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When I read that teacher and author Roxanna Elden had listed the expression 

"5 catchiest (and most annoying) reform phrases," 

I had a flashback to last fall and winter.

That's when "transformational" and "transform" seemed to be on the lips of everyone involved in the hiring of 

Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU)

 system Chancellor Steven Rosenstone and 

 President Eric Kaler, as well as those caught up in the latest round of budget cuts.

(If my ears don't deceive me, one member of the state Senate higher education committee, after hearing the term bandied about during a meeting earlier this year, quipped that he was still trying to figure out what exactly the term meant.)

I think Elden was writing about transformation as it applies to the rhetoric used in K-12 education reform, but I think it applies to higher education as well.

 in his State of the University speech in March, and used "transform" to describe Rosenstone's 

 at the U. Rosenstone used "transformation" 

during an MPR interview, and the word was used during interviews with his rival, William Sederberg, 

 echoed the sentiment of MnSCU trustees' desire for transformation 

Those are just a few examples. (Reporters hear buzzwords much more often than their articles let on. After a while, we tend to tune them out. But it's tough to forget something pounded into your head day after day.)

Does it really matter? Probably not. I'm sort of chuckling as I write this.

But I think Elden has a point about the danger of inflating goals and expectations. After all, 

Education News

On Campus Blog

Alex Friedrich

Author

When I read that teacher and author Roxanna Elden had listed the expression transformational change as one of the “5 catchiest (and most annoying) reform phrases,” I had a flashback to last fall and winter. That’s when “transformational” and “transform” seemed to be on the lips of everyone involved in the hiring of Minnesota State…

MN colleges — Are we done with this transformative-change thing already?

Go Deeper.

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