Planned Obsolescence in Academe
The phrase "planned obsolescence" entered our vocabulary as a critique of business practices that forced the purchase of new products through the things we owned but broke, often because they were built to break after a too short period of time, which then fostered "conspicuous waste". It is wonderful phrase in the richness of its nuances and interesting to apply to higher education and its graduates. Here's another meaning. In a rapidly changing culture, if you plan not to change, if you choose to avoid environmental scanning as to how things are different and where competition is emerging then you have also created your own "planned obsolescence". The reasons for not changing are many, including: fear, insufficient capacity or general slackness. There are interesting levels to this problem, but where the "front burner" academic issue of open access publishing directly impacts a tiny fraction of our culture, academics, the more "back...