04/24/2024
By Hongwei Zhu
Title: The Abundant University: Remaking Higher Education for a Digital World
Speaker:
Michael D. Smith
J. Erik Jonsson Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
Date/Time: Friday, April 26, 2024, 10 to 11 a.m.
Where: Via Zoom
Abstract: Over the past 20 years, new information technologies have transformed nearly every sector of the global economy, upsetting the market power of firms and creating abundant choice, interactivity, and personalization for customers. For a long time, the one sector remarkably absent from this transformation was higher education. In his award winning book, The Abundant University, Professor Smith discusses what has allowed higher education to resist the forces of digital transformation that have altered so many other industries, why current market forces make higher education ripe for disruption, and how universities can embrace this opportunity to create a more inclusive and accessible system of education for the hundreds of thousands of deserving students who today are excluded from our pricey residential degrees. Professor Smith’s book has received the Frandson Award for Literature and Forbes named it one of "The Best Higher Education Books for 2023."
Bio: Michael D. Smith is the J. Erik Jonsson Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy and the Co-Director of IDEA, the Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in engineering from the University of Maryland, and a Ph.D. in Management Science from the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research focuses on markets for digital information and digital media products. His research has been published in leading Management Science, Economics, and Marketing journals and in professional journals including The Harvard Business Review and The Sloan Management Review. His work has also been covered by press outlets including The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Wired and Business Week.
Professor Smith has received numerous awards for his teaching and research including the National Science Foundation’s prestigious CAREER Research Award, the 2017 Carol & Bruce Mallen Award for lifetime published scholarly contributions to Motion Picture industry economic studies, the 2009 and 2004 Best Teacher Awards in Carnegie Mellon’s Masters of Information Systems Management program, and the 2018 Dick Wittink Award for the best paper published in the journal Quantitative Marketing and Economics. He was also recently selected as one of the top 100 “emerging engineering leaders in the United States” by the National Academy of Engineering. Professor Smith has served on the editorial boards of a variety of top journals including as a Senior Editor at Information Systems Research and as an Associate Editor at Management Science and Management Information Systems Quarterly.