I recently had the opportunity to hear the new President of Art Center, the world leading design training institute in Pasadena, speak. Her fireside chat was great and one piece in particular jumped out at me. She emphasized the criticality of Art Center's connectivity with industry - through alumni engagement, industry sponsored projects and also encouraging professors to either consult or work four days and teach on the fifth. That model reminded me of the founding MIT model, well documented by Eric Gilliam as part of a great project to understand impactful R&D initiatives that is well worth reading in full.
Additionally, MIT would make a habit of keeping an irregularly large proportion of its instructors as part-time instructors who, during the day, held jobs in industry — and were quite intelligent.
By contrast, MPA and MPP programs, like much of academia, default to full time professionals with a smattering of experienced guest lecturers. This always struck me as profoundly odd in an ever evolving arena like civic leadership. Further, practical affairs like management, urban inquiry and policy creation are best learned through a combination of theory and practice, i.e. praxis. (Full disclosure: once upon a time, I dropped out of a MPA program on a 75% scholarship and instead learned the ways of public finance as an analyst at a consulting firm. Later I would go on to get a masters in a nonstandard data science for city program at a startup research lab in NYC.)
These types of public administrative and public policy training programs could benefit from greater connection with the every changing urban environment. Such training programs emerged in the thick of the industrial era and still have many of those implicit assumptions regarding organizational protocol. One could easily argue this is part of the big reason why we have a state capacity crisis and struggle to build! You learn to read a certain type of report, write a certain type of paper and do a certain type of (usually pretty basic) data analysis. It's great preparation for where most people land after the programs, usually varying shades of professional individual contributor or midlevel managerial roles in the "blob."
Today though we need a muscular public sector that can build! Not just keep the routine going. The Arts Center or early MIT model seems well suited for the maturing field of public interest technology. Here there is a rapidly evolving state of the art that's distinct from the industrial organizational paradigm underlying MPA / MPP programs. There is a growing cohort of gov, urban and civic tech pioneers with experiences and skills to share. Those practical, marketable and impactful skills in data analytics, web development, and digitally native project management are invaluable in today's world.
Here's a nice set of lessons from my friend and fellow Rose Institute and CMC alumni Abhi Nemani:
And here is a nice vision piece from my fellow Argonaut and co-founder Varun that was part of the ferment that helped launch the Biden-Harris administration US digital corps:
Lots of need and opportunity!
Other spare thoughts on the future of education
Also here is a piece I wrote about a decade back envisioning what inquiry could look like in 2025 which is now next year! The basic gist is that interactive AI assistants would enable curious minds to explore the world and learn through discovery. Something that's increasingly available today!
About a decade back massively open online courses (or MOOCs) were all the rage. A young finance analyst shared math lessons with his young nephew on youtube that would go viral. A few entrepreneurial professors started posting their lectures on the internet. I have wondered why there aren't more examples of small groups of people getting together to learn, try and grow together. Serve as accountabilibuddies if you will.
