Higher Education in the Information Age

How higher education may look like in the future

From Mark Weedman (hat tip Professor Arnold Kling)

A school in this Google model derives its identity from its faculty and curriculum, or its “software” while de-emphasizing the importance of its infrastructure, such as its classroom, library and other campus facilities. In other words, it is possible to provide a first-class education in a school without a full range of campus facilities (or maybe even a school without a traditional campus) as long as the curriculum gives students access to the right kind of critical thinking, formation and training. It used to be that to provide a first-class education required institutions to assemble all three components: faculty, library and classrooms. The Google model suggests that it is possible to re-conceive that structure entirely by shifting the focus to curriculum (and the necessary faculty to teach it) and then adapting whatever “hardware” is available to give the curriculum a platform.

The key to this model is the curriculum. There are a number of reasons why traditional higher education institutions have gotten away with fairly generic curricula (i.e., a series of courses taught in classrooms via lectures and discussion), but one of the most important is that the other components offset the inadequacies of curriculum. Stripping away the infrastructure exposes the curriculum and demands that it be effective and have integrity on its own. Stripping away the infrastructure, however, also frees the curriculum to provide new and dynamic ways of learning. If you have a classroom or library, you have to use it. If you do not have a classroom, then entirely new educational opportunities present themselves.

The information age will transform the way we live.