, and conventional materials as well as on best practices for online and blended online and face-to-face education. Additional research aimed at assessing the accomplishment of learning outcomes would help support improved teaching and learning. • Review and recalibrate intellectual property rules, recognizing the increasing importance for innovation of users as follow-on innovators. Extend permis- sible uses of proprietary materials under the educational exceptions for non- commercial educational use beyond traditional classrooms. • Retain existing requirements for public access to NIH-supported research (public availability within 12 months of publication) and extend the public- access policy to cover non-classified research funded by the 11 federal agen- cies that each annually provide over $100 million of research support.
• Remove obstacles to federal involvement in efforts with states, collèges, et
universities, and accrediting bodies to establish minimum quality standards
pour, and foster self-improvement by, institutions of higher education.
Support efforts to establish clearer learning outcomes at the program and
departmental level at institutions of higher education.
• Establish as federal policy the goal of increasing compatibility, comparability,
and portability of degrees and certificates and transparency regarding the
student-faculty ratios, and the financial resources of the institution. Wouldn’t we
be better served by competition based on publicly available educational objectives
and the learning outcomes that the institutions achieve, and the value that they
add to what their students bring to them?
We currently trail European efforts to make transparent, comparable, et
compatible the meaning of degrees and certificates and to describe the education-
al aims and outcomes that underlie them, but we are seeing some progress. Nous
continue to suffer, cependant, from the legacy of battles over the federal role in
accreditation and the very purpose of the accreditation process itself. We believe
that in a world of great student mobility, increasing distance education that tran-
scends state borders, and the critical role of higher education in our national com-
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Harnessing Openness in Higher Education
educational outcomes at, and the value-added by, institutions of higher edu-
cation.
• Support the establishment of “fabrication laboratories” in conjunction with
community colleges, businesses, labor unions, and local governments in
areas of high unemployment.
• Improve access to “orphan works”—those still under copyright but whose
rights holders cannot be reached—by legislatively limiting liability for their
good-faith use.
Colleges and universities should:
• Reevaluate faculty recognition policies regarding tenure, advancement, et
the granting of awards to acknowledge (and not discriminate against) new
practices regarding the dissemination of research results, such as via immedi-
ate release, publication in open-access publications, and creation of open
educational resources.
• Establish open-source digital repositories and require faculty to provide the
institution with a non-exclusive license to the products of their research.
Deposit electronic copies of the research into the repository and identify
them using standardized metadata to facilitate search and use. Ensure faculty
the right to withhold research from general availability while providing
metadata to disclose the existence of the research and contact information.
• Reexamine and readjust technology transfer policies and programs, particu-
larly exclusive licensing arrangements, in light of the research mission to cre-
ate and disseminate new knowledge, while recognizing the need to generate
revenues to support the institution.
• Establish e-portfolios into which students can deposit their work while
attending the institution, which can be used for assessment and shared with
prospective employers and others. Consider making such e-portfolios avail-
able for students to continue to use after they leave the institution.
• Be a voice for greater openness in access to information and for a re-exami-
nation of intellectual property rules for a new digital era.
petitiveness, that the federal government must play a role in facilitating the porta-
bility of degrees and certificates and ensuring their compatibility, comparability,
and transparency. Increased federal support for research on assessment and meas-
urement of educational outcomes would help. So too would a change by accredit-
ing agencies from a focus almost entirely on institutions (their members and
clients) and inputs to one that pays greater attention to impacts on students. Few
accrediting agencies now make public information about the institutions they
accredit, beyond the formal accreditation actions that they have taken; greater
focus on student outcomes would lead to greater transparency and facilitate more
informed choices by potential students.
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Elliot Maxwell
THE ROLE OF PROPRIETARY INSTITUTIONS
We have focused our research on the impact of openness on not-for-profit public
and private two- and four-year institutions. This is not because for-profit institu-
tions are unimportant or unworthy of attention—the for-profit sector of higher
education has been growing rapidly and includes many highly successful institu-
tion. It is a function of limited time and resources.
But even in our cursory look at this sector we can identify certain practices that
support our conclusion that greater openness can help improve higher education.
We think that the most successful for-profit institutions have learned the
importance of defined learning outcomes and appropriate assessment, et le
need to produce decision-relevant data. Many have been leaders in experimenting
with new technologies in support of their missions; they must prepare their stu-
dents to meet and exceed the needs and expectations of potential employers, donc
they have to strive continuously to understand existing and emerging workforce
needs. For-profit institutions often provide more support and teacher training to
their faculty than do their not-for-profit equivalents, and they have been earlier to
recognize and support the positive impacts of student group-learning activities.
CONCLUSION
In this paper and full report from which it is derived, we have only begun to plumb
the potential for greater openness to improve higher education. As my colleagues
at the Committee for Economic Development and I have made clear in our previ-
ous reports, we believe that openness is not a paramount value or an unalloyed
good. Par exemple, just as we see opportunities to use greater openness to provide
certifications of competence to those around the world who cannot attend institu-
tions of higher education but who need credentials to enter the workforce, we rec-
ognize that we will need to find ways that limit openness to ensure the integrity of
online testing. Just as new, more open means of electronic distribution for schol-
arly work should accelerate the dissemination of new knowledge and hasten the
pace of innovation, they pose financial challenges to existing vehicles for scholarly
publication that have, and are, providing valuable services. The list goes on.
But with all the difficult issues to address, and with all the unforeseen conse-
quences of these new pathways, we are convinced that institutions of higher edu-
cation should move toward greater openness on their own with support and
encouragement from businesses and governments. We are firm believers in the
value of higher education, and we are convinced that greater openness will
improve colleges and universities. We hope that our analysis will help persuade
others that this is the correct approach and that the concrete recommendations we
make will help provide a responsible path to the benefits of greater openness. Nous
want to encourage thoughtful experimentation to learn more about the effect of
greater openness in practice. And in the spirit of openness, we hope that others
who know more than we do will share with us their insights and experiences and
correct our mistakes and misapprehensions for the benefit of the global higher
education community.
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