Future of Higher Education

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Higher education's purpose is to equip students for success in life -- in the workplace, in communities, and their personal lives. While this purpose may have remained constant for centuries, the world around colleges and universities is undergoing significant change. Higher education is under pressure to meet greater expectations, whether for student numbers, educational preparation, workforce needs, or economic development. Meanwhile, the resources available are likely to decline. New models, an intense focus on the student experience, and a drive for innovation and entrepreneurism will ensure that higher education continues to meet society's needs. Information technology supports virtually every aspect of higher education, including finances, learning, research, security, and sustainability, and IT professionals need to understand the range of problems their institutions face so they apply IT where it brings greatest value. Creating this future will require collaboration across organizational and national boundaries, bringing together the collective intelligence of people from backgrounds including education, corporations, and government.

Articles and Reports

The Current and Future State of Higher Education, EDUCAUSE Live!, November 2012.
Through a Glass, Brightly: IT’s Impact on Higher Education by 2020, ECAR Bulletin, August 2012.
Information Technology and Tomorrow’s University: A President’s Confessions and Advice. Jolene Koester. EDUCAUSE Review, January/February 2011.
Open Governance in Higher Education: Extending the Past to the Future. Patrick Masson. EDUCAUSE Review, January/February 2011.
Much of the EDUCAUSE Review Magazine, Volume 45, Number 2, March/April 2010 issue is devoted to the future of higher education.
The entire issue of the EDUCAUSE Quarterly Magazine,Volume 33, Number 1, 2010 is largely devoted to anticipating the future of higher education.
The entire issue of the EDUCAUSE Review Magazine, Volume 45, Number 1, January/February 2010 is largely devoted to innovation and the future of higher education.
The Future of Higher Education: Beyond the Campus, EDUCAUSE White Paper, January 2010

Podcasts and Videos

The Future of Mobile Computing. EDUCAUSE Live! April 2011
Future of Higher Education, Diana Oblinger, Midwest Regional Conference, March 2010.
The Future of Higher Education: What Is the IT Professionals Role? Linda A. Jorn, James J. Koenig, David W. Dodd, Robert H. McDonald and Melissa Woo, Midwest Regional Conference, March 2010.

Projects

2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning, KnowledgeWorks Foundation.

April 2013

EDUCAUSE Staff Picks

IT-Based Transformation in Higher Education: Possibilities and Prospects, Greg Jackson, EDUCAUSE, March 2012. A Discussion of how achieving both greater efficiency and better outcomes in higher education through information technology requires a commitment to fundamental, unfettered thinking about the future both within and outside current institutions—the kind of process many institutions are beginning to undertake.
Rethinking Higher Education Business Models, Robert Sheets, Stephen Crawford,and Louis Soares. Center for American Progress. March 2012.
Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time!, EDUCAUSE Review, Volume 45, Number 1, 2010. If colleges and universities open up and embrace collaborative learning and collaborative knowledge production, they have a chance of surviving and even thriving in the networked, global economy of the future.
The Changing Landscape of Higher Education, EDUCAUSE Review, Volume 46, Number 1, 2011. Focusing strictly on technology trends can obscure other environmental factors that are drivers for innovation in higher education. The authors identify ten fissures in the landscape that are creating areas of potentially tectonic change.

Latest News

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EDUCAUSE Library Items for Future of Higher Education

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Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies: May 2, 2012

How can we reach more learners, more effectively, and with greater impact? Education changes lives and societies, but can we sustain the current model? New models and new technologies a…
Rethinking Higher Education Business Models: March 28, 2012

Information technology has long been seen as a major key to meeting this challenge, but the results thus far have been disappointing. In this brief, the authors argue that the fault is not with …
IT-Based Transformation in Higher Education: Possibilities and Prospects: March 19, 2012

If information technologies are to transform higher education, we must exploit opportunities and address problems. At the same time, transformed higher education cannot neglect important dimensi…
Pew Internet Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives: February 29, 2012

Teens and young adults brought up from childhood with a continuous connection to each other and to information will be nimble, quick-acting multitaskers who count on the Internet as their extern…
Medieval Models, Agrarian Calendars, and 21st-Century Imperatives - Sponsored by Vology: May 30, 2012 | A session at the Southeast Regional Conference
In this new century, three forces—declining funding, rising expectations, and rapidly developing technologies—will transform higher education. The loss of public funding has already reshaped th…
Leveraging Service Blueprinting to Rethink Higher Education: October 31, 2011

In this paper, by authors Amy L. Ostrom, Mary Jo Bitner, Kevin A. Burkhard, the Center For American Progress takes the position that higher education is a service, or a service system, and…
As the Future Catches You - Sponsored by NetApp, Silver Partner: March 26, 2012 | A session at the EDUCAUSE Midwest Regional Conference 2012
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Join us for an exciting "travelogue" into the future of higher education by exploring the key challenges in the coming decade. Powerf…
Imagining the Future of Higher Education: December 15, 2011

Imagine a student heading to college in 2022. How will her campus experience differ from ours? What changes has digital technology made? I have been exploring those questions in this space for…
The 2020+ Project: Using WordPress to Organize, Evaluate, and Discuss the College of the Future: March 13, 2012 | A session at the NERCOMP Annual Conference 2012
The provost of Providence College asked the Library+Commons to compile scholarly materials on the future of higher education in order for the Academic Affairs Committee to prepare for the college o…
Bob Heterick Memorial Lecture - If Not Now, When?: February 13, 2012 | A session at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative 2012 Annual Meeting
The challenges facing American education are formidable and seem to call for change more radical than incremental. For more than two decades technology has been "on the verge" of transfor…

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