Classic Note Entries

Future of Higher Education

I expect a huge movement towards knowledge- management tools that enhance the learning practice and focus on each individual path while maintaining engagement at a social level. This could make the learning experience tailored to each individual and at the same time aggregate responses and perceptions from a large group of students in order to direct toward specific learning goals.

Source


Futurist John Smart - professor of emerging technologies at the University of Advancing Technology and president and founder of the Acceleration Studies Foundation - took the notion further and said that by 2020 online social networking will already possess enough value to adequately substitute for the majority of traditional social networking on college campuses: "The other value of college, the social one, meeting others who you network with to do things like start businesses, is the one that is rapidly moving online as social networks, meet-ups, and Internet television advance," he said. "The typical BS holder has just shown they can do something difficult, nothing more. This will remain 90% of the value of a college education (the social value will no longer be exclusive to brick-and-mortars by 2020) and will remain the primary requirement for entry-level work in 2020. With luck, perhaps 20% of online and brick- and-mortar BS students will be engaged in online (more than half) or in-person (less than half) internships at some point during or immediately after BS graduation. Again, MS, technical, certificate, and remediation education will be online both earlier and more extensively."

The 2020 model of higher education will focus on making the student a person who can effectively translate problems into solutions, translate intercultural conflicts into opportunities for innovation, and translate data and information into knowledge products - from Ed Lyell, a professor at Adams State College

Elon University