The future of higher education
A year and a half ago, I enthusiastically studied the online course “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” (from Stanford University). I was shocked by how much I learned in comparison about similar courses at my university. Since that time, I have become interested in the changes taking place in the higher education system. And I decided to make my prediction of how higher education will change in the future.
To answer this question, we must understand whether everything is in order in the system of higher education. If everything is normal and all participants in this process are satisfied with the process itself, as well as with the result, then, of course, no changes can be expected. But if there are complaints, especially among clients, that is, students and graduates, then changes must be expected.
So are there any problems in modern higher education? If we are only interested in the USA, western Europe (and other developed countries), then we can predict that there will be changes in the teaching methodology under the influence of technology. But the system itself and its principles will not change. The reason is obvious. Country development built a good balanced education system. It is possible to filter talented gifted children and give them the opportunity to get an education for free or at a low price. Such a system looks relatively fair, and, in general, satisfies the requirements of society. Of course, there are problems in the education system in developed countries. In my opinion, the biggest problem is the cost. But despite this, the imbalance is not so serious as to accelerate change.
And what about the rest (developing) countries? The population there is much larger and the education system is not so fair. A significant part of talented children is not able to get an adequate education, to develop their talents. Such children have a choice - to pay an exorbitant price for a quality education or an affordable price for higher education of dubious quality. Or do not get an education at all and lose almost all the chances to climb the social ladder. That is why millions of such children all over the world need an alternative to the modern education system.
From the above conclusion: Yes, the higher education system needs to be changed. The modern system does not satisfy the needs of the world community.
So how to solve the problem of price / quality ratio in higher education? How to get a good education if your finances are extremely limited?
For 2 decades, there has been talk about how technology will change the education system. There are already all the prerequisites for starting to use online education everywhere as an alternative to traditional higher education. Distance education is much cheaper. But despite this, online education has not become a real alternative to traditional university education. Because studying at a university is not only studying courses and passing exams. This is a part of modern life, communication, building relationships with many people, a special student environment. All of these things cannot be compensated through online training.
In the last 2-3 years, one can trace the growing interest in online learning. In my opinion, 2 areas of development attract the most attention:
Nevertheless, both directions of development do not solve the problems of traditional higher education and, so far, cannot be an alternative. There are several reasons:
Problem 1. Employers do not trust online education.
When you indicate in your resume in the Education section “I have received education at such a university via the Internet”, the employer will be suspicious of this. In the best case, you will be given an additional interview to check what level of your education. At worst, your resume will simply be ignored. If the employer chooses from 2 candidates for the position and one of them studied “traditionally” and the other “online”, then obviously the first will have an advantage in the vast majority of cases. This is a stereotype and it takes time and many positive examples to overcome it.
Problem 2. Online courses do not provide practical skills.
Online courses are a good way to gain new knowledge. Nevertheless, how can an online course student try their knowledge in practice? For some specialties, such as programming, this can also be done online. But what to do with physics and chemistry? There is no way to practice online. And this is a problem for most specialties.
Problem 3. Chaos and uncertainty.
If you google the phrase “online course” or “online courses on <object>” then you will find thousands of sites on this subject. The search results will include free and paid courses. And a lot of superfluous, not at all what you need. How to find exactly what you need? General search engines still do a poor job of this task.
Another problem associated with this is the lack of standards for describing courses. What prior knowledge is needed for the course? What kind of knowledge and skills can be obtained? Each course provider writes a course description in its own way. Someone writes preliminary knowledge in the section - “basic knowledge of mathematics”. But it is too wide. If I want to study the course "basic chemistry" from Supplier1 and then the course "Advanced chemistry" from Supplier2. How do I know that the first course is the right preliminary course for the second? This is problem. We need one standard for a structured description of knowledge and skills.
Let's solve the problems and get Education 2.0.
Is it possible to solve the problems described above? I offer my vision of how these problems will be solved and, in the process, change the system of higher education over the next 10 years.
When writing a resume when looking for a job, you need to indicate your education. If you have a traditional diploma of education, you can simply indicate the details of the diploma. But what about online education (especially if I studied courses from different suppliers)? In the future, we will see an increase in the quantity and quality of web services providing services for maintaining and publishing the history of education - education passports. Modern prototypes are OpenBadges (Mozilla), LinkedIn profile, etc. Such services will help to conveniently show the level of your education when looking for a job and partially solve Problem 1.
There are currently many online learning providers on the Internet. Hundreds of courses in each subject. I believe that in the near future there will be specialized search engines for finding courses and training programs. Portals will be created where students who choose online education will leave comments, reviews, evaluate courses for making ratings. Such portals will help students find the most appropriate course of study to achieve a certain level of knowledge. Course providers will be interested in adding their courses to catalogs for feedback and independent evaluation and comparison with courses from competitors. This will be the first step towards solving Problem 3.
In the near future, the problem of the lack of a practical component of the learning process will be solved. The first solutions will be offered by commercial online training providers. Such companies will seek partners to offer their students practical classes on the topic of the course at the nearest training center. The student will be asked to find the closest partner organization of the course provider and gain practical experience there. These will be laboratories for borrowing in physics / chemistry / biology or companies offering internships for students of a certain course. Large learning providers will develop mutually beneficial business plans for collaboration with local “traditional” universities, colleges, and companies to provide practical access for students to take their students as close to their place of residence as possible.
These will be the first steps towards solving Problem 2.
The need for local partners for online course providers will open up new business opportunities. First, in large cities, then in smaller cities, “training cafes” or “centers for joint learning” (co-learning similar to co-working) will appear. They will offer individual or group work sessions in educational laboratories to complete the practical part of online courses. This will work like a modern coworking. A student can go to the “training cafe” and just sit online studying his course in a relaxed atmosphere or for communication and discussions from other students studying this or a similar course. There will be different business models around these opportunities. Some centers “centers for co-education” will have contracts from providers of online courses and for students of such courses, admission to the center will be free (that is, included in the course fee). Other centers of self-study will not be tied to a particular provider of courses and the student will pay a certain price for attendance (while studying under the free online course program). The process of developing such a business will finally solve Problem 2. It will also help to solve Problem 1, employers can be sure that the candidate for the position received not only theoretical knowledge, but everything should be in order with practical skills.
Later, large companies will offer an all-inclusive service for students enrolled in the free program. These will be hostels where students will be able to live receiving education according to their personal plan using courses from different suppliers (including free ones). The price for such a service will not be high. The student will be offered only accommodation, Internet access, access to laboratories and rooms for group classes. The learning process will be a student’s personal matter. As a bonus, students will receive their special student atmosphere so important in the modern traditional education system.
Course providers will begin the discussion and come to understand the importance of a single standard for describing requirements and the expected result for courses. Some international organization (such as ISO) will create this standard. For each course there will be an opportunity to indicate what knowledge and skills are developed in this course. Thus, using the “skill tree”, it will be possible to easily determine the relationship between courses from different providers and determine the options for the development path to achieve certain skills (“education path”). For each course, it will be easy to find preliminary courses using the relationship between skills. It will also be easy to find alternative courses from other providers if you didn’t like reviews about a particular course. When this is done Problem 3 will be resolved.
Using the education passport and the “skill tree”, you can easily determine whether the education of a particular person corresponds to the desired level or not.
Online courses will have 2 types of ratings. One from students, another from employers. The employer will evaluate the skills of his employee using the same “skill tree”. These grades will be transferred to the courses at which the employee (former student) developed certain skills. Such a rating may be more important than a student rating. This will finally solve Problem 1.
Traditional universities and colleges will lose customers (students) because more and more young people will choose to study online + practical exercises using "centers of co-education." Universities will change their business model to be able to compete with the Education 2.0 model. They will start selling individual courses instead of “course packages” as they are doing now (pay for the year and teach all courses with almost no choice). Students will combine courses from traditional universities with online courses. Whoever has a lot of extra money can buy a lot of courses from the university. Those who have limited financial resources will use alternative free online courses and pay only for practical classes (if you can’t do without practice in the laboratory).
As a result, there will be large providers of courses and co-learning services (former universities and colleges) and small providers offering several courses or even only one course. Including individuals who will personally create a course to share their experience in a particular subject (and, possibly, make money on this).
It will be harder and harder for traditional universities to survive in the new environment. Some will simply go bankrupt and close. Some will adopt new rules of the game, optimize their work and become large providers of courses and related services for students (dormitories, laboratories, conditions for group self-education, etc.). Course packages will still be offered according to open market rules (“Buy 12 courses at once and get a 15% discount!”).
Step by step, smoothly and organically, we will receive a new system of higher education - Education 2.0.
What are the advantages of such a system?
The changes have already begun. Children who are now 12-14 years old will have a choice when it comes time to get higher education. There is no university monopoly!
Will higher education change in the foreseeable future?
To answer this question, we must understand whether everything is in order in the system of higher education. If everything is normal and all participants in this process are satisfied with the process itself, as well as with the result, then, of course, no changes can be expected. But if there are complaints, especially among clients, that is, students and graduates, then changes must be expected.
So are there any problems in modern higher education? If we are only interested in the USA, western Europe (and other developed countries), then we can predict that there will be changes in the teaching methodology under the influence of technology. But the system itself and its principles will not change. The reason is obvious. Country development built a good balanced education system. It is possible to filter talented gifted children and give them the opportunity to get an education for free or at a low price. Such a system looks relatively fair, and, in general, satisfies the requirements of society. Of course, there are problems in the education system in developed countries. In my opinion, the biggest problem is the cost. But despite this, the imbalance is not so serious as to accelerate change.
And what about the rest (developing) countries? The population there is much larger and the education system is not so fair. A significant part of talented children is not able to get an adequate education, to develop their talents. Such children have a choice - to pay an exorbitant price for a quality education or an affordable price for higher education of dubious quality. Or do not get an education at all and lose almost all the chances to climb the social ladder. That is why millions of such children all over the world need an alternative to the modern education system.
From the above conclusion: Yes, the higher education system needs to be changed. The modern system does not satisfy the needs of the world community.
So how to solve the problem of price / quality ratio in higher education? How to get a good education if your finances are extremely limited?
Will online education (e-Learning) solve the problem?
For 2 decades, there has been talk about how technology will change the education system. There are already all the prerequisites for starting to use online education everywhere as an alternative to traditional higher education. Distance education is much cheaper. But despite this, online education has not become a real alternative to traditional university education. Because studying at a university is not only studying courses and passing exams. This is a part of modern life, communication, building relationships with many people, a special student environment. All of these things cannot be compensated through online training.
In the last 2-3 years, one can trace the growing interest in online learning. In my opinion, 2 areas of development attract the most attention:
- Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOC - massive open online courses) from such providers as Coursera, Udacity, eDx, Khan Academy, etc.
- Many traditional universities offer online study programs (this is a new level of distance learning). Most often, offers from Penn Foster College, University of Phoenix, Kaplan University and others are found on the network.
Nevertheless, both directions of development do not solve the problems of traditional higher education and, so far, cannot be an alternative. There are several reasons:
Problem 1. Employers do not trust online education.
When you indicate in your resume in the Education section “I have received education at such a university via the Internet”, the employer will be suspicious of this. In the best case, you will be given an additional interview to check what level of your education. At worst, your resume will simply be ignored. If the employer chooses from 2 candidates for the position and one of them studied “traditionally” and the other “online”, then obviously the first will have an advantage in the vast majority of cases. This is a stereotype and it takes time and many positive examples to overcome it.
Problem 2. Online courses do not provide practical skills.
Online courses are a good way to gain new knowledge. Nevertheless, how can an online course student try their knowledge in practice? For some specialties, such as programming, this can also be done online. But what to do with physics and chemistry? There is no way to practice online. And this is a problem for most specialties.
Problem 3. Chaos and uncertainty.
If you google the phrase “online course” or “online courses on <object>” then you will find thousands of sites on this subject. The search results will include free and paid courses. And a lot of superfluous, not at all what you need. How to find exactly what you need? General search engines still do a poor job of this task.
Another problem associated with this is the lack of standards for describing courses. What prior knowledge is needed for the course? What kind of knowledge and skills can be obtained? Each course provider writes a course description in its own way. Someone writes preliminary knowledge in the section - “basic knowledge of mathematics”. But it is too wide. If I want to study the course "basic chemistry" from Supplier1 and then the course "Advanced chemistry" from Supplier2. How do I know that the first course is the right preliminary course for the second? This is problem. We need one standard for a structured description of knowledge and skills.
Let's solve the problems and get Education 2.0.
Is it possible to solve the problems described above? I offer my vision of how these problems will be solved and, in the process, change the system of higher education over the next 10 years.
Step 1. Standard for the description of skills and an educational passport.
When writing a resume when looking for a job, you need to indicate your education. If you have a traditional diploma of education, you can simply indicate the details of the diploma. But what about online education (especially if I studied courses from different suppliers)? In the future, we will see an increase in the quantity and quality of web services providing services for maintaining and publishing the history of education - education passports. Modern prototypes are OpenBadges (Mozilla), LinkedIn profile, etc. Such services will help to conveniently show the level of your education when looking for a job and partially solve Problem 1.
Step 2. Special search engines and ratings.
There are currently many online learning providers on the Internet. Hundreds of courses in each subject. I believe that in the near future there will be specialized search engines for finding courses and training programs. Portals will be created where students who choose online education will leave comments, reviews, evaluate courses for making ratings. Such portals will help students find the most appropriate course of study to achieve a certain level of knowledge. Course providers will be interested in adding their courses to catalogs for feedback and independent evaluation and comparison with courses from competitors. This will be the first step towards solving Problem 3.
Step 3. Local partners.
In the near future, the problem of the lack of a practical component of the learning process will be solved. The first solutions will be offered by commercial online training providers. Such companies will seek partners to offer their students practical classes on the topic of the course at the nearest training center. The student will be asked to find the closest partner organization of the course provider and gain practical experience there. These will be laboratories for borrowing in physics / chemistry / biology or companies offering internships for students of a certain course. Large learning providers will develop mutually beneficial business plans for collaboration with local “traditional” universities, colleges, and companies to provide practical access for students to take their students as close to their place of residence as possible.
These will be the first steps towards solving Problem 2.
Step 4. New business opportunities.
The need for local partners for online course providers will open up new business opportunities. First, in large cities, then in smaller cities, “training cafes” or “centers for joint learning” (co-learning similar to co-working) will appear. They will offer individual or group work sessions in educational laboratories to complete the practical part of online courses. This will work like a modern coworking. A student can go to the “training cafe” and just sit online studying his course in a relaxed atmosphere or for communication and discussions from other students studying this or a similar course. There will be different business models around these opportunities. Some centers “centers for co-education” will have contracts from providers of online courses and for students of such courses, admission to the center will be free (that is, included in the course fee). Other centers of self-study will not be tied to a particular provider of courses and the student will pay a certain price for attendance (while studying under the free online course program). The process of developing such a business will finally solve Problem 2. It will also help to solve Problem 1, employers can be sure that the candidate for the position received not only theoretical knowledge, but everything should be in order with practical skills.
Later, large companies will offer an all-inclusive service for students enrolled in the free program. These will be hostels where students will be able to live receiving education according to their personal plan using courses from different suppliers (including free ones). The price for such a service will not be high. The student will be offered only accommodation, Internet access, access to laboratories and rooms for group classes. The learning process will be a student’s personal matter. As a bonus, students will receive their special student atmosphere so important in the modern traditional education system.
Step 5. The standard for the "skills tree" ("skills tree").
Course providers will begin the discussion and come to understand the importance of a single standard for describing requirements and the expected result for courses. Some international organization (such as ISO) will create this standard. For each course there will be an opportunity to indicate what knowledge and skills are developed in this course. Thus, using the “skill tree”, it will be possible to easily determine the relationship between courses from different providers and determine the options for the development path to achieve certain skills (“education path”). For each course, it will be easy to find preliminary courses using the relationship between skills. It will also be easy to find alternative courses from other providers if you didn’t like reviews about a particular course. When this is done Problem 3 will be resolved.
Using the education passport and the “skill tree”, you can easily determine whether the education of a particular person corresponds to the desired level or not.
Step 6. Assessment of courses by employers.
Online courses will have 2 types of ratings. One from students, another from employers. The employer will evaluate the skills of his employee using the same “skill tree”. These grades will be transferred to the courses at which the employee (former student) developed certain skills. Such a rating may be more important than a student rating. This will finally solve Problem 1.
Step 7. Separate courses vs course packages.
Traditional universities and colleges will lose customers (students) because more and more young people will choose to study online + practical exercises using "centers of co-education." Universities will change their business model to be able to compete with the Education 2.0 model. They will start selling individual courses instead of “course packages” as they are doing now (pay for the year and teach all courses with almost no choice). Students will combine courses from traditional universities with online courses. Whoever has a lot of extra money can buy a lot of courses from the university. Those who have limited financial resources will use alternative free online courses and pay only for practical classes (if you can’t do without practice in the laboratory).
As a result, there will be large providers of courses and co-learning services (former universities and colleges) and small providers offering several courses or even only one course. Including individuals who will personally create a course to share their experience in a particular subject (and, possibly, make money on this).
Step 8. Universities will finally move to a new model under the pressure of the new realities of the education market.
It will be harder and harder for traditional universities to survive in the new environment. Some will simply go bankrupt and close. Some will adopt new rules of the game, optimize their work and become large providers of courses and related services for students (dormitories, laboratories, conditions for group self-education, etc.). Course packages will still be offered according to open market rules (“Buy 12 courses at once and get a 15% discount!”).
We welcome the new system of higher education - Education 2.0.
Step by step, smoothly and organically, we will receive a new system of higher education - Education 2.0.
What are the advantages of such a system?
- Dynamism and flexibility . The traditional higher education system was created at a time when the rhythm of life was not so fast. This system is too inert. Education 2.0 will be able to respond to changes with lightning speed. When the market needs new skills, new courses will appear in a week. Students can change their learning paths on the fly.
- Low price . Education 2.0 will be much cheaper. Even for free. Only the offline part of training requiring special equipment will cost money. Theoretical training will be free, with the exception of some exclusive courses from super professionals in their fields offering to learn a unique experience.
- Individual and adaptive educational plan . When a student begins his education, he creates his training plan (or copies one of the ready-made shared by experienced comrades). If a student changes his goals and wants to get another profession, then there is no problem. He simply changed his plan and went the other way with virtually no loss and any bureaucracy.
The changes have already begun. Children who are now 12-14 years old will have a choice when it comes time to get higher education. There is no university monopoly!