A New Global Agenda by Ayton-Shenker Diana;

Author:Ayton-Shenker, Diana;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781538106037
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated
Published: 2018-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Designing the University of the Future

A New Global Agenda for Higher Education

Mary R. Watson

What is the role of higher education in moving forward a New Global Agenda for change? As has been clearly articulated elsewhere in this volume, there are many pressing global challenges facing our world today: escalating consequences of climate change, inequality, political conflict, forced migration, and rising intolerance, among others. None of these dynamics are new, of course. Yet, we find ourselves now at a perceived tipping point, where, in the aggregate, these issues seem existential in their force and magnitude. We seem to be challenging the continued existence of the earth itself.

Agendas have been set and reset to focus our global and local efforts to address these systemic problems. The Sustainable Development Goals are one laudable example, and they provide us with a rich typology of challenges in which to situate our efforts. Yet no agenda, including the Sustainable Development Goals, can capture the human imagination and will that is required to face forward into the winds of sea change ahead. For this, we need living, breathing human beings who will enact that change themselves. Many of them spend time studying in universities.

One of things that inspires deep hope in me is seeing young people around the world advocating for, and then creating, a new way forward. As a university dean, professor, and researcher myself, I play a role in building on the long history of higher education as an instrument to advance social progress. I am privileged and inspired by partnerships with students who lead us along the way. But the larger higher education system as a whole is in trouble: it is deeply atrophied, with learning mechanisms developed for a generation that has now passed, and with a purpose that no longer fits the energy of those who seek learning. Our current system was designed for knowledge acquisition and life preparation, concepts that focus on success in the status quo system, drawing on principles of the dominant disciplinary canon that are no longer relevant. Now is the time to reset the purposes of higher education to meet calls for learning in action that include diverse voices and viewpoints suitable for understanding the complex challenges we face.

My purpose in this chapter is to propose how we should redesign the system of higher education to meet learners in our current global moment. Many young (and not so young) leaders, activists, and innovators embody an emergent bias toward change, and they form the very force that is needed to advance our collective progress. To be sure, we do see some institutional change unfolding, especially in networks of universities that currently constitute a powerful force in moving the higher education system forward. To animate how we might imagine the university of the future, I draw on interviews with global colleagues whose networks are remaking education as we speak, and together with them, I propose a New Global Agenda for higher education.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.