Across the world, coronavirus has fundamentally changed the student experience. It has also raised a number of questions concerning what universities should offer and to whom. It is obvious that COVID-19 will leave a lasting imprint on the higher education that won’t “go back to normal” as we knew it, pre-pandemic. But the truth is the crisis has just accelerated some disruptive trends of the sector, and even without it, the future of higher education was never going to look like its past. Let us imagine what higher education will be like in 2025-2030.
The first trend that comes to mind when one thinks of the university of the future is of course digitalization of learning environment. The reality showcases that to succeed today, universities have to embrace innovation in education and have strategies to best respond to the latest digital trends with potential roles in teaching, such as augmented reality and artificial intelligence (AI). As the COVID-19 crisis struck, online learning became increasingly mainstream, with nearly every institution moving their programs online, after decades of slow and steady adoption.
Today, we already see the ‘digital divide’ existing among universities. Top private universities have better IT infrastructure and higher IT support staff ratio for each faculty compared to budget-starved public universities. In addition, online courses require educational support on the ground: instructional designers, trainers, and coaches to ensure student learning and course completion. There is every reason to believe that this divide will be more apparent in the future, as institutions that do not try to maximize their tech-related are not likely to survive.
All experts in education agree that digitalized learning environments becoming the norm implies that higher education of the future will be based on blended learning. Ben Nelson and Diana El-Azar from the Minerva Project, a leading educational innovator, describe the future of higher education as “a mixture of in-person, location-based programmes, experiential teaching, and the flexibility of both synchronous and asynchronous virtual learning.” The model they propose suggests students living together on campus, but still taking part in virtual classrooms.
Hybrid teaching models support student-centricity, provide for a personalized and adaptive learning experience and enhance the cost-effectiveness of large programs. Such models imply that courses and lectures that require little personalization or human interaction can be recorded as multi-media presentations, to be watched by students at their own pace and place, or even delivered to very large audiences at low cost by a non-university instructor or technology platform (e.g. an online education provider like Coursera). Such courses can be commoditized without sacrificing social interaction as one of the important benefits of the face-to-face classroom, which would free resources to commit to research-based teaching, personalized problem solving, and mentorship. For students, that would mean having online classes at their own pace and at much cheaper cost. They would use precious time they spend on campus for all types of activities that require face-to-face engagements. Some years ago, experts predicted that massive open online courses (MOOCs), such as Coursera, Udacity, and edX, would kill traditional education (“just as digital technologies killed off the jobs of telephone operators and travel agents”). However, the history proves that certain campus-based activities, such as social networking, group assignments, field-based projects, and global learning expeditions, can enhance the student’s learning experience.
The third disruptive trend is the transition from a degree-based talent pipeline to a skills-based talent pipeline. The nature of jobs is changing, and students need to be able to update their skills throughout their careers. Recent surveys show that students prioritize employability when selecting universities, however, the idea that a college degree singularly prepares students for decades of work has long been outdated. Since many future jobs are not yet defined, universities must equip their students to be lifelong learners who can acquire new skills and give them broad, cross-disciplinary problem-solving skills and entrepreneurial mindsets. Overall demand for continuous education and corporate training is growing. Scott Pulsipher, the president of Western Governors University, a nonprofit, online, competency-based university, points it out that COVID-19 has created sudden demand for mid-career reskilling and upskilling at unprecedented scale. “In the future, degrees will continue to hold value, not because of the degree credential, but because a degree is composed of many skills and competencies that are valued by employers”, he says.
Connected to that is another major trend – digital credentialing, described as “a rapid shift from static educational records and transcripts, previously an extremely analog process that centered around degrees, to online, digital credentials focused on certificates and certifications that summarize achievement, skills or competency”. In a digital economy where continuous upskilling is needed to keep pace with technological advances and skills outdate in no time at all, universities will move beyond bachelor’s degrees as their primary product, toward more nimble, lower-priced, digital “credentialized packages”. This process is central to achieving the goal of greater education/workforce alignment, which hinges on integrating college and employer HR systems.
However, Nelson and El-Azar emphasize that in the university of the future investment in student-centric learning outcomes will be more important than technological innovation. No technology can improve poor teaching – on the contrary, it can only be made worse by “distractions from the digital world.” Instead, institutions must improve student learning outcomes by updating their curricula and pedagogy, and technological solutions can help in this process. For example, digital learning platforms can measure talk time per student, allowing a professor to evaluate participation objectively.
Change is hard. But with the ongoing crisis accelerating the processes that would otherwise have taken decades to be fully established in institutions of higher education, the university of the future will hopefully be more student-centered, flexible and resilient.