The Futures of Higher Education

Recently George Siemens posted:

Dave Cormier and I are offering an open course on the Future(s) of Education, starting in April. … Could you post a video/drawing/audio recording/dance routine/cave drawing/clay pot that represents your vision of the future of education?

Prologue
1. Nice that the course title uses the world “Future(s)” instead of “Future.” What country? Public or private? What level … undergraduate or graduate? Formal or informal? What time frame … a year or 5 or 20 or 100 or what? And the list goes on and on and on. It’s obvious, I know, but there is no single future for education.

2. Educational systems also do not exist in a vacuum. Discussing their futures depends critically on what assumptions we make about other factors … you know, little things like the economy. If you believe that current global financial pressures will ease and robust economic growth returns, your educational futures will look considerably different from someone who believes that we’ve only seen the first dip in a double-dip recession-cum-depression. Again, an obvious point. But seriously, we cannot talk about futures without also talking about context.

3. In a blog post, I cannot set the context with sufficient richness. But suppose we consider the United States 10 years from now in the year 2020. Further suppose that recovery from the current recession is slow but that major global economic disaster is averted. Suppose that demographic influences unfold as anticipated and that the broad digital transformation of society and culture continue. What might higher education look like in that future? Here are some guesses.

From 2020
1. Prices and cost, not technology, sculpt the higher education landscape.

2. Private for-profits benefit, as do two-year community colleges in some states. Private non-profits and public 4-year colleges and universities feel the most impact from cost-conscious families and state legislatures struggling to maintain levels of social services.

3. Fewer young people see higher education as an entry point for social and economic mobility and life satisfaction. Men started voting with their feet in the early 2000s, but more and more women now turn elsewhere. Opportunities in the web economy are especially attractive.

4. At the margins, some existing institutions fail. Others merge or are purchased by for-profits. Very few new public or non-profit institutions appear unless they serve unique specialized markets.

4. Most institutions continue to search for alternative revenue sources and innovative ways to curb costs, but traditional academe and business-as-usual erode. Institutional stress increases as administrative services and faculty power recede. Tenure and weak academic departments receive a pummeling.

5. Some institutions experiment at redefining themselves. Frequently this is done in collaboration with other institutions, not all of them educational and not all of them in the United States. Much of this is motivated by cost-sharing along lines of complementary strengths. But some of it is non-traditional, such as the construction of joint certificate and degree programs with learning blended in a combination of online and on-campus activity.

6. Dramatic institutional surgery occurs in some elite institutions that legally reorganize to better buffer their research programs from the pressures on their teaching programs.

7. Public and governmental demand for greater institutional transparency improves the quality of information available to families when making enrollment decisions. But from an institutional viewpoint, this further limits flexibility.

8. Technology plays an important role in institutional change, most frequently to minimize costs. Some cost-saving occurs but not as much as expected. Learning technologies receive support, but only if they promise to open new revenue sources or reduce existing expenses.

9. Accreditation changes to reflect inter-institutional collaboration and shared programmatic efforts.

10. The Federal government increases real financial support to higher education, but is itself besieged by an economy that is restructuring, a population that is aging, a public trust in government that is decaying, and a host of other hungry mouths that need feeding. The Federal government means well but can do little more than supply bandages for higher education.

Epilogue
As I said, these are just guesses. It’s a somewhat bleak outlook, but not without hope either. There is lots of good work to do in traditional institutions of higher education. This requires lots of talented and decent people with creative ideas. It will happen. Higher education will change and will be better prepared for tomorrow than it is today. But the transition won’t be easy.

Having said that, however, I also think that more and more talented and decent people with great ideas will leave higher education as they choose instead to build another future, one that is more just and reverent of the world.