Higher Eds Destination by 2020

While reviewing teaching research this week, I ran across this 2012 article asking "experts" in higher ed, their prediction for higher ed in 2020 (see graph). The qualitative article by Anderson, Boyles and Rainie entitled, "Main Findings: Higher education’s destination by 2020" found that 40% of the respondents believe education will remain the same. Of course, none of them could have predicted the pandemic and how that event might have modified higher ed.

The authors summarize the data as follows:

Some viewed the use of tech tools as class-equalizing, expanding access to global knowledge. Others feared that use of web-based platforms would promulgate automated and impersonal programs.
Many who expect a transition to more use of tech-based approaches said they are likely to cause a critical widening of the economic divide. These respondents said they expect that those in the middle and lower socioeconomic classes will be educated through what they consider to be inferior online delivery. These survey participants value traditional, F2F methods and said they fear that in the future only elite students will be able to afford to experience a well-grounded, personal education in a campus community.
A distinct difference of opinion emerged among the survey respondents as to what constitutes human contact and an effective educational connection. Many perceived the term “distance learning” as encompassing impersonal and detached learning environments. At the same time, cutting-edge educators noted that communication modes are improving so rapidly that by 2020 a lack of geographical proximity will have little to no deleterious effect upon learning.

As I read this article, I did wonder how many of us have modified our teaching methods (whether planned or due to the pandemic disruption). I would like to share some of the highlights for your consideration to perhaps integrate and/or begin to prepare for what we might see in the future.

The cost/benefit ratio of today’s university education is grossly out of balance.
It is likely that universities will expand their use of tech and diminish their dependence on everything being based on ‘seat time.’
By 2020, if education is unchanged they will have a hard time filling seats.
Universities will instead have to focus on the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and the learning part will be delivered online.
Everyone will move to virtual experiences with more emphasis on just-in-time training instead of long courses of study.
Public institutions will be forced to adopt inexpensive ways to prepare students for jobs, but there will be less humanistic.
Distance learning is viewed with disdain by many who don’t see it as effective.