Education Commons^™

The Revolution In Higher Education, James V. Koch

Economics Faculty Publications

Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian born economist and social historian who spent a major part of his academic career at Harvard, was a cogent observer of how societies develop. His Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy is still considered a classic. Schumpeter spoke of "perennial gales of creative destruction" (often technological) that shock societies and force change. The advent of electricity and the coming of the automobile illustrate technologies that created new power arrangements and destroyed or modified existing institutions. Higher education is now in the midst of a Schumpeterian "gale of creative destruction"--a revolution, many say. After almost 150 years of reliance …