Education is changing faster than
many officials and traditional systems can understand. A study by Dr. Starr
describes how education in the U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, South Africa and
New Zealand is changing rapidly based on a number of pressures. She conducted
semi-structured focus groups with a 199 participants in her target markets to
understand how technology is changing everything.
Pressures in budgeting and financing
are apparent. As traditional education becomes more expensive state and
national budgets are increasingly strained. This is creating pressure to change
and streamline the educational process. New policies and procedures are
designed to reign in those costs and educational excesses.
Universities are also finding
themselves challenged by new technology and learning methods. In multiple ways
it is making some traditional universities obsolete and they have opted to try
and adapt new technology quickly. Despite their best efforts technology is
adapting faster than they can find ways of implementing it.
The nature of work of professors is
also going through a tough transition. Professors won’t have the large support
of union power going forward, will need to be available 24/7, and will likely
have their working conditions changed. This doesn’t mean it will be positive or
negative but the way things were done in the past are not likely to be done in
the future.
Higher education is moving through a
developmental period in which the seeds were sewn 15 or so years ago.
Technology, globalization, budgets and the demographics of students have placed
pressures in new places and cracking higher education as we know it. The rapid
change of higher education is likely to speed in the near future as new
successes and failures in educational models become apparent.
Starr, K. (2014). Implications of
radically transformational challenges confronting education business
leadership. Business Education &
Accreditation, 6 (2).
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