What are the factors Impacting the Future of Higher Education?

Funding and changing governments and the economy

Perhaps the main factor impacting the future of higher education is the gap between private market labor demands and what current curricula and practice in higher education is able to provide. Without addressing this critical gap, addressing issues in unemployment and its ensuing consequences will be impossible. Moreover, higher education is impacted by the need to retain talent in training and teaching capacities.

To my understanding the factors impacting the future of higher education are diverse. It's because of difference of social, cultural, economical, political and educational levels in societies belonging to various regions of the globe. Impacts change with the change of circumstances so we can't find universality in it. 

Anyhow one thing is common all over the world. It's the challenge of growing competition in the sector of higher education. More institutions are coming in this sector with new ideas and technologies to stand out of the crowd. It's pushing the sector towards more tough and innovative fields to label themselves most modern institution in the world. 

Although it seems hard for the learners but in fact it's a kind of human development which is imperative to move forward in the world. 

A cursory glance at the socio, economic and political context of the world suggests that there are a number of factors impacting on the future of higher education. Higher Education thinkers and planners should be aware of the economic imperatives that drive higher education.  The expensive nature of this type of education suggests that planning for the future will require an intelligent analyses of the global environment from an economic, social and political position.  The first question relates to what kind of world do we want to live in?  Should it be plagued with violence and dissatisfaction amongst the youth?  It is clear that instability and lack of opportunities creates the conditions for instability.  Higher education must impact on the vulnerablity experienced by the youth.  Higher education will have to recreate itself in order to create a better world.  So violence, instability and vulnerable youth should influence to some extent higher education.  Secondly, is there a relationship between the lack of a focus on arts and social sciences and the current social environment.  Are there sufficient social commentators in higher education that can read this environment and engage critically about it.  Without a relevant education and appropriate education, what value does higher education offer?  We are forced to ask the question is higher education planning and delivery addressing the current challenges of the world?  What is the purpose of higher education?  My view is that higher education produces the thinkers for society in all facets of life.  It does not seem that we are producing the knowledge and skills set that is required in the21st century.  A quick analyses of the data that captures the reality of world suggests that there is more instability than stability, more discord that harmoney and more fear than courage.  More people are living on the poverty line at a global level than ever before.  A small percentage of the population of the world owns the majority of resources.  War and tension is at the highest levels since World War II.  It follows that for higher education to become relevant it has to take on board the current political, economic and social conditions that characterise the21st century.

In recent years information and communication technologies (ICT) have made implementing extraordinary and revolutionary models of education possible. Participation of various colleges and universities in adopting new models of teaching and learning via the Internet, however, has been uneven. Up to now, the role of ICT in higher education has been largely to support the traditional models of teaching and learning (Kirkup and Kirkwood,2005).

What is more troubling is that colleges and universities have not changed their organizational models to take better advantage of what technology has to offer. Most universities today are organized based on the same traditional model set centuries ago, when the first institutions of higher education appeared in Europe.

The key motivation for adopting ICT, however, has been to increase the ability of an institution to compete for student enrollments with all the others. Potentially, in a world that students are no longer bound by geographical location, they have a wide array of education providers to choose from.  This inevitably increases competition among colleges and universities that are compelled to compete on a global stage to attract qualified students.

A recent report by Parker, Lenhart and Moore (2011)indicated that89 percent of four-year public institutions offer courses via the Internet, while the participation rate for private institutions is60 percent. Nevertheless, the world of distance education has touched the lives of only23 percent of students who have taken at least one course via the Internet in the past10 years. As the report further indicated, more than half (51%) of college presidents surveyed believed that online courses are equal in value than campus-based courses. However, the public perception of the value of courses offered via the Internet is not as positive. Only29 percent of the general pubic, and39 percent of students believed that there is parity between these two modes of instruction. Nevertheless,50 percent of college presidents predicted that by2021 most of their students would be taking courses via the Internet.

.Their predication is partially supported because entrepreneurs and some state governors have realized that ICT has made new forms of educational service institutions possible. Among the prominent forms of such organizations are those that aggregate courses and educational resources of several colleges and universities and offer them to students residing in dispersed geographical locations. An early example of such an institution is the Western Governors University (WGU), which was founded in1996.  What is unique about WGU is that it operates on a competency-based model. Learners receive credit for what they know and can do and not necessarily based on how much time they have spent in a course. Such learner-centered models of higher education have also increased the possibility of providing individualized learning environments to learners. In such environments, learners can pace themselves based on several variables, such as, their prior knowledge of the subject, as well as their tolerance for independence or need for structure. This is an area which we will delve into in detail in this book.

Companies such as Coursera, UDACITY, and edX in the private sector which have roots in MIT and Stanford university are also aggregating courses and offering them to students the world over, although some of their offerings are not credit bearing for learners. In contrast, Semester Online is the first-of-its-kind program to offer for-credit undergraduate courses through a consortium of top-tier universities that includes Brandeis University, Duke University, Emory University, Northwestern University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Notre Dame, University of Rochester, Vanderbilt University, Wake Forest University and Washington University in St. Louis.

While universities have been able to extend their course offerings beyond the walls of their campuses through the use of ICT, they have not been as successful in innovative uses of ICT to change the management structure of the university. As a result, instructional innovations, such as, personalized learning will not yield the benefits they should in reducing the cost of education if they are implemented within the constraints of an organizational system that is not responsive to a post-industrial and dynamic model of teaching and learning . For example, if the majority of institutions continue to enroll new students only twice a year, and move all of them through the system at the same pace regardless of their personal levels of performance, it would be difficult if not impossible to shorten the current5 to6 years that it takes for a student to graduate from a so-called four-year institution no matter how well s/he performs.

Lack of self motivation and financial problem