While most industries have Core skills math grade 8 answer key changed significantly in recent years, higher education has remained relatively the same. Students listen to professors’ lectures at century-old universities and look for answers to complex philosophical questions in the same way as their ancestors did.
But higher education is now at the limit of its strength. The cost of education is increasing enormously. Government funding is falling. And providers of online courses are growing.
Cost is the main barrier to obtaining higher education. In 2011, the Pew Research Center, in a survey on the cost and value of higher education, found that 75 percent of respondents believed that higher education was too expensive for most Americans. 57% also believe that the U.S. higher education system 1st grade printable math games does not provide good opportunities for return on investment.
“Technology has a significant role to play in addressing access and affordability,” said Ben Wildavsky, a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-editor of Inventing Higher Education from Zero: The Promise of Innovation. “The main thing is to do it wisely.
Futurists interviewed as part of the Future of Higher Education Report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project thought about what higher education will look like in 2020. 39% said that higher education will not differ significantly from today’s. But 60 percent believe that higher education will be very different: with extensive use of teleconferencing and distance education. Nevertheless, in written replies to the survey many considered a mixed scenario.
Everything is ready for a shift in how higher education works – the question is how exactly this will happen? Futurists view the coming decades as an opportunity for teachers and students to build relationships solely through the use of technology – an approach known as technology-mediated education. But teachers are trying to keep education in the state it has been in for centuries by integrating technology a little.
These two approaches represent, in a sense, alternative views on the future of education in the coming years, and each of them proposes to make higher education better, more accessible and cheaper.
Lillian Taiz, a history professor at the State University of California and president of the California Faculty Association, which launched the Future of Higher Education campaign, believes it would be a mistake to eliminate traditional university experiences.
For Theis, technology-mediated learning means no student involvement, no physical interaction, and no credibility. Universities will be similar to correspondent training of the XIX century, which cost little, because it accepted the work of students by mail.
She believes that integrating technology into existing higher education is a more successful option. Technology will be a tool for teachers, one of many. Universities will continue to work and will do much the same thing as today.
“I love technology, but it’s not a substitute for the kind of learning that happens when you interact,” Tise said, “it’s an improvement.
Professor Richard DeMillo is the director of the 21st Century Universities Center at Georgia University of Technology and author of Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities. He argues that universities have no place in the new world, at least not as they function now. Learning through technology is the right path.