Exploring Higher Education Futures

Maree ConwayThinking Futures

Tertiary Education Management Conference 6 October 2010

The presentation is mainly images, soI’ve added boxes like this in the online version with some words of explanation.

What will our higher education sector, institutions and our work look like in 20 years time?

Unless we activate our foresight capacity, our ability to think systematically about the future, all our planning about higher education futures is based on what we know about the past and the present.

Essence Optimism

Essence Pessimism

Influence OptimismInfluence Pessimism

Frederick Polak’s Images of the Future – influences our perspectives on the future

Let’s Party

We can make itbetter if we worktogether

It will be a challenge and it probably won’t work, but we have to try

The end of the world is near

If the future is going to be nothing like today, then the current paradigm won’t be good enough. We need to start building a new paradigm today, one that takes the uncertainty of the future, and uses it to understand what our options are.

There are no future facts though. All we have are images and ideas aboutthe future, underpinned by our assumptions about how we think the worldworks now, and will work into the future.

Challenge your assumptions about what’s possible and how you think your organisation will operate into the future.

We must spend time today exploring the shape and form of the future, to avoid looking like this when our best laid plans collide with the future.

QUESTION – when you think about the future of higher education, what images spring to mind?

There are many possible futures. No one can predict the future, except by luck. No one. But we can understand the shape of possible futures, and this activity – thinking about alternative futures – needs to be a pre-requisite for strategy development – right now!

Tertiary Education

Globalisation

Knowledge Economy

Demographics

Consumer Trends

Technology

Work

The Need to Green

There are many drivers of change out there affecting higher education, and you are all living the impact of these every day in your work.

Customise and personalise

Technology that enables

Openness and collaboration

Ways of WorkingHere are four of them

Customise and personalise

CUSTOMYZED

CUSTOMER-MADE

Co-creation is alive and kicking

SNACK CULTURE

Deconstructing products - smaller, faster, cheaper

INTENTION

Transparency of intentions is the Next Big Thing

Technology that enables

These three pieces of technology have the potential to change how work is done in universities. They are already changing the way content is delivered.

http://florian-michahelles.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

A cow that tweets real time yield information…really. If you had this information about your students, what would it mean?

Cloud Computing: huge computer power in your hands

• Always in our pocket• Powerful and inexpensive• Communication-first devices• Full-featured e.g. Cameras, GPS, internet• Easy to download content into• Open to external input & output

CELL PHONES ARE:

Missing: Imagination & Funding© 2004 Marc Prensky

Phones are the delivery tool of choice(slide from Marc Prensky)

ALERTING

Crème Brûlée Cart: no physical office; the owner tweets daily on location & specials – and the customers come…

Photo: http://www.cyberpunkreview.com

Where will technology take us? Think Singularity?

Openness and collaboration

Ways of Working

Increasing globalisation continues to affect the way we work, collaborate and communicate.

Automation is increasing. Over time, more and more jobs will be automated.

If robots and automation become more of a reality though, what are the options for flexible working then?

Leaders of the future will need to nurture and cultivate resilience, personal mastery, integrity, authenticity, intuition and foresight.

ON

Text’nDrive

Okay, whiy would you ever need this app?

People want more than work-life balance, they want work that means something to them

• Director of Emerging Thought

• Chief Zookeeper - of people

• Creative Undertaker

• Thought Jockey

• Chief Imagination/Ideas Office*

• Hacker Relations Manager

• Valuer of Intangible Assets*

• Human Interface Manager*

* Job already exists www.annimac.com

Body part maker Old age wellness manager Memory augmentation surgeon Space pilots, tour guides and architects Vertical farmers Virtual clutter organiser Personal branders Narrowcasters Time broker/trader

Shape of Jobs to Come, Fast Future

QUESTION: have I missed anything that you think will be an important driver of higher education futures?

So given these drivers, what might be some possible futures for higher education? Let’s look at some scenarios.

The scenario development process, from gbn.com

Swinburne’s Future Journey?

Societal Culture

Trad Mod CC

Trad

Mod

CC

Un

iver

sity

Cu

ltu

re

Howard’s End Legend of

Sleepy Hollow

Wall Street

Hello, Mr Chips!

Jurassic Park

Things to Come

A Fish Out of Water

2012+

2012+

2012+1992

2002

Single view of university work

Fragmented view of university work

Universitiesnot valued

Beating your head against a brick wall

Jurassic Park

Universitiesvalued

It shouldn’t be this hard…

Beyond the Divide

Academics and Administrators

Some questions to ponder…

Will universities as we know them today be the dinosaurs of the future?

Will they be leading change or playing catch-up?

Will learning continued to be delivered like this?

What of blended learning?

Will we keep moving further into the digital age?

Or will the knowledge download direct to our brains become a reality?

Will governments still be regulating education to death?

Or will the ties of regulation be cut?

Will education be about serving communities with the rebirth of a new sense of public responsibility for civic engagement?

Or will it be about education as a business, and competition and growth as the driver of strategy?

Will the student become the arbiter of what knowledge is required, when and where?

Will education content and delivery be consumer driven?

Or will the sheer amount and knowledge of information out there cause us to surrender to an institution that promises it will work with us to give us what we need?

Will our institutions continue to look like this?

or will they be more like Disneyland?

Globalisation and community Demographics – ageing population, mobile

population Technology – convergence on mobile devices Workforce – conscious business, new

leadership paradigms, employee expectations Education in society and how it is valued Education as an industry and how it operates Learners – expectations, consumer trends,

generational trends Funding for education Regulation and autonomy

These are some of the trends and drivers of change you need to be paying attention to – today.

One thing is for certain – the world into which we are heading looks like this. It’s complex, it’s interconnected and we don’t know what the outcomes will be.

The future for higher education is NOT going to be like this. It isn’t business as usual with a few tweaks. It isn’t the same old paradigm. It won’t evolve in a linear fashion. It’s going to be a totally different ball game.

Back to Work

How do you get ready for the possible futures that might emerge for higher education?

Find the time to explore trends and drivers: just as we schedule planning workshops, we have to schedule time for strategic thinking

Scan often, scan well

Invest more time in doing this…

…as well as this.

Most importantly, activate your foresight capacity

So that you can shape your future and get to the destination you want

Rather than ending up as a bit player in someone else’s future.

Don’t face the future like this, or it will bite you on the proverbial.

Aim to face it like this – calm and ready for whatever the future brings.

Contact Details

Maree Conwayhttp://thinkingfutures.net

maree.conway@thinkingfutures.net

Tel: 03 9016 9506Skype: mkconway1

Building Strategic Futures Guides:

Getting Started with FuturesEnvironmental Scanning

http://thinkingfutures.net/resources/building-strategic-futures-guides/

Photos from folotia and istockphoto unless otherwise indicated