Sunday, December 16, 2012

Prepare for a new academic world

I left newspaper reporting in 1995, right before the internet transformed the business.
My boys will be college-age in a few years. Their college experience will be vastly different than mine, and probably vastly different than what's going on right now.
The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students.
Online news made many jobs obsolete. You can't fight the tide of free.
There's much duplication of courses at schools across the country. You don't need to pay your local instructor to do what the school can get from another source for cheaper - of free.
Schools need to look to the future with hope - welcoming opportunities for more learning - even if their personal kingdom struggles.

No comments: