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"We need an educational structure that takes instability and unpredictability as its starting point, its fundamental assumption. If a university is not made up of stable, enduring structures arranged linearly or hierarchically-schools, departments, majors, minors-but rather is made up of components that can be used or deployed according to demand and need, then invention instead of convention becomes the governing institutional dynamic."

"In reality, however, the news is bleak: Median pay per course in 2010 was $2,700. ($2,235 at two-year schools; $3400 at four-year doctoral or research schools). Pay doesn't correspond with credentials-wage premiums for better credentials within the contingent workforce are small; likewise, there's not much of a career ladder. And, of course, contingent faculty pay lags behind similarly-educated professionals in other fields. Part-time faculty have access to limited professional development, and are generally excluded from governance. Most part-time faculty teach in such positions for extended periods of time, and most would prefer a full-time appointment, if one were available."

"While things are in motion (dramatic disruptive change) we can't use the old mindset to describe the new mindset. We can't use current processes to accomplish new processes. We can't measure a butterfly as if it were still a caterpillar. The event of change requires us to also change the way we view ourselves, our roles, and our processes."

"But you lose much more than you gain. If you believe, as I do, that education is a collaborative exploration of ideas, you've immediately restricted the class's ability to explore a subject together. You've determined the course in advance, so students will not be able to make any meaningful contributions to its direction. If you stumble onto an interesting detour in your thinking, you might be able to veer off for a while, but the inexorable pull of the fixed list's itinerary will ineluctably drive you on."

"Innovative thinkers and teachers, like writers and artists, move us forward. When our institutions become hostile toward innovative thinking and new ideas, they-and the people who produce them-don't disappear. They go elsewhere. The best thoughts are not happening on our campuses, they are happening elsewhere."

"tools for creating, publishing, and distributing digital content have been come more and more user-friendly, allowing instructors to create their own textbooks, should they have time and inclination to do so, tailoring the content to their particular course."

"That's what happens to the majority of undergraduate projects in the humanities. Heroic research is undertaken, and the student suffers mightily during the writing process. But after being submitted for a grade, the results of all that work are filed away, never to be read again. (Of course, the same could be said of most dissertations and many academic monographs.) It's as if we've entered the print revolution while most of us are still illuminating manuscripts. What are we doing all this work for-one might ask-if not to make some kind of impact on the world? And why should anyone continue to pay for it?"