Slip Sliding with a Cannonball
Sometimes the best move in higher education is the one that feels reckless. The cannonball into the deep end. The decision that cannot be undone.
Paul Simon wrote "Slip Slidin' Away" about the quiet erosion of the things that matter most. The song is about how we lose our grip gradually, not all at once. A little slide here. A little compromise there. And then one day you look up and you are somewhere you never intended to be.
Higher education is slip sliding away right now. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But steadily, measurably, and in a direction that most people inside the system can feel but few will name out loud.
Enrollment is sliding. Trust is sliding. The perceived value of the credential is sliding. Faculty morale is sliding. The demographic cliff is not a cliff at all. It is a slope, and we have been on it for years.
The temptation in a slide is to hold on tighter to what you know. To grip the familiar. To double down on the way things have always been done because at least that feels stable, even when the data says it is not.
But sometimes what you need is not a tighter grip. It is a cannonball.
A cannonball is a commitment. You cannot do a cannonball halfway. You leave the diving board and gravity takes over. You are in the water before you have time to second-guess yourself.
In higher education, a cannonball looks like this: We are going to pilot an AI proficiency system in our gateway courses this semester. Not next year. Not after the committee reports back. This semester. We are going to measure what happens. And we are going to let the data tell us what to do next.
That is terrifying for an institution built on consensus and caution. But consensus and caution are what got us to the edge of the pool, staring at the water, while the temperature drops.
Jump.