Leading and shaping new futures for higher education

The purpose of this article is to explain how I am trying to think about and plan for new ‘futures’ in higher education, and their potential implications for other educational sectors. A growing industry is developing around predicting the future shape of universities and of learning more broadly. Predictions range from the radical and (possibly) fanciful, to the logical. Either way, I have noticed a sudden spike in the number of futures-focused books and articles, policy reports, blogs and conferences, and an emerging consensus that education will need to look very different as we enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution (see Schwab, 2016). We can argue about the detail, but I am left in little doubt that major change is afoot.

As an education leader in a university, my task is to work out which of the predicted futures is radical but ‘real’ and deserving of preparatory action, and which is just plain wrong. Taking wrong turns at this stage could prove expensive in all sorts of ways, not least for our future graduates; taking no action at all is likely to render the university obsolete. Given that I have poor crystal-ball gazing skills, this is something of a challenge. So, how best to proceed?

I am an academic, so, as my training dictates, the obvious starting point is to review the literature. The problem is that the type of ‘literature’ available on this topic is unfamiliar. I am used to trawling the literature on topics such as career-long professional development for teachers and theory–research–practice gaps in education. I know which journals to source, and I have a good understanding of the robustness of the existing evidence base. Literature on predicting the future of education is very different. There is a lot of speculation and also some well-argued positions, but given the speed and complexity of economic, political, social and cultural change in contemporary societies, it would be a brave person who could predict much with certainty. Of course, there is also an upside to all this uncertainty in that ‘futures’ is a game anyone can play. The evidence might be speculative, but the future is there to be shaped, and this fact offers opportunities if educational institutions choose to engage. If we do not engage, others will step in to shape our futures for us – not least, in higher education, our new ‘regulator’ (the Office for Students).

Interestingly, my rather unscientific but fascinating trawl of the futures-focused blogs, position papers, think tank reports, sector comments, Twittersphere, books, papers and consultants did identify some areas of agreement. There are eight broad themes that recur in one form or another across these fora, and they are detailed below with some illustrative examples. Many of these themes are already visible or are on the horizon (in some places, at least), so they are probably worthy of serious consideration by all leaders in education.

Learning will be lifelong (at last)

Over the years, many of us in education have argued passionately for the importance of better access to lifelong learning, citing the societal and economic benefits it can bring (Gouthro, 2017). Now, however, the spectre of the Fourth Industrial Revolution seems to be making the case for lifelong learning in powerful new ways. In one of its special reports, The Economist (2017) argues the case for finding new and more fluid links between higher education and employment, to facilitate continuous upskilling throughout a career. The report concludes that both employers and employees are beginning to recognize this need.

Similarly, a Universities UK (2018: 4) report commented that ‘Subjects and skills will need to be combined and re-learned throughout working life…Educators and employers need to collaborate more closely, and develop new and innovative partnerships and flexible learning approaches’. The report also draws on several striking observations from the World Economic Forum, including the claim that employees will be working for longer and so will need continually to re-skill and upskill, that new skills will be required for jobs that have not yet been created, and that knowledge taught in technical degrees today is likely to have a short shelf life.

Universities in some parts of the world are already responding to the challenge. In August of 2018, the University of Michigan tweeted about a new lifelong learning strategy for its 583,000 alumni worldwide. Michigan is offering 91 new modules, at no cost and with the possibility of gaining certification, through Michigan Online (see https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2018/08/08/alumni-eligible-for-free-courses). In Singapore, the government has gone even further, establishing the promotion of, and support for, lifelong learning as a major policy initiative. As an example, the National University of Singapore is planning to extend a student’s initial enrolment to a period of 20 years as part of the government’s wider lifelong learning agenda (see https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/education/lifelong-learning-scheme-to-be-open-to-all-nus-alumni. Currently, the university offers up to two free modules for all alumni.

The conclusion I draw from this is that more education providers will want to engage with the lifelong learning agenda and, in the case of higher education, this could signal a real change in the relationship between universities and their alumni.

There is widespread recognition that new integrated and multidisciplinary knowledge solutions are required

There have been calls in the past for more multi/interdisciplinary research on, and solutions to, complex problems. A scan of the UK Research Funding Council websites suggests that there is some progress on this agenda. Last summer, for example, there were major calls for multidisciplinary research projects from a range of funders including the Medical Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the British Academy. As van der Zwaan (2017: 241) argues in his open access book Higher Education in 2040: ‘the questions that will be addressed in the future will transcend disciplines, and the solutions to major problems will be found, more so than in the past, in interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary knowledge’. This will have implications for teaching in universities and other education providers too. Although single-discipline expertise will still be relevant and necessary, much more of our teaching will need to be focused on bringing disciplines together in innovative ways. Most of us do some of this, but are we doing enough?

Industry/employers are likely to have increasing levels of influence over the curriculum

Employers have long argued that graduates lack the kinds of skills required in the workplace. Some of us have been sceptical about these claims, and some would still argue for a university education that has loftier educational aims. Yet in the UK, the government’s imperative to recover a greater portion of the student loan debt is leading to a growing focus on employability and employment outcomes. In this scenario, and with the advent of the powerful LEO (longitudinal education outcomes) dataset, it seems logical for employers to have a stronger role in curriculum design in all areas, and not just through degree apprenticeships

In a radical example, it was reported in Times Higher Education (2018: 6) that Incheon National University in South Korea has ‘handed control of curriculum design to major employers’. Moreover, the university’s president said that ‘the university should be honoured to be the servants of industry’. We may not wish to go that far, but the role of employers and industry in all aspects of education provision, especially higher education, looks set to grow far beyond where it is now. The machines really are coming.

This is not my area of expertise, but I am persuaded that the machines are here and they are coming faster and closer than most of us realize. There is much written on this topic. Yuval Noah Harari’s (2018) book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, provides a reasonably balanced view of the revolution, including identifying challenges for all levels of the education sector. A useful summary of the book was provided by the online magazine WIRED UK, and a quote from it is instructive:

The algorithms are watching you right now. They are watching where you go, what you buy, who you meet. Soon they will monitor all your steps, all your breaths, all your heartbeats. They are relying on Big Data and machine learning to get to know you better and better. And once these algorithms know you better than you know yourself, they could control and manipulate you, and you won’t be able to do much about it. (WIRED UK, 2018)

At the very least, therefore, we need to ensure that our staff and students understand exactly how artificial intelligence (AI) is already operating in their lives and work.

Knowledge producers are proliferating

In a blog on the Wonkhe website (https://wonkhe.com/), Stuart and Shutt (2018) from the University of Lincoln argued that ‘The role of the expert as a gatekeeper of knowledge is being challenged. This has significant implications for all producers; arts and culture, politics and political systems, organisational structures and the world of work and financing, and, of course, for education.’

Almost all of my reading of the futures literature points to the rise of new knowledge producers and the growing future role of EduTech companies. In a recent workshop organized by Wonkhe and the Nous Group (www.nousgroup.com/uk) on the ‘Next-generation university’, the growth of Edutech was identified as one of the global megatrends that will have a major impact on universities and other education providers. In the discussions that followed, we were able to identify a strong role for the next-generation university as a trusted knowledge source, but few of us doubted that we will face increasing competition in this space, and that we will be producing knowledge in different ways that will also be accessed differently. One key lesson that I took away from this workshop was the need to focus harder on the quality and accessibility of our digital curriculum content.

Teaching will become more important (and valued)

University teaching has become newsworthy. A sustained government-led narrative has raised questions about the quality and quantity of teaching and the value that universities accord it. The introduction of student tuition fees and the widespread criticism of university teaching, particularly in research-intensive universities, has paved the way for the introduction and development of the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF).

The debate around teaching and research and the relative emphasis placed upon them is not confined to the UK. It was reported recently that a major new report in Australia on ‘Reimagining tertiary education’ (Parker et al., 2018) has supported the creation of a TEF to ensure that teaching and research are recognized and rewarded equally. The authors made the case that if public money is to be used to back universities (in the form of student loans) it is essential there is also a robust assessment of quality.

Whatever else happens, we can conclude that, with or without a TEF, teaching will only become more important in the future in a university context. It is also likely that teaching will become more effective as teaching careers become more attractive, better learning analytics data become available and more robust research on student learning is published. If nothing else, the advent of student fees has presaged a renewed focus on the student as a learner.

Students will be different

At the same time, and closely linked to the points made above, we have to recognize that tomorrow’s students will be different. In UK higher education, a former government minister suggested we are now in the ‘age of the student’ (Gyimah, 2018). Following the introduction of comparatively high tuition fees, the withdrawal of maintenance grants and the introduction of loans, students have been repositioned as ‘consumers’ (although all aspects of this system are currently under review). At the time of writing, the current UK Government views higher education as a competitive market and has established a number of mechanisms to protect consumer rights, including a market regulator. The presumption appears to be that universities will not act in the best interests of their students without such regulation. This is likely to change the relationship between students and higher education providers in ways that are not yet fully understood.

We also have to recognize that children’s lives are increasingly digitized, and my conclusion is that we will need to work hard to support staff in education institutions to shift more quickly towards a better understanding of the digital world that is inhabited by our current and future students

Addressing inequalities will demand increasing attention

Although it is difficult to prioritize any one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2019), Goal 10 – Reduced Inequalities – is particularly relevant in the case of education. Advanced digital communication has made stark societal inequalities more visible, and social media is an easily accessible platform on which to share outrage. In their Wonkhe blog cited earlier, Stuart and Shutt (2018) commented:

…regional economic divergence is the new reality…This phenomenon can be seen across all Western democracies and has a stark impact on the quality of life. For example, a child born in the bottom 20% in wealthy San Francisco has twice as much chance as a similar child in Detroit of ending up in the top 20% as an adult. This disparity was a central focus in the Industrial Strategy White Paper with the UK’s long tail of low productivity singled out as the reason for uneven growth, wages and living standards. These inequalities form the basis of an increasing interest in the concept of inclusive growth, a challenge to the dominance of growth alone as a measure for success.

Themes 1, 4, 5 and 6 – discussed above – have the potential to address inequalities in new ways and, importantly, this is a goal with which many leaders across all levels of education would agree. It is a principle upon which we might be able to build a strategy that can help us to prepare our universities and education institutions for new futures.

In conclusion

Van der Zwaan (2017: 14, 239) opens and closes his book Higher Education in 2040 as follows:

Whilst the university is by no means a sinking ship, as some have claimed, it needs to make a clear about-turn in order to survive. Almost every aspect of its existence will be transformed. Teaching will change radically, but above all, the students who follow its educational programmes will change.

…Today’s university is situated rather reluctantly in society; being rather unsure of its role, it is navigating between the entrepreneurial university and the medieval academia.

In similar vein, Sperlinger et al. (2018) claim that the university system is not fit for purpose, and they argue for a radically different system based on greater flexibility and access. Indeed, each of the themes that I have explored in this article suggests that places of learning, and particularly universities, need to find new ways to retain what they value while meeting the very different needs of new generations. Taken individually, each of the themes above is interesting and plausible; taken together they seem to be important and compelling.

So, back to my original question: how best to proceed as a leader in the higher education part of the education landscape? It is clear that I need to engage a wide range of stakeholders in discussions about the next-generation university, not least students and my academic and professional colleagues. When colleagues are so busy meeting the ever-growing teaching and research demands of the present, it can be difficult to look beyond the next measurement point, never mind to ‘the future’. Yet, as I noted earlier, the futures ‘game’ is worth playing. The ways in which universities and other educational institutions engage with the futures agenda and the decisions we take now will help to deliver the very futures that we are trying to predict. This means that uncertainty around the futures agenda is an opportunity, and it is territory in which we need to be positioned strategically. In short, there are some principles for which we should fight, and building new futures on some shared principles might be one way to proceed.

In 2016 in my institution we opened a ‘Big Conversation’ about the curriculum of the future with staff and students. Since then, we have created a ‘Higher Education Futures Institute’, https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/university/hefi/index.aspx to help us to find new ways to support and engage with staff in real time. For example, each week we offer MicroCPD as a form of just-in-time bite-sized learning that meets the needs of busy staff. (All the material is open access, https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/university/hefi/staff-development/MicroCPD-Library.aspx.)

In that first Big Conversation, our staff and students identified inclusion, research-intensive learning and teaching, and digital futures as the foundations of a future curriculum. We have since reopened the Conversation to offer the community an opportunity to engage with the futures agenda and – importantly – help to shape it. This, I think, is the way in which I need to proceed. Our educational institutions are full of clever people. I think we need to persuade them that, far from being a distraction, futures-focused discussions are important because we need to influence those potential futures in the interests of the educational principles in which we all believe. Please feel free to join our latest Big Conversation that opened in January 2019 and is to run until the autumn (https://blog.bham.ac.uk/bigconversation/).