Envisioning the Future of Higher Education
It’s nothing new that the last two years have proven to be a year of great change and adaptation in the field of education. Education moved to online classrooms for which both the students and teachers weren’t prepared. This adaptation of educational institutions made the experts foresee the future differently.
Elementary students are now growing up with laptops and the internet has become an essential tool to prepare the students effectively for the modern digital landscape. Developers are building better technologies to help the students study with flexibility and convenience within the university setting. Even though the demand for hi-tech learning was always present and would have been inevitable in the future, the pandemic acted as an accelerant in this case.
Now, so many educational institutions are finding themselves caught up to the challenges of higher education needs since last year. The recent changes in the field of education tell us that we must brace ourselves for the new realities of higher education. Here are some predictions of how the future of higher education might turn out to be.
Table of Contents:
- The Future of Higher Education Looks Exciting
1. Content Producers and Distributors Will Enter the Marketplace
2. Institutional Control of Higher Education Will Decrease
3. Students Will Seek More From Educational Institutions
4. Continuous Skilling Beyond Degrees Will Become Reality
5. Blended Learning Holds The Key to an Immersive Learning Experience - Conclusion
The Future of Higher Education Looks Exciting
The future of education looks promising. Here are the things the stakeholder of education may expect going further:
Content Producers and Distributors Will Enter the Marketplace
Content producers and distributors will emphasize digital technologies by ditching time and place-based education. Low-cost degrees will be created, and outcome-based education will be offered. The competition, as well as the consumer choice, will rise. Students will be offered convenient combinations of course-based programs. Moreover, the courses will be cheaper than traditional colleges and universities, which will allow the students to afford the courses they are interested in.
Content delivery platforms are presently revolutionizing the higher education landscape by providing unified content experiences for students. Gone are the days when learners had to visit various platforms for getting various content types. Additionally, since these platforms are access-based and copy-disabled, you can conveniently say goodbye to plagiarism and publish confidential content easily with the topmost data security measures.
Institutional Control of Higher Education Will Decrease
Just like consumers are given a choice over what, when, how, and where they will consume content like movies, newspapers, etc., the future of higher education will put more power in the hands of the learners.
Thanks to the digital revolution, students will have a greater choice regarding all aspects of their education. Take a look at the modes of education around you, and you can already feel the change. Presently, a student of a remote village in Africa can pursue a course from a university in the USA. Going further, we expect this trend to continue even as more and more courses get added, and the education will become more immersive.
Students Will Seek More From Educational Institutions
Just like the sources of entertainment like music, movies, and news updates are crafted based on a particular consumer, the future of higher education will encourage personalization that will fit into a student’s circumstances. Colleges, universities, and other educational institutions will unbundle their programs and services at affordable prices so that the students can buy according to their needs and wants. There will be an increased focus on delivering interactive lessons to higher education students.
The future of higher education will focus on things we want the students to achieve, things we want them to learn, and not what we want them to be taught. All students don’t learn at the same pace. The explosion of new content being brought in by museums, software companies, and others is now becoming so diversified that the students’ academic development cannot be converted into stable time or process measures. However, one common denominator that all students share is that they produce outcomes, and whatever they learn is the consequence of their experience.
The future of higher education will see a reset between the value placed on degrees and ‘just-in-time’ education will increase in status. Education will be more immediate and present-oriented. The increasing need for upskilling and reskilling because of the knowledge explosion and pandemic will tilt the balance towards educational programs that are aligned with the labour market, and students will be provided with badges and certificates and not degrees.
Continuous Skilling Beyond Degrees Will Become Reality
According to the President of the University of Phoenix, Peter Cohen, ‘continuous skilling’ will play a huge role in the future of higher education. Since more than 85% of students come to university to have a better career in the future, it’s the university’s responsibility to prepare the students with the best resources.
Gone are the days when people used to think that you go to school once when you are young and have all the skills you need for life. As technology is evolving super fast, it’s necessary to prepare the students for the challenges they are going to face once they graduate from college. That’s why, apart from providing the students with their degrees, institutions will prepare them to tackle the challenges that they may come across.
Blended Learning Holds The Key to an Immersive Learning Experience
Although blended learning has been operational since computers were introduced in education, it has never been as pronounced as it is now. And, with technology evolving rapidly, we can expect blended learning to reach new heights.
In the future, blended learning will refer to the combination of in-person, online, experiential, simulation-based, synchronous, and asynchronous learning. The days are not too far when a student will stay on the campus and attend virtual classes. Such facilities can invite a new era of economic growth by reducing the cost of education, which will eventually reduce students’ tuition fees.
Conclusion
We don’t need a whole lot of information to research and speculate on the future of higher education in the upcoming years. It’s slowly unfolding before our eyes with the innovations that institutions worldwide are adapting. The changes will come into better focus if we look closely at the margins where major changes are occurring.
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