There is a disconcerting tendency by administrators of higher education to ignore some key facets of our own culture. Concepts like “scalability” may apply to businesses and many businesslike aspects of higher education, but if they are carelessly imposed on teaching and learning, they not only do a disservice to education but also can drown out the still, small voice of the learner.

A related impulse, our common impatience with the slowness of change and the lack of innovation in teaching and learning, similarly threatens violence to the delicate combination of trust and risk that is at the heart of effective teaching and learning. Academic culture is at least as much craft and art as it is business and science. Clear thinking and solid grounding in academic culture can serve as a vital touchstone as we test ourselves, stretch ourselves and strive to improve this ancient, all-too-human enterprise.

Scalability, which can be cynically defined as an almost infinite expansion of service with no increase in budget or effort, applies unevenly to higher education, where personnel costs are always a sizeable majority of the budget. Still, there are specific problems where scalability has great promise. I am currently working on such a specific problem at the University of Virginia, the Virtual Exhibition Tool. This tool will allow faculty who want to effectively marshal mountains of data, texts, images, and sounds, to craft a rich and instructive experience for their students or to enable the students themselves to grapple with “original” sources, or their digital fascimiles. But even if this tool exceeds its goals by 200% (and in all humility, we have the confluence of talent and resources to at least approach that) it will still not take care of two of the major reasons that faculty shy away from using instructional technology more aggressively: time and rewards.

So scalability, which is directly applicable to some of these issues, brings others into sharp focus. Innovation, as we have approached it at the University of Virginia, is best when it is faculty driven, faculty owned. And given that the faculty have extremely limited time and expertise in technology, those innovations will need to progress slowly. More slowly, at any rate, than we would generally prefer. I began with a cynical definition of scalability and shall end with a similarly cynical definition of innovation. I sometimes feel that the innovation expected by upper administration is more about fundraising than creating new knowledge. Our institution needs to regularly command the cover of various national publications with good news, innovations, beacons of hope that will have friends and alumni eager to write checks to support that brighter future. Innovation, then, becomes a part of expanding business operations because it provides the bright stars and hopeful stories that better support generous private giving. The business pressures are unavoidable (the State of Virginia, for example, continues to cut its funding for higher education even as its and the University’s own expectations rise. Scalability, indeed.) But courageous leadership and a clear understanding of the scale and scope and pace of academic culture are vital if we are to set and keep a pace that is sustainable, honorable and sound.