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What factors and forces may have the most profound impact on the future of the university? Around which is there the greatest degree of uncertainty? |
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What factors and forces may have the most profound impact on the future of the university? Around which is there the greatest degree of uncertainty? |
As part of the scenario-building process in New Orleans, seminar participants created a list of key factors and driving forces--those issues that may have the most pronounced effects on how the seminar's (and the project's) focal question is answered in the coming decade.
The headings for the key factors and environmental forces appear here exactly as they were listed by the facilitator during the brainstorming session in New Orleans. Participants were each given 25 votes and were asked to allot these votes to those issues they believed were both most significant to the question at hand and most uncertain. The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of votes participants gave to each item.
1. Bricks and mortar vs. virtual: not just time and place but institutional
(28)
2. Limits of traditional funding (23)
3. Intellectual property rights (27)
4. Reward system (2)
5. Role of newly emerging markets (6)
6. Demographics by culture and age (21)
7. Departmental/disciplinary boundaries (5)
8. Tenure (1)
9. Enabling maturation (1)
10. Physical definition of community (6)
11. Certification/credentialing (18)
12. "Cycle time"-4 years (3)
13. Customization of product/service by age, by learning styles, by type
of intelligence (17)
14. New forms of representing knowledge--broadening access (14)
15. Different levels of fluency and literacy in new media (7)
16. Research conundrum: costs going up, perceived value going down (7)
17. Public perception of scholarship (14)
18. Broader set of educational choices (10)
19. Motivation (1)
20. Public requirement for accountability (7)
21. Cost of technology (13)
22. Resistance to change: rhythms of change in society faster,
autonomy/individualism, incentive system (19)
23. Resilience of the
university (1)
24. Narrow elitism/pluralism/democracy/ as related to verbal/analytic
skills as opposed to visual/image skills. (6)
25. Social dimension of learning (7)
26. Curriculum (5)
27. Privatization of knowledge/IPR (5)
28. Limits of growth in storage (0)
29. Home learning (3)
30. Industrial apprenticeships (0)
31. Competition from software companies (8)
32. Trend from liberal education toward skills training (9)
33. From learning-distinct from doing- to Doing as learning (7)
34. Sense of urgency and potential for crisis (0)
35. Other nations as competitors (0)
36. Popular culture as "supplier" and influencer: convergence of education
and entertainment (35)
37. Competing certification (2)
38. Skills required for new media (19)
39. Solo performance/team efforts (4)
40. Cyber community/ virtual community (8)
41. Primary care educator (8)
42. New skills to learn (10)
43. From have/have nots to know/know nots (34)
44. Political influence (political funding) (22)
45. Short term expectations (0)
46. Deinstitutionalization of learning (18)
47. Higher education and a civil society (12)
48. Religion, fundamentalism (3)
49. Wars, the draft (0)
50. Decay of the middle style (4)
51. Nation state-cultures (0)
52. Security threats (0)
53. Standards (10)
54. Changes in K-12 as supplier (16)
Using conceptual association and weighing the number of votes each issue received, the New Orleans group determined that three clusters emerged from the list of key factors and environmental forces.
