The forces of change are gathering for their assault on the bastions of higher education. Like a storm front on the horizon we can see some of these changes now, but many will not become evident until later on. Here are four things I would hope higher education would learn if they don’t already know it.
1. Universities aren’t the gatekeepers anymore
Information used to be a scarce commodity. Universities were brokers and creators of it and based their business model on it for centuries. However, as anyone who has used the Internet can tell you, information is not so scarce anymore. It is not necessary to sit in a room and listen to your elder talk about a topic to learn about it. Students today have already figured out that to pass college means getting good grades, it doesn’t have to mean learning. There are many more ways to do this than in the past. Just having the students memorize things they can look up on their phones is not going to interest them anymore. This doesn’t mean they don’t have to learn and remember things, it just means this should be a small part of the class. A massive multiple-choice test at the end of the class doesn’t assess their learning it just shows they can remember and pass tests. In the age of Facebook, blogs, Instant Messaging and online games, students are used to being the center of a web of information. Telling them to put all that away when they get into the classroom will seem medieval to them. Education has to be more student-centric, and challenge-driven to maintain relevance to the new generation growing up with the Internet. This brings us to my second point.
2. The only thing you need for learning is a learner and a source of knowledge.
I recently watched a fascinating TED presentation by Sugata Mitra. He is a researcher in India and has been conducting an experiment. He places a computer outside in a poor, rural neighborhood and walks away. He found that children would come and start to play with it and in a short period of time would begin learning. I actually got chills watching the video because I was seeing raw curiosity and learning happening. We have been conditioned to believe that if you don’t have a college degree then you haven’t learned anything. In fact, many of the most important contributors to society and civilization never graduated or even attended college. In fact, you can make an argument, as Sir Ken Robinson does in his famous TED talk, that schools are stifling creativity and creating a homogeneous product. Learning can happen anywhere and anytime as long as you have a student and a source of knowledge. Most parents send their kids to college not because of the football team, or the parties, or the dorm life. These are valuable in their own way, but not irreplaceable experiences. All these physical campuses are going to be a large liability soon and that leads me to my third point.
3. Universities have to provide value for the money.
Business Insider posted a simple chart the other day that illustrated a problem. The price of tuition has gone up at a rate that makes the housing bubble of the last few years look like a mild aberration. My local college, University of Central Florida, just announced that it was raising tuition next year by 15%. While I understand that colleges have to pay their bills, they have to understand that they will only exist if people keep feeling they are getting value for their money. What if that changes? Back in February the New York Times published a story about how students are not feeling like they are getting their money’s worth. The problem many universities are about to have is one of fixed expenses. They can cut staff, and trim offerings, but you can’t do much about all the buildings and fixed assets they own. Online colleges have much reduced costs and still can be effective learning tools. Students can do the work at their own rate, and in their own homes. Their regular lives still continue. At the rate that tuitions have gone up the last 30 years, the bubble has to burst at some point. Maybe students will decide that they can do a lot more with their lives than going into massive debt for the privilege of listening to some person talk and then taking a test about what was said. What if they don’t show up?
4. Universities have to look over the edge of the abyss.
Don Tapscott is a respected writer and futurist. He wrote an article for EDUCAUSE a few months ago. He said:
“The Industrial Age model of education is hard to change. New paradigms cause dislocation, disruption, confusion, uncertainty. They are nearly always received with coolness or hostility. Vested interests fight change. And leaders of old paradigms are often the last to embrace the new.”
Many universities have been around for hundreds of years. They have educated students in the same basic way for all that time. They have large campuses, large pools of alumni, and a tradition of doing things a certain way. It is very difficult to look around at all of that and visualize it in any other way. And yet… I am sure the newspapers business thought the same thing 15 years ago. The storm front of change is coming. The universities that dare to visualize the possibilities have a chance to survive it.
Andrew Barras of Education StormFront is our 2nd Monday Morning Quarterback.
Andrew Barras a/k/a “Crudbasher” has been a college teacher at Full Sail University for 14 years and now works in Faculty Development. He has a deep interest in the mid to long-term outlook for Education and how it will be changed by technology. Andrew writes each day on the Education Stormfront blog where he forecasts the coming storm in Education. He is also active on twitter as @Crudbasher. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not represent Full Sail University in any way.
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