The Dawn of the Academic Revolution: An Individual Contribution to Shaping the Future of Universities

Abstract

A dramatic global socio-economic transformation is challenging the traditional university models. Disruptive technologies are quickly changing the way we live and work, inducing shifts in occupational structures and pushing demand toward new skills and competences. Several factors such as the rise of neoliberalism and knowledge economy, the 2008 global economic crisis, Fourth Industrial Revolution, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the continuing emergence of online learning, the amount of student debt, and employers’ dissatisfaction are generating pressure to reconsider global higher education systems. The key stakeholder groups—governments, education institutions, employers, and learners are seeking for new models that are more learner-oriented. The power struggle between various tensions within the current volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous landscape generates a range of scenarios for the universities’ futures. Regardless of which scenario prevails, it is likely that academia will undergo a significantly dynamic transformation in the near future. Following a literature review shaped by personal experience in higher education, the author analyzes macro factors that may affect higher education in the forthcoming decade, with the aim of supporting strategic planning by universities. By generating a set of potential scenarios—Transformative, Market, and Fortress, the author identifies three possible futures to add to the debate about the direction and intensity of the required higher education transformation.