Innovative education
What will higher education look like in 2050? That was the question addressed Tuesday night (Nov. 30) by Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University. “We’re at the end of the fourth wave of change in higher education,” Crow began, arguing that research universities followed the initial establishment of higher education, public colleges, and land-grant schools in the timeline of America. In less than a half-century, he said, global market competition will be at its fastest rates of change ever, with several multitrillion-dollar economies worldwide. According to a recent Pew Foundation projection, the nation’s population could reach 435 million, with a large percentage of those residents economically disadvantaged. In addition, climate change will be “meaningfully disruptive” in many parts of the world. The everyday trends seen today, such as declining performance of students at all levels, particularly in math and science, and declining wages and employment among the less educated, will only continue,...