Some of the Challenges Facing Higher Education

• Increased need for higher education. More people are attending college than in the past.  In most of the 20^th century people could survive without a college education, but as we enter a new century there is an increased need for people to attend college.
• Changing Demographics.  The increase in population combined with the first point that more people will need to attend college only exacerbates the problem.
• Increasing Costs.  In California we have been lucky that our public institutions have not faced the same increases as other institutions across the nation.  Still approximately 15% of a family’s income goes towards education for a child that is of college age, whereas just a few years ago it was only 9%.
• Lifelong Learners.  We need to be educating people much longer and throughout their lives.

When these factors are added together it becomes apparent that higher education is not going to meet these challenges using its current model.  This is where the use of technology and looking at different ways to approach the problem become incredibly relevant.

What are the (most important) unsolved problems? What should be included in an agenda for research?

• On an academic scale our institutions are divided into departments and colleges that do not easily morph into new departments or colleges to reflect the way that the fields are growing.  All of the funding and resources go to the departments and colleges not to the new interdisciplinary areas that people are excited about. 

• We need to know more about the way that students learn and especially how they learn via the new technology.  

What prototypes can you point us toward where principles from the science of learning are already being applied (e.g., activities, courses, fields of study, degree programs, or entire systems)?

•  Rensalears' model for studio courses.

• Also, interested in looking at open university options.

What are the major problems with or barriers to redesigning higher education? 

• We don’t change quickly.
•  Our institutions are designed to support a model that is time and place bound.

Do you have any ideas for overcoming them?

• I think it was Sir John Daniel that said, “Technology is the answer.  What is the question?”
• There are many ways that technology will be helpful and that it can be used to help us overcome some of the barriers that we are not able to overcome as institutions.
• This is not to oversimplify the problems and to say that technology will be able to solve all of the problems, but it will definitely be a solid tool with which to begin.

What additional questions should we be asking?

• There are many levels on which to address each of the questions that have been asked. 
• Each question can be answered globally, for the U.S., for California, or for individual campuses.

What do we need to do so that one outcome of the retreat is to effect change (in ways that we want)?

• Outline the problem so that people are drawn away from their day-to-day character and begin to see that what they do really does impact education over the next 5 to 10 years.

• Show people reasonable solutions