Future Of Higher Education Research Articles

Journal Work in the Time of Coronavirus

Journal Work in the Time of Coronavirus Jennifer L. Airey This is not the preface I intended to write. This preface was going to focus on our journal internships, but then a deadly pandemic upended all our lives with a speed that I could never have imagined, and a disrupted preface became the least of anyone's concerns. Now we are all working from home, socially distanced, and facing deep uncertainties about health and safety, the United States' economy, and the future of higher education itself. In such times, my natural tendency is to process life through the lens of fiction. I am hardly alone in this; movies like Contagion (2011) and Outbreak (1995) have shot to the top of the national streaming charts.1 Personally, alongside binge-watching Tiger King (2020) with the rest of America, I have been trying to cope by rereading Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) and feeling closer to my early modern forebears than ever before. For years, I have taught my students about the closing of theaters in times of plague and about the early modern antitheatrical belief that the playhouse was a site of both physical and moral contagion. I certainly never expected to live through a time when our own theaters and playhouses would have to shut down for the "plague," when the early modern remedy of distance would be the only hope available to us, too. I have also been thinking about Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826), which I wrote about extensively in my recently published monograph, Religion Around Mary Shelley (2019).2 Shelley did not live through a pandemic, but she did experience great loss—of her husband, her children, her half-sister, and many friends—and at the age of twenty-six, she wrote the first post-apocalyptic novel to represent creatively the experience of constant bereavement. She wrote in her journal on 24 May 1824, "The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions, extinct before me."3 I have always loved the novel and have taught it several times, but it takes on new resonance in our current historical moment, with scenes of people calling out to a dysfunctional government to save them even as "commerce had ceased"; disease bringing out both the worst and the best in ordinary folk; the public hoping the change in season will save them from the disease (in The Last Man, characters wait for the winter to freeze the virus, while we pin our hopes on increased temperatures); and people finding in religion both solace and exploitation.4 For me personally, what resonates most in Shelley's novel is the speed and suddenness of the plague's onset. Much of the book has nothing to do with the pandemic; it spends many pages detailing the political intrigues and romantic entanglements of two main couples. [End Page 7] The disease itself does not emerge until midway through volume two, and it does not begin to affect England until the end of that volume. The plague originates in a far-away place in the east, and it does not mean anything to the novel's main characters . . . until suddenly it does. My own year has been deeply wrapped up in local concerns, serving as Faculty Senate Vice President in a time of university turmoil, and those concerns were all consuming, too . . . until suddenly they were not. On Monday, March 9—less than three weeks ago as I write this preface—I heard the first rumblings that we might need to shift to online learning after spring break. At the time, that conversation seemed overly alarmist to me, but within twenty-four hours, the stock market was in freefall, COVID-19 cases were being diagnosed in Tulsa, and we were moving immediately to social distancing and online classes. By Friday, all of our lives—faculty, students, staff, and administrators alike—had shifted in ways that did not seem possible on Monday. Now university concerns, when we can think about them, are both perversely comforting (because they are familiar, a reminder of...

The future of higher education (HE) hangs on innovating our assessment – but are we ready, willing and able?

ABSTRACT Graduates are entering a sociotechnological world, with teaching and assessment needing to reflect that, by shifting from a ‘recall-on-paper’ to ‘do-it-for-real’. With increasing student numbers, it is not feasible to have staff-student ratios and round-the-clock availability required to provide instant feedback and ever-more interactive teaching sessions, so digital solutions are the only option. There is already growing comfort with using computers in formal assessment; however, more work is required to extend beyond performance indicators enabling digital assessments, to addressing how students apply their learning to relevant work-based scenarios. This opinion piece discusses the issues HE currently face to ensure students develop the employability skills that equip them to be proficient in the skills directly related to their degree subject but also transferable to other graduate careers. It raises possible solutions to current technological problems in developing more computer-based assessment, to enable academics to design assessments that develop the capabilities students need.

Conditional Cash Transfers: Expanding Higher Education through Social and Economic Support in Pakistan

This study was motivated by the initiatives of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan that provides various conditional cash transfers (CCTs) to youth education in the less developed areas of the country. The CCTs are given to youth in the shape of HEC Need-Based Scholarships (HEC-NBS) and the Prime Minister’s Fee Reimbursement Scheme (PMFRS). This study investigates the impact of the CCTs on the educational performance of the students in the under-developed areas of Pakistan. Data were gathered through self-administered questionnaires from the students who were awardees of the scholarships. A total of 350 responses were used for the final analysis. A statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 25 was used to get the data analyzed. It was found that the two CCTs (HEC-NBS and PMFRS) substantially affect the educational performance of the students. The PMFRS was the most dominant predictor of the students’ performance indicating a high tangible source of students’ motivation. This study helps in both theoretical and practical spectrums. It practically helps expand the higher education to every nook of the country as well as light the policy-making outlines to sustain the CCTs for the better future of higher education in Pakistan.

An Interview with Peter Smith on His New Book

The future of higher education is one in which adult learners who continue to learn on the job will receive both credit and respect for their informal learning. In this interview Dr. Peter Smith of the University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) discusses his life work and new book.

Teaching physics for tomorrow: Equipping students to change the world

Why should engineers have all the fun?

Artificial Intelligence and the Academy's Loss of Purpose

This article speculates on the future of higher education as online technology, specifically adaptive learning and analytics as infused by artificial intelligence software, develops and matures. Online and adaptive learning have already advanced within the academy, but the most significant changes are yet to come. These evolving technologies have the potential to change the traditional roles in our colleges and universities to the point that many educators will reconsider their purposes as teachers, researchers and administrators.

Design Thinking, Collaborative Innovation, and Neoliberal Disappointment: Cruel Optimism in the History and Future of Higher Education

The extensive amount of academic labor of minoritized faculty, especially at research institutions, has been well documented in the academic literature. Three tenured associate professors at The University of Texas present the genesis, evolution, and postscript of leading and serving in an initiative to de-silo and encourage collaboration across the university, culminating in a collaboratively taught course. Integrating concepts of teaching in the neoliberal university context, the gendered and raced distribution of academic labor, and slow scholarship, the authors discuss the pedagogically productive process of collective teaching and decision-making, the frustrations inherent when employing radical pedagogy, and institutional shifts that prioritize a customer-service model of teaching, learning, and rapid research productivity. The authors conclude with reflections and recommendations for scholar-researchers similarly placed in institutional contexts where encroachments upon academic freedom and an embrace of business models collide with personal goals of career satisfaction, collective work, and improving pedagogy.

Visions of value: Leading the development of a view of the University Library in the 21st century

Over the course of 2018 the University of Sheffield Library conducted a series of interviews and workshops with stakeholders as part of a strategic project to reflect on the value of the university library in the 21st century. Using a mixed methodology, participants were asked to reflect upon the future Higher Education (HE) environment for the university and, for academic participants, their discipline. In this context participants were also asked to reflect upon the future value of the University Library in a series of questions designed to elicit value statements using a tool which the project group have called the ‘Wheel of Value’. The resulting reflections upon the future environment have been grouped into four categories reflecting the drivers for change; Digitalisation, Student Experience, Diversification and Collaboration recognizing that there is considerable overlap and interconnection between these. The reflections on the future value of the library are presented by Wheel of Value higher order categorization. This approach proved useful in eliciting responses from participants in the face of recognized difficulty in getting beyond current views of the library and the approach is recommended to other universities looking to carry out a similar project. The results of this research will be used to inform the development of a view of the library for the purpose of engaging with our university community and key partners.

The public good and accepting inbound international students in Japan

This study is part of an international joint project on the Future of Higher Education which is led by Centre for Global Higher Education.

Future Skills and Higher Education “Future Skill Readiness”

The discourse on the future of higher education is already an old one. Higher education Institutions are used to it and are slow in turning around which makes them stable and enduring organisations. In a way institutions and society are benefitting from their internal protection mechanisms which goes along with the status of autonomy and independence they are granted in democratic societies. However, in recent times it becomes clear that we are approaching a peak point in the “race between technology and education” as the Dutch Nobel Prize winner Jan Tinbergen called it about four decades ago (Tinbergen, 1975). One popular theory to explain the rising trend in inequality was first put forward by the Dutch Nobel Prize winner in Economics Jan Tinbergen over four decades ago. He characterised wage inequality as being the outcome of a “race between education and technology”. In this theory, technology increases the relative demands for more skilled labour while education increases the relative supplies of such labour. Thus, rising inequality implies that technology is winning this race. It is characterized by technology, global and globally networked societies, institutions and individuals and education systems as a whole will have to make the next move in this race – and evolve in the light of to these developments, change their mode of working and evaluate their objectives. This is especially true for higher education amongst educational institutions, as the last autonomous and self-governed institutions in the education sphere. One important piece in this puzzle is the question of direction – change in which direction? What are the new skills which are needed for our societies to be sustainable and our organisations to be fit for the changed environments?

Editorial: Introduction to ‘Futures of Higher Education’ special issue

One of the main missions of higher education is to prepare the young (but not exclusively them) for future challenges. It not only has the potential to change individual lives but it can also make the social fabric more resilient and adaptive. However, presently this future is highly uncertain and fraught with risks. This radical uncertainty makes it difficult to identify future-proof knowledge, skills and capacities. Moreover, it also raises questions about the possible roles higher education should play in future societies.We argue that higher education should be an active agent in shaping future society. In order to fulfil its potential as such, this type of agency-orientation should transcend its core activities, like research and teaching, currently built into its institutional settings. This special issue highlights certain possible directions for change as far as HEIs are concerned. These future possibilities are in relation to learning, ethics, fairness, community involvement and the role of research at institutions which were formerly teaching-oriented. These can be seen as first steps towards understanding what organisational changes are needed for HEIs to maintain their social relevance and to actively shape their environment.

Leading and shaping new futures for higher education

Leading and shaping new futures for higher education

Rhetorical Movement, Vulnerability, and Higher Education

ABSTRACTMobility is the engine that makes rhetoric work. It's integral to rhetoric itself and yet is also potentially destabilizing of both human subjectivity and of the institutions—including higher education—in which we reside. This essay defines rhetoric's mobility by considering Burke's action-motion pair, Giorgio Agamben's stasis, and Deleuze and Guattari's nomadism, taking account of how rhetoric moves us, and how we move, rhetorically, in and amid institutions. Rhetorical movement has less to do with movement from here to there and more to do with flux, disturbance, and—potentially—vulnerability and violence. This essay takes up this premise about rhetoric's mobility—as disturbance, potential, “more”—in order to understand what it would mean to deploy rhetoric in discussions about the future of higher education.

Embracing ambiguity

PurposeEmbracing reflective practice and retrospection, with a goal of identifying commonalities, this paper aims to examine delivery of engineering subjects in both traditional higher education (THE) and technical and vocational education and training (TVET).Design/methodology/approachReflections on actions and autoethnography were used to examine the teaching and learning experiences of three educators across two higher education (HE) institutions (HEIs) in the greater Chinese context. Literature reviews and historical contexts are outlined to support the approaches and insights identified.FindingsThis paper presents a number of common characteristics and challenges identified across both THE and TVET. Drawing on the successful embrace of ambiguity and change in recent software engineering (SE) development paradigms, recommendations are made for how the agile SE themes can be applied in a larger sense to address the wider challenges facing both THE and TVET.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that engineering education has been examined and contrasted in the contexts of THE and TVET. The similarities and common challenges may represent a new focus for related work, and the presented insights, from agile methodologies in SE, represent a new perspective for viewing future HE and TVET sustainability.

Tumbleweed Connections

Tumbleweed Connections Jeffrey R. Di Leo (bio) The Annual Meeting of the Modern Languages Association of America is one of the high points of the academic year. Scholars from English, comparative literature, and foreign language departments from across the United States convene after the winter holidays for four days of scholarly presentations, book exhibitions, and—for the fortunate few—job interviews. This event is both a barometer of the relative health of one of the largest branches of the humanities as well as one of the few opportunities we have to see our profession and its participants in action. Hundreds of sessions are organized on the wide-ranging themes and issues that represent the current interests and needs of the members of the MLA. To get a sense of the range, this past fall, the first two sessions were "Fund-Raising 101: How to Raise Money for Your Programs and Events" (Session 001) and "DH Curious? Digital Humanities Tools and Technologies for Students, Emerging Scholars, Faculty Members, Librarians, and Administrators" (Session 002), and the last two sessions were devoted to "Marxism and the Future of Higher Education" (Session 746) and "Critical Race Theory and New Directions for Victorian Studies" (Session 747). These sessions serve as a living matrix of the shape of the profession and its interests. More sessions one year as opposed to previous years serves as evidence of growing interest in a topic; fewer sessions on a topic over the years attests to diminishing interest. And starting the program this year with a session on raising money says everything about the most urgent problem facing the profession: decreasing funding. Over the years the convention and the organization have grown considerably in size and diversity. Back in 1889, when the seventh annual convention was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sixty-two people attended to hear nineteen presentations in five sessions along with a variety of reports. All of the members of the MLA at that time were men. To highlight this fact, Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University, gave a welcome address to the association on Thursday night, and then invited "the members of the Association and their wives" to a reception at his home on 17 Quincy Street after the formal address to the organization by its president, the poet, James Russell Lowell. The 1889 program also explicitly notes "The attendance of Ladies at the Sessions of the Convention will be expected and welcomed." The twentieth-century though would bring major changes to the demographics of the MLA, not the least of which would be the steadily increasing role and status of women in the organization and the profession. In 1989, one-hundred years later, the MLA Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession reported that about 48 percent of doctorates in English and 64 percent of doctorates in foreign languages that year were awarded to women. And of those doctorates in English, 656 were awarded to white women and 54 to women of color; of the doctorates in foreign languages, 180 were awarded to white women and 34 to women of color. Moreover, though the MLA president was male in 1989 (Victor Brombert), women held the position the year before (Barbara Herrnstein Smith, 1988) and the year after (Catherine R. Stimpson, 1990). In addition, since 1985, the three executive directors of the MLA have all been women (Phyllis Franklin, 1985-2002; Rosemary G. Feal, 2002-2017; and Paula M. Krebs, 2017-present). Furthermore, a 1995 Survey of Humanities Doctorates conducted by the National Opinion Research Center reported that among Assistant Professors of English, approximately 16 percent were white men, 23 percent were white women, 22 percent were men of color, and 34 percent were women of color; among Assistant Professors of Foreign Languages, approximately 14 percent were white men, 26 percent were white women, 16 percent were men of color, and 31 percent were women of color. Nevertheless, at the highest rank, there were wide disparities based on gender and minority status. Full Professors of English were about 46 percent white men, 22 percent were white women, 27 percent were men of color, and 24 percent were women of color; among Full Professors of Foreign...

The new technological and information revolution and the future of higher education

The intensity and the consequences of transformations of the educational system and particularly of higher education’s depend on a number of factors. These include global, regional and national political, demographic, socio-economic, technological and cultural changes. They depend also on the development level and the structure of the given economies.In the present era of global transition to knowledge based societies and economies highereducation is playing a centrally important role much beyond the educational system ongraduate, post graduate level and lifelong learning-also in Hungary. The strategies for itsdevelopment should include the triangle of its task: educate, research and innovate.

Trends of Change in and the Future of Higher Education

Since the foundation of the first modern university in Berlin in 1809 as a realization of Immanuel Kant’s idea, this special institution has gone through many changes in terms of its functions and operational models. The most significant trend today is probably Uberization involving all aspects of higher heducation. Uberization, in our opinion, will lead to the non-campus higher education model and perhaps the death of the traditional university.
 Keywords
 Higher education, Uberization, new techonologies, non-campus higher education
 References
 [1] Graff, Gerald, Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education, New York: Norton, 1993.[2] Readings, Bill, The University in Ruins, Cambridge: Harvard U.P., 1996.[3] Kant, Immanuel, The Conflict of the Faculties [1798], trans. Mary J. Gregor, New York: Abaris Books, 1979. [4] Kant, Immanuel, What is Enlightenment? 1784.[5] Bộ giáo dục và đào tạo, Thông tư Số 22 / 2017/TT-BGDĐT, Ban hành Quy định điều kiện, trình tự, thủ tục mở ngành đào tạo và đình chỉ tuyển sinh, thu hồi quyết định mở ngành đào tạo trình độ đại học.

The future of online testing and assessment: question quality in MOOCs

If MOOCs are to play a role in the future of higher education it is imperative that we critically examine how they are currently functioning. In particular, questions persist about the role MOOCs will play in the future of formal accredited learning. As the focus turns from informal and free to formal, accredited and paid, greater scrutiny will be brought to bear on the quality of the courses themselves. Although there have been some empirical studies into the quality of MOOCs, a notable gap exists in that such research has not examined Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) which are a key component of much MOOC assessment and testing. Previous research suggests that flawed MCQ items may compromise the reliability and validity of these assessments, potentially leading to inconsistent outcomes for students. This study was hence designed to examine MCQ quality in MOOCs. 204 MCQs were analysed, from a selection of 18 MOOCs, sampling the domains of computing, social science and health sciences. Over 50% of MCQs (112) contained at least one item flaw; 57 MCQs contained multiple flaws. A large proportion of MOOC MCQs violated item-writing guidelines, which is comparable with previous studies examining the prevalence of flaws in assessments in more traditional educational contexts. The problem of low quality MCQs can be ameliorated by appropriate faculty training and pre- and post-test quality checks. These activities are essential if MOOCs are to become a force that can enable enhanced and improved pedagogies in the future of higher education, instead of simply proceeding to replicate existing poor practices at scale.

The future of higher education in Ireland: a postcolonial perspective

ABSTRACTThe transformation that Irish higher education (HE) has undergone since the mid-2000s has been particularly rapid and unidirectional. Following the Global Financial Crisis, the Irish Government sought to take control of tertiary education in an attempt to shield the country from future economic shocks. This paper succinctly discusses the circumstances leading to the current policy position and what these changes have meant for Irish HE. A postulation that neoliberalism will inevitably deepen further within Irish HE will be explored through the lens of Postcolonial theory. In conclusion, I will show that the application of this theoretical stance may succeed in buffering many of the effects of neoliberalism to ensure ample space in HE for all subject areas and disciplines.

Soft Structure vs. Soft Measure: Fleshing Out the Tension in EU Education Policy

EU Education policy is ‘an a priori very lightly Europeanized policy area’ (Alex Warleigh-Lack & Ralf Drachenberg, Spillover in a Soft Policy Era? Evidence from the Open Method of Coordination in Education and Training, 18(7) J. Eur. Pub. Pol’y 1000 (October 2011)), belonging to the weakest type of Union competence, and of all EU policies, it is the one most strongly influenced by open method of coordination (OMC) (Sacha Garben, The Future of Higher Education in Europe: The Case for a Stronger Base in EU Law, LEQS Paper No. 50/2012, 13 (July 2012)), a policy instrument known for its ‘soft’ character. Yet there is a tension between the soft education policy competence and the soft measure of OMC employed in its framework. EU soft competences are generally explained by Member States’ reluctance to attribute competences to the EU in sensitive policy areas, but the soft instruments used in these areas nevertheless ensure compliance, while evading and bypassing competence and decision-making constraints. This general finding, made clear with the help of fiscal federalism and public choice approaches to EU education policy is also relevant in areas of (exclusive) EU legislative competence where soft instruments are used (such as customs policy). The present article tries to shed light on the various manifestations of softness and their ambivalent relationship with the help of the fiscal federalism and the public choice approach.