ABSTRACT
High risks and low rewards discourage risk-takers and encourage faculty members to be cautious rather than imaginative. The nutritive requirements for innovation, says Lieberman, are flexibility and risk taking. Like individuals, institutions respond cautiously according to the law of risk and return and generally must have an overwhelming reason to break with established ways. Innovation may stem from the social and economic conditions of the nation or from immediate educational or institutional distress. Established faculties may see radical changes in curriculum, departmental structure, or teaching methods as a threat to academic standards or to their own carefully guarded interests. Constructive change certainly requires tension between the impetus of the new and the resistance of the old. The philosophy and goals of higher education vary with a country’s social values, its economic needs, and its way of seeing the individual in relation to society.
