Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

What will universities be like in the future?

[Editor’s note: This article is excerpted from The Fourth Education Revolution, Sir Anthony Seldon’s latest book, which takes a tantalizing look into the school of the future, what artificial intelligence (AI) will mean for higher ed, and how it will impact our lives in general.]

Universities, for all their diversity across the world, will become still more so over the next 25 years, under the pressures of financial, social, and above all technological change. The ‘Carnegie Classification’ of institutions of higher education, created in 1973, attempts to categorize the different types of universities and colleges in the U.S. All accredited-degree granting universities and colleges across the U.S. are described as follows:

  • Doctorate-granting universities, with a high research focus
  • Masters’ colleges, which focus on Masters’ degrees while still undertaking research
  • Baccalaureate colleges, which see the focus on bachelors’ degrees
  • Associate colleges, whose highest award is the associate degree
  • Special focus institutions, defined as offering degrees in a single field or set of related fields
  • “Tribal colleges,” belonging to the American Indian HE consortium

A more international and forward-looking model of university archetypes have been outlined by Glyn Davis, formerly vice chancellor of the University of Melbourne. The “influencer” university is international in perspective, strongly driven by research and tackling the major issues facing each individual country and the world. The “agile” university is rich in AI and digital technology, and dedicated to applied research as well as giving students a competitive advantage. The “consultant” university is focused on the job market and its purpose is to serve organizational clients who buy expert advice, education, and research/innovation to boost their own performance. Finally, the “community” university is less interested in national and international league tables and has its raison d’etre principally in serving local students and business, and in championing them on national stages.…Read More

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Future-proof your college before it’s too late

In any ecosystem, if one waits long enough, eventually a cataclysmic disruption occurs. Examples range from ice ages to digital cameras and mobile phones. When an environment becomes out of balance or a system is too reliant on archaic technology, something never-before-seen will come and change the game.

The final years at Blockbuster Video, Kodak Corporation, and Toys “R” Us, all share the consistent systemic failure to respond to disruptive threats: a willful ignorance to reexamine and adjust their product, services, and business model. Higher education is behaving much the same way. Until institutions acknowledge both the impending disruptive threat and the risk of not appropriately responding, higher ed remains a vulnerable enterprise.

Since the proliferation of the internet and digitization of information, we have witnessed several warning signs. Online course delivery, e-textbooks, the rise and fall of large for-profit institutions, MOOCS, certificates, and micro-credentialing have each commanded attention in the past two decades. While some of these innovations have persisted and some failed, each represents a foreshock prior to a large seismic event that we have not yet experienced.…Read More

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What does higher-ed look like in 2023?

College could be a very different place when freshmen step foot on university campuses in the fall of 2023. For starters, many students will find that step to be entirely virtual.

student-higher-education
Accreditation could change dramatically by 2023.

A seemingly alarmist prediction from Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen gaining traction among some educators states that more than half of universities will be in bankruptcy within 15 years.

Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, recently made a similar prediction, but provided a slightly more optimistic number of 25 percent.

Either way, this would mean that the high school senior class of 2023 will have far fewer options when it comes to picking a school. But that doesn’t mean they’ll have fewer choices in obtaining an education.…Read More

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