I’ve been reading about the future of the university lately. Detractors think it costs too much, is inefficient, is too politicized, doesn’t properly train the workforce of the future, and is generally out of step with the great demographic changes of the past 25 years. It’s not flexible enough (what is?), researchers don’t teach well and teachers don’t research well. Supporters point out that universities are among the few institutions that have survived from the fifteenth century, that good education is just plain expensive, that education is about more than just posting “content” online somewhere, that Socrates got it right, and that businesses are out to privatize lots of publicly-funded infrastructure as was done with the healthcare industry (there is even talk about Educational Maintenance Organizations, EMO’s). Both supporters and detractors seem agreed that there’s a lot of change ahead for the university.
Of course the development of the Internet plays a huge role in the debates surrounding the future of higher education. Techno-utopians see the Internet as bringing more democracy, more education, more knowledge, more love, new life forms… More practical sorts see the reduced costs of information delivery on the Internet as a great business opportunity, so you see for-profit educational organizations popping up. More traditional sorts see the Internet as improving but not overturning current educational practices.
What interests me the most is the way the Internet (and high-tech in general) produces what can only be described as religious passions in many people. Cyberspace becomes a heavenly realm where information and emotions are transmitted friction-free and conflict melts away. You saw this in the millennial binge of the late 1990’s dot.coms, where profits were suddenly deemed unimportant and market share was everything. The fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of the Internet, and Y2K (remember that?) made everyone a bit crazy for a time.
Below are some of the sources I’ve been looking at and thinking about:
Digital Diploma Mills–short book, well written and closely argued, author very much against distance education, makes interesting comparisons to the “correspondence movement” in the early twentieth century
Digital Revolution and the Coming of the Postmodern University–seems a bit too focused on the technology and not enough on the institutions that create the context for the technology
After the New Economy–includes interesting analysis of 1990’s business bubble
Post-Capitalist Society–by Peter Drucker (aka “the management guru”), Drucker began talking about the “knowledge worker” decades ago, thinks the university won’t last
Startup.com–this documentary unwittingly highlights the excesses of the 1990’s dot.com boom
Shaping Communication Networks: Telegraph, Telephone, Computer–puts Internet in historical perspective
Death of the University–written in 1987, interesting but makes a lot of sweeping generalizations
Higher Education in the Digital Age
The University in Transformation
Technology and the Rise of the For-Profit University— authored by Donald Norman, an educational entrepreneur (UNext), says scholars should create content and instructional specialists should deliver it
Undisciplined–by Louis Menand, interesting, about the breakdown of disciplinary boundaries in the university
Linkages Between Work and Education?
Dearing Report–influential UK report on higher education
Distance Education and the Emerging Learning Environment–short, interesting article
The Rise and Rise of the Corporate University–good article, part of an entire issue of the Journal of European Industrial Training devoted to corporate education
Surviving the Change: The Economic Paradigm of Higher Education in Transformation–interesting article by a guy with economic training
Educating the Net Generation–from Educause, about learning styles, likes and dislikes of the net generation
—Fred Rowland