The Future of University

Link: Importance of Libraries

For several years, there has been a multitude of doom sayers about the future of universities. That fear, as been, mostly, overstated. In this Bloomberg Article, Tyler Cowen gives an initial proposal for what an University designed today would look like:

It would have two modes, face to face and online. Face to face would include living in campus, although not mandatory. Online would be available worldwide, and the application would simply be a 3 month free online course. If needed, online students would be required to come to campus once a year for exams.

Core subjects would be: writing well, economics, public policy, statistical reasoning. All the rest would be optional and as varied as possible.

Every student, on top of their normal course grades, will have a Github-like certifications, which is not needed to get graduate, but can complement their CV. The market will decide how much to value this side certifications.

Teachers would not have tenure. They will get more money based on the students they attract, which they can do via their research, online presence, mentoring and teaching capabilities.

Teachers do not design their tests or grade students, this way, there would be no incentive to inflate student grades.

This Future University would be cheaper to students and pay teachers more.

On top of these ideas, I would like to add the importance of study groups, critical thinking and debate, presentation skills, and computer science skills.

Universities are not a place to download knowledge. It’s much more than that. Downloading information is far from an exclusivity from these institution nowadays.

So what are they? A platform, accelerator for professional growth. That professional growth needs some new characteristics:

Comunity Oriented
Major focus on mentoring / coaching
Project-based, not topics based

Also, it would be worth thinking about how to have diversity by design and have new financing options besides fixed tuitions.