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The future of Higher Education: facing new and old challenges
Change and adaptation to new contexts and circumstances has been an essential part of human and societal development. It can be argued that the rate of change has been increasing each passing century due to the transformations that new knowledge and technologies bring. Scientific and higher education systems have been playing a central role in the development of societies since much of the new knowledge and technologies that we use today derived from academic research. The training of students and the growing formally qualified population enables and further promotes the further development of further knowledge and search for new technologies. The change from local, to national, and then to global has been impacted by these systems as well. They have been doing so in the past and will continue to do it in the future.
A key issue for scientific and higher education systems and institutions is that they need to adapt to a world that they themselves contributed to shape. In this regard, some adaptions are easier than others. Although several development dynamics can be found in scientific and higher education systems all around the world, several challenges facing them tend to be similar: 1) making access and participation as equitable as possible in competitive driven worlds, 2) streamline governance models and organizational structures; 3) adapt teaching styles, pedagogies and curricula so that graduates can face an increasingly globalized, competitive and uncertain world; 4) collaborate in teaching and research: not only the universities, but also the quality assurance, accreditation and research evaluation organizations; 5) contribute to the sustainable development goals; 6) adopt policies that consider climate change, ecological preservation and sustainable development; 7) diminish inequalities and engage with communities at all levels of action; and finally, 8) contribute to the use, development – but also regulation – of recent and emerging technologies such as: big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence and other forms of digitalization. At the heart of these issues is policymaking and funding. However, for those countries that have reached universal higher education and are transitioning into post-universal higher education further issues compound to challenges faced by scientific and higher education institutions:
1) demographic change and ageing of societies will likely mean a downsizing of systems and institutions with a myriad of consequences: some universities will likely close, others will become smaller, others perhaps specialized. The process will be painful unlike the process of massification – because this will be a process of consolidation: institutions will disappear, jobs will be lost, new PhD graduates in greater precarity, and regional and local economies will likely suffer. What solutions for this scenario? Target different age groups to higher education? further internationalize? Change the scope of scientific and universities as institutions?
2) public funding, that often is taken for granted in most developed countries, is likely to become increasingly constrained. Here the demographic change and ageing of societies also takes a role: if more people will be older and retiring, then more funding will need to be allocated to welfare and health systems. As the proportion of the working age cohorts become smaller, so will likely be the tax income for governments to invest in society. Concurrently, public and private debt has been on the rise in both developed and developing countries. Less public funding available, but several valid needs make for hard choices and should investment in science and higher education be a priority in such societies. What solutions for this scenario? Lessen the investment in higher education and in the public good, and leave these institutions to their own devices? Deregulate tuition fees to ensure their survival? Invest in just a few and further create inequalities between institutions? Should governments fund only some few strategic disciplines and not others? Or should governments fund only research?
3) “College is the new high school” – as the population becomes increasingly qualified, supply/demand dynamics kick in and salaries of those highly qualified tend to be lesser (relatively and comparatively speaking) with those of the previous generations. Overqualification and under-employment are terms increasingly used in the higher education, sociology and labor economics literature, and refer to situations where some elements of human capital theories do not apply anymore. This affects more graduates from some disciplines than others, but two trends are evident: salary premiums for graduates are going down, and plenty of positions not requiring tertiary training increasingly demand their workers to have a university degree (while paying basically unqualified salaries). This has raised voices and concerns about the benefits of higher education from some elements of society and inclusive to graduates in some countries that are drowning in debt. Still credentialism endures. What to make of this scenario and what solutions can we envisage for it? What needs to change and what needs to remain the same?
4) Technology and organizations. The advent of the fourth industrial revolution underlines a change in the sets of skills and competencies that university graduates (and researchers as well) need to have. Technical knowledge is of relevance, but the knowledge cycles are increasingly faster meaning that some – if not most – of the knowledge learned is near obsolete in most disciplinary areas. Moreover, the emphasis is on learning a wide range of hard and soft skills and competences in face of fast changing technologies, requirements and needs that increase uncertainty and require adaptation. In this sense, transversal and multidisciplinary learning seems to be of the essence, but organizational structures and learning at universities still rests in logics of the industrial societies. New technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence can streamline learning and organizational processes but is not yet used to their potential. How to change universities structures and learning offering? What solutions for this scenario? How can universities reform themselves and change? What role can evaluation and accreditation agencies play in this? Who needs to give the first step?
