Jon Husband referred me to The Impending Demise of the University, an interesting post but similar to many others on the subject.
Enter Don Tapscott, who is looking at the challenges the digital revolution poses to the fundamental aspects of the University.
“Universities are finally losing their monopoly on higher learning”, he writes. “There is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn.”
My major take-away from this article is that larger institutions will have a greater challenge in the near future than smaller ones. This would put academia back to where it was for the 500 years prior to the post-war boom – a niche market for the rich and intellectuals.
The loss of monopoly creates new openings for new academic business models, especially disruptive ones.
George Siemans had a similar post a few weeks past. However, as I commented on his post, for most attending the University these days, there is more to the university attendence these days than learning. I have many students that live on campus even though their family lives minutes away. They are enculturated into university life which allows them to create contacts that will help them later on in life. Look at the comment that Michael Payton left on my blog.
Until online learning can recreate the social power structures that universities provide, there will always be a traditional bricks and mortar university. However, as universities begin to use the power of tools such as facebook, these alternatives may replace the traditional university for learning.
Thanks, Virginia. I don’t think that online learning will disrupt universities as much as online unlearning will. I must say that for myself, few (almost none) of my business contacts come from either of the universities I attended nor from my career in the military. My observation is that online co-operation is not recreating power structures but rather changing them. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it will remain so.