Reading “Universities of the Future”

I was reading the post by @universityboy this morning and then I thought … blimey, what will out children do when they leave School? Will they go to University .. or even will there be Universities for them to go to?

• Read the whole original post here: Universities of the Future

Anyway, there were sections of the post that really made me think, see if they strike a chord with you too;

“But concrete does not a university make. It takes time to turn a smart school leaver into a plausible junior lecturer, and it takes time for research departments in the western model to mature and bed in. The old ‘first world’ model of the university will be hard pressed to scale to accommodate the surge of the new middle class youth of what used to be called the third world. Out of need, something new will take its place. The new ‘gigaversities’ of China, India and Brazil might not command much respect in the staff common rooms of the old NUI, but they will rise to meet that need. In time, they will enter first world markets with degrees that are faster and cheaper than anything we can deliver.”

“The death of distance as a factor in education has been predicted since the telephone was invented, but only now are remote classroom tools becoming usable, though fully immersive environments like Second Life are still fringe. Growth in bandwidth and processing power will move these tools into the mainstream over the next ten years, as telepresence suites currently sold to corporates as alternatives to private jets price down into the mass market.”

“Institutions reliant on local students and without a global draw will find themselves relegated, their reputation slowly crumbling as the cream of the crop goes elsewhere.”

And finally …

“The university my daughter attends may prepare her for a job no one today has thought of yet, working at the centre of a network of increasingly intelligent tools and services. But there is no law that says that new technology will keep creating new jobs for humans as it has in the past. It is an open question whether the university my granddaughter goes to will be able to prepare her for any job at all.”

I think (hope) that, on the whole, there will be Universities and our children will be able to attend them. I am planning that my children will have the same opportunities I was lucky enough to have … the option to take up Higher Education, even if they don’t want it!

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