Transitions in education

By Jill N. Reich, PhD
Executive Director for Education

All across the United States, our 3,613 institutions of higher education are starting a new semester and most often a new academic year. What will the combined $156 billion annual operating budgets of these institutions provide for the 15.1 million students enrolled? And what role do each of us play in ensuring that these students are well served; the money is well spent; our work is valued; and our discipline is vital and healthy?

The start of a new year is a good time to take stock of where we have been and where we are going. What has worked in the past and should be maintained, what hasn?t worked and should be discarded? What is changing and how? What needs to change and when? These are all important questions to consider carefully; and having done so, to take action on.

Society?s fundamental change

These questions are especially important in times of rapid change. A recent report on 'Transforming Higher Education' proposes that society is undergoing a fundamental transformation, one characterized as moving from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. As described by Dolence and Norris in this report, this is a global phenomenon with significant local implications for all people, organizations, societies and nations, although not all are affected at the same pace or to the same degree.

The Information Age is particularly relevant to education because its driving force is learning and knowledge. Further, the rate of knowledge generation and the corresponding demand for its use grows exponentially at the same time that its life cycle is continually shrinking. As a result, the demand for learning should skyrocket, but resources available under existing models for educational delivery are expected to remain fairly static.

Looking forward just a decade, futurists estimate that just to keep even each individual in the workforce will need to accumulate learning equivalent to that currently associated with 30 credit hours of instruction, every seven years. This level of learning will be needed for every member of the workforce who wishes to remain competitive and productive?perhaps even to maintain basic employment. Think about this projection for a moment and you will realize that such a demand cannot be sustained without significant change to our current ideas about education.

Some sort of transformation to the education system must occur, but this is not an all-or-nothing proposition. The classroom is not expected to disappear, nor will the campus as we know it fade into oblivion. Rather, American higher education in the 21st century will provide a spectrum of choices for learners, ranging from the truly traditional to the totally transformed. These choices will be exercised by individual learners, faculty, researchers and practitioners throughout their learning careers, which can be expected to last a lifetime.

The arena of greatest change

It is the post-degree learning arena that today sees the greatest change and likely will serve not only as the first but the major place where the transformation in higher education will occur. It is becoming increasingly difficult within our traditional course and degree structures to produce graduates who are competent critical thinkers, have had sufficient time to develop the track record needed to meet job demands and know enough about the broad discipline and a subfield to be considered expert. One must have the capacity to continue to learn, to obtain knowledge germane to a changing and complex world.

Central to this model of learning is the network, a system of global links to information and knowledge. Networks can be a research lab, a forum for debate, or a new venue for testing and disseminating ideas. In effect, networks increase the 'bandwidth' of information that can be accessed by an individual and shortens the timeframe for doing this.

Serious intellectual debate can be framed, waged and resolved over the Internet in a period of months rather than the years that would have been required under traditional modes of scholarly communication. And for disciplines such as ours, networks can narrow the gaps between research and application by providing a basis for exchange between research and practice in ways that make everyone involved a learner.

But, a sampling of exchange observed currently on many networks suggest that we haven?t yet achieved this level of use or discourse. The opportunities are there. Perhaps too many are still too 'young' to participate wisely. As one of your resolutions for the year, I urge you to get involved?constructively. We will be better for it.