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 at how much I learned in comparison about courses with similar subjects 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 need to understand whether everything is in order in the higher education system. 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 we must expect changes.
So is there a problem with modern higher education? If we are only interested in the United States, Western Europe (and other developed countries), then it can be predicted that there will be changes in the methodology of education under the influence of technology. But the system itself and its principles will not change. The reason is obvious. Development countries have built a good balanced education system. It is possible to filter out 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 demands 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.
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And what about the rest (developing) countries? The population there is much larger and the education system is not so fair. Much of the talented children do not have the opportunity to receive an adequate education, to develop their talents. Such children have a choice - to pay an exorbitantly high price for a quality education or an affordable price for a higher education of dubious quality. Or do not get an education and lose almost all the chances of climbing the social ladder. That is why millions of such children around the world need an alternative to the modern education system.
From the above conclusion: Yes, the higher education system needs change. The modern system does not satisfy the needs of the world community.
So how to solve the problem of price / quality ratio in the higher education system? How to get a good education if your finances are extremely limited?
For 2 decades, there has been talk of how technology will change the education system. There are already all the prerequisites to start using 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 university study is not only the study of courses and exams. This is a part of modern life, communication, building relationships with many people, a special student environment. All these things can not be compensated by online learning.
In the last 2-3 years, you can trace the growth of interest in learning online. In my opinion, 2 directions 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 for this:
Problem 1. Employers do not trust education received online.
When you indicate in your resume in the Education section “I received my education at such a university via the Internet”, the employer will react to this suspiciously. In the best case, you will arrange 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 one will have an advantage in the overwhelming 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. However, how can a student online course 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 <subject>" then you will find thousands of sites on this issue. The search results will be paid and free courses. And a lot of superfluous, not at all what you need. How to find exactly what you need? General search engines do not do this task well yet.
Another problem associated with this is the lack of standards for course descriptions. What preliminary knowledge is needed for the course? What kind of knowledge and skills can be obtained? Each course provider writes a course description in his own way. Someone writes in the section of preliminary knowledge - the "basic knowledge of mathematics". But it is too wide. If I want to study the course "basic chemistry" from Supplier 1 and then the course Advanced Chemical from Supplier 2. How do I know that the first course is the correct preliminary course to the second? This is problem. We need one standard of structured description of knowledge and skills.
Solve 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 in the next 10 years.
When writing a resume in a job search, you need to specify your education. If you have a traditional diploma of education, you can simply specify the details of the diploma. But what about online education (especially if you 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 - the education passport. 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.
At the moment, there are many online training providers on the Internet. Hundreds of courses in each subject. I believe that in the near future there will be specialized search engines to search for courses and training programs. Portals will be created, where students who choose online training will post comments, reviews, rate courses to compile 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 to add their courses to catalogs for feedback and independent assessment 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 integral learning process will be solved. The first solutions will be offered by commercial online training providers. Such companies will look for partners to offer their students practical training on the topic of the course in the nearest training center. The student will be asked to find the nearest provider organization partner and get practical experience there. These will be laboratories for taking on physics / chemistry / biology or companies offering internships for students of a particular course. Large training providers will develop mutually beneficial business plans for cooperation with local “traditional” universities, colleges and companies to provide practical access to their students as close as possible to their place of residence.
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 cafés” or “centers for collaborative learning” (co-learning, by analogy with co-working) will appear. They will offer individual or group work sessions in educational laboratories to carry out the practical part of online courses. This will work as a modern coworking. A student can go to the “study cafe” and simply sit online while 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 “joint training centers” will have contracts from suppliers of online courses and for students of such courses visiting the center will be free of charge (that is, included in the cost of payment for the course). Other self-study centers will not be tied to a specific course provider and the student will pay a certain price per visit (while learning through the free online course program). The development process of such a business will finally solve Problem 2. Also help solve Problem 1, employers can be sure that the candidate for the position has received not only theoretical knowledge but also with practical skills everything should be in order.
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 while getting an education according to their personal plan using courses from different providers (including free ones). The price for this 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 the student’s personal matter. As a bonus, students will get their special student atmosphere so important in the modern traditional education system.
Course providers will start the discussion and come to understand the importance of a single standard for describing requirements and the expected result for courses. Some international organization (for example, ISO) will create this standard. For each course there will be an opportunity to indicate what knowledge and skills are being developed in this course. Thus, using the “tree of skills” it will be possible to easily determine the relationship between courses from different providers and identify 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 don’t like the reviews on a particular course. When this is done Problem 3 will be solved.
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 courses where an employee (a former student) developed certain skills. Such a rating may be more important than a rating from students. This will finally solve Problem 1.
Traditional universities and colleges will lose customers (students) because more and more young people will choose online tuition + hands-on activities using “shared learning centers”. 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 a year and learn all the courses with almost no choice). Students will combine courses from traditional universities with online courses. Who has a lot of extra money, he 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 don’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 just one course. Including individuals who will create a course through their personal efforts to share their experience on a particular subject (and, possibly, make money on it).
It will be harder and harder for traditional universities to survive in the new environment. Some will simply go bankrupt and shut down. Some will adopt the new rules of the game, optimize their work and become great providers of courses and related services for students (dormitories, laboratories, conditions for group self-education, etc.). Course packages will still be offered but according to the open market rules (“Buy 12 courses at once and get a 15% discount!”).
Step by step, smoothly and organically, we will get a new system of higher education - Education 2.0.
What are the advantages of such a system?
Changes have already begun. Children who are now 12-14 years old will have a choice when the time comes to get a higher education. There is no monopoly of universities!
Will higher education change in the foreseeable future?
To answer this question, we need to understand whether everything is in order in the higher education system. 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 we must expect changes.
So is there a problem with modern higher education? If we are only interested in the United States, Western Europe (and other developed countries), then it can be predicted that there will be changes in the methodology of education under the influence of technology. But the system itself and its principles will not change. The reason is obvious. Development countries have built a good balanced education system. It is possible to filter out 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 demands 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. Much of the talented children do not have the opportunity to receive an adequate education, to develop their talents. Such children have a choice - to pay an exorbitantly high price for a quality education or an affordable price for a higher education of dubious quality. Or do not get an education and lose almost all the chances of climbing the social ladder. That is why millions of such children around the world need an alternative to the modern education system.
From the above conclusion: Yes, the higher education system needs change. The modern system does not satisfy the needs of the world community.
So how to solve the problem of price / quality ratio in the higher education system? How to get a good education if your finances are extremely limited?
Will online education (e-learning) be a solution?
For 2 decades, there has been talk of how technology will change the education system. There are already all the prerequisites to start using 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 university study is not only the study of courses and exams. This is a part of modern life, communication, building relationships with many people, a special student environment. All these things can not be compensated by online learning.
In the last 2-3 years, you can trace the growth of interest in learning online. In my opinion, 2 directions of development attract the most attention:
- Mass 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 education). Most often in the network there are offers from Penn Foster College, University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, etc.
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 for this:
Problem 1. Employers do not trust education received online.
When you indicate in your resume in the Education section “I received my education at such a university via the Internet”, the employer will react to this suspiciously. In the best case, you will arrange 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 one will have an advantage in the overwhelming 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. However, how can a student online course 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 <subject>" then you will find thousands of sites on this issue. The search results will be paid and free courses. And a lot of superfluous, not at all what you need. How to find exactly what you need? General search engines do not do this task well yet.
Another problem associated with this is the lack of standards for course descriptions. What preliminary knowledge is needed for the course? What kind of knowledge and skills can be obtained? Each course provider writes a course description in his own way. Someone writes in the section of preliminary knowledge - the "basic knowledge of mathematics". But it is too wide. If I want to study the course "basic chemistry" from Supplier 1 and then the course Advanced Chemical from Supplier 2. How do I know that the first course is the correct preliminary course to the second? This is problem. We need one standard of structured description of knowledge and skills.
Solve 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 in the next 10 years.
Step 1. The standard of the description of skills and educational passport.
When writing a resume in a job search, you need to specify your education. If you have a traditional diploma of education, you can simply specify the details of the diploma. But what about online education (especially if you 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 - the education passport. 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.
At the moment, there are many online training providers on the Internet. Hundreds of courses in each subject. I believe that in the near future there will be specialized search engines to search for courses and training programs. Portals will be created, where students who choose online training will post comments, reviews, rate courses to compile 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 to add their courses to catalogs for feedback and independent assessment 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 integral learning process will be solved. The first solutions will be offered by commercial online training providers. Such companies will look for partners to offer their students practical training on the topic of the course in the nearest training center. The student will be asked to find the nearest provider organization partner and get practical experience there. These will be laboratories for taking on physics / chemistry / biology or companies offering internships for students of a particular course. Large training providers will develop mutually beneficial business plans for cooperation with local “traditional” universities, colleges and companies to provide practical access to their students as close as possible to their place of residence.
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 cafés” or “centers for collaborative learning” (co-learning, by analogy with co-working) will appear. They will offer individual or group work sessions in educational laboratories to carry out the practical part of online courses. This will work as a modern coworking. A student can go to the “study cafe” and simply sit online while 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 “joint training centers” will have contracts from suppliers of online courses and for students of such courses visiting the center will be free of charge (that is, included in the cost of payment for the course). Other self-study centers will not be tied to a specific course provider and the student will pay a certain price per visit (while learning through the free online course program). The development process of such a business will finally solve Problem 2. Also help solve Problem 1, employers can be sure that the candidate for the position has received not only theoretical knowledge but also with practical skills everything should be in order.
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 while getting an education according to their personal plan using courses from different providers (including free ones). The price for this 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 the student’s personal matter. As a bonus, students will get their special student atmosphere so important in the modern traditional education system.
Step 5. The standard for the "tree of skills" ("skills tree").
Course providers will start the discussion and come to understand the importance of a single standard for describing requirements and the expected result for courses. Some international organization (for example, ISO) will create this standard. For each course there will be an opportunity to indicate what knowledge and skills are being developed in this course. Thus, using the “tree of skills” it will be possible to easily determine the relationship between courses from different providers and identify 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 don’t like the reviews on a particular course. When this is done Problem 3 will be solved.
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. Evaluation 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 courses where an employee (a former student) developed certain skills. Such a rating may be more important than a rating from students. 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 online tuition + hands-on activities using “shared learning centers”. 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 a year and learn all the courses with almost no choice). Students will combine courses from traditional universities with online courses. Who has a lot of extra money, he 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 don’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 just one course. Including individuals who will create a course through their personal efforts to share their experience on a particular subject (and, possibly, make money on it).
Step 8. The 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 shut down. Some will adopt the new rules of the game, optimize their work and become great providers of courses and related services for students (dormitories, laboratories, conditions for group self-education, etc.). Course packages will still be offered but according to the open market rules (“Buy 12 courses at once and get a 15% discount!”).
Let's welcome the new system of higher education - Education 2.0.
Step by step, smoothly and organically, we will get a new system of higher education - Education 2.0.
What are the advantages of such a system?
- Dynamism and flexibility . The traditional system of higher education 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 way of learning 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 explore 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 ones by experienced comrades). If a student has changed his goals and wanted to get another profession, then there are no problems. I just changed my plan and went the other way with almost no losses and any bureaucracy.
Changes have already begun. Children who are now 12-14 years old will have a choice when the time comes to get a higher education. There is no monopoly of universities!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/181267/
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