According to Lawrence Bacow, the President of Harvard University, higher education would adapt to new situations progressively, as it did in the past while keeping its current goal and framework. In comparison, the deceased Clayton Christensen, the notable business school academic, claimed that the developments will be really significant and that they might destabilize higher education the way we recognize it, rendering existing models outdated and forcing numerous higher education institutions into bankruptcy.
We could do greater than putting our money on one side or another since we really can witness the initial adjustments and seismic shifts that will occur. Even now, somewhere at the fringes or extremities of postsecondary learning, we can see the possibilities. There seem to be three sites where you should look.
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Areas Where Higher Education Might Develop
As we mentioned, there are three essential areas where higher education might develop after the post-pandemic era, and these fields are as follows:
- First: Alongside conventional higher education institutions, there seems to be a tertiary sector. It is made up of a jumble overlapping for as well as nonprofit projects, organizations, programs, and activities that exist outside of mainstream higher learning and have rejected essential parts of mainstream higher educational practices. They are dismissing hours and location-based education, developing relatively less expensive degrees, embracing competency- or achievement training, emphasizing information technology, focusing somewhat on the rising population poorly represented in classical higher ed, and providing groundbreaking fields of study and accreditations like using third-party platforms that provide classes.
- Second: Alternative institutions develop as substantially distinct substitutes to mainstream academic institutions during periods of major societal change. Their modern successors are pushing for a worldwide, digital, knowledge-based economy, concentrating on competency-based online learning that eliminates seat-time requirements and allows students to work at their own speed. Virtual community schools that specialize in upskilling as well as reskilling certification programs, like Albright College, seem to be currently available.
- Third: The third area to search for clues about what’s ahead for post-secondary learning is financially ailing institutions along with subunits of robust universities, including continuing education units, which offer mainly brief or part-time programs for individuals after they’ve graduated from high school. In an attempt to thrive, financially challenged institutions to develop new techniques to differentiate themselves while becoming competitive. Because self-funding subdivisions of formerly healthy organizations must produce revenue and continually examine the environment for potential forms of income, they must bring in revenue but also continuously identify any areas for prospective sources of income. Such modules eventually become integrated into the organization’s core and conventional higher education.
New Realities in the Future
Taken together, these patterns indicate higher education institutions must prepare for some unexpected realities, neither of which is the result of post-secondary education’s original efforts.
- Content producers will enter the market, driving up the competition: Organizations will lay a strong emphasis on digital technology, reject temporal and area-based education, develop low-cost degrees, provide competency- or achievement-based learning, and award atypical credentials. Advertising industry executives and community institutions which are increasingly affordable and approachable, offering a hybrid of competency- as well as course-based programs, are existing in the industry. They’re also less expensive and more adaptable than typical higher education institutions that are more prone to layoffs and closures.
- A decline in institutional control: The emergence of the transnational, digital, knowledge-based economy boosted the number of content creators and purveyors in a variety of knowledge disciplines, such as the journalism, movie, and entertainment industries, and gave consumers flexibility over what, why, where, or how they access it. Higher ed would be no different. The student would have more authority as a result of the online revolution, as they will possess more options in all elements of their schooling.
- Students might want more accessibility to higher educational facilities: Students will expect the very same qualities from colleges as they do from the entertainment, film, and newspaper sectors now that they have nearly universal exposure to digital gadgets and the web. Students, like people in those businesses, will desire access to education anywhere at and anytime that is tailored to their needs. Colleges and universities would increasingly be forced to uncouple their programs and facilities so that students could buy just what they really need at reasonable pricing.
What do We Believe?
This isn’t a series of unrelated adjustments. Taken collectively, they provide a glimpse of what future global, technological, information economy’s institutions might look like. Knowledge economies, on the other hand, place an emphasis on standardized outcomes. Time plus processes are indeed subject to change. Those altering ideals would have to be embraced by the institution of the future. It has to be based on results rather than on time and technique. Instead of lecturing, the focus should be on understanding.
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