Is it time for higher education
to find better ways to meet the needs of today’s learners? Joseph Aoun,
President of Northeastern University, clearly thinks so. During an interview
with MIT Technology Review (2018), Aoun discussed the impact of AI on higher
education and outlined the urgent need for change in institutions of higher
learning. Much of what he stated will not be new to most readers, but I recommend
viewing the 29-minute video (at the link below) since the brief summary below hardly does the
interview justice.
Firstly, in terms of how the
average, degree-seeking higher education student is educated, Aoun advised a
greater emphasis on humanics (defined by Merriam Webster as “the subject or
study of human nature or human affairs”), which he described as the
interweaving of three literacies: tech literacy (the ability to grasp how
machines function and how to interact with them effectively), data literacy
(the ability to understand and navigate volumes of data generated by AI), and
human literacy (the development of soft skills that cannot be duplicated by
machines). Aoun also recommended a combination of real-world (experiential) and
classroom education to teach learners to identify personal skill gaps, develop
empathy, and better understand the world.
Secondly, Aoun observed that many lifelong learners have ceased looking to universities for their professional development needs; they are turning to employers instead, and although some organizations are meeting this need, they are also questioning whether it will be worth it in the long run, given that most employees no longer remain with a company for extended periods. Other employers, seeing that their employees’ skills are already obsolete, are taking the initiative to provide training, but they’d prefer that higher education do this so that they can focus on business instead.
One solution, according to Aoun, is for higher education to
offer customized, flexible options, consulting with learners to determine their
desired outcomes, just as businesses do with their customers, rather than restricting
options to degrees and research in a time when learners are already customizing
their learning. As long as institutions
continue to restrict admission to their programs based on an established set of
criteria, they are turning “customers” away, which no business in its right
mind would do. This statement really hit close to home for me—as a lifelong learner who sought information on some courses offered by a local
university only to be told that they were strictly for undergraduate students
(despite there being a diploma option), I can identify with this. I felt exactly like a customer whose business
was being turned away. Like others in this type of situation, I looked
elsewhere and found the training I wanted for a reasonable fee at a small,
private institution that offered flexible options.
Aoun also suggested that perhaps it’s time for the
governments that fuel research and innovation and provide funding for education
from Kindergarten to higher education, to consider offering incentives to
individuals to encourage lifelong learning in ways that suit them best.
The labour market worldwide is quickly changing: new jobs are being created on an ongoing basis, and it won’t be long before many others become obsolete. A quick Internet search will yield possibly hundreds of results on the topic of job automation, with varying projections on the types and numbers of jobs at risk (Winick, 2018). Although the news is not all doom and gloom (Lund & Manyika, 2017), Aoun asserted that institutions that fail to place a greater emphasis on lifelong learning are like the railway industry that saw the advent of the airlines but continued with business as usual, assuming that their jobs would not be impacted.
Advances in technology have made it necessary for higher
education to rethink the options they offer to all types of learners, but
according to Aoun, this is not an easy sell. Ironically, though, the same
institutions that are hard at work teaching today’s educators to embrace the
latest learning theories and adapt their teaching practices to give this
generation of learners the skills needed for success in the 21st
century, may find one day that their faculties of education have done their job
all too well, as the current generation of students become autonomous learners with
well-developed growth mindsets who are capable of customizing their own
learning and have little or no need for the traditional options offered by
institutions of higher learning.
References
Humanics. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster’s
online dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humanics
Lund, S. & Manyika, J. (2017, November). Five lessons
from history on AI, automation, and employment [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-organizations-and-work/five-lessons-from-history-on-ai-automation-and-employment
MIT Technology Review (Producer). (2018). Robot-proof:
Higher education in the age of artificial intelligence [Video webcast]. MIT Technology Review. Retrieved from https://www.technologyreview.com/video/611313/robot-proof-higher-education-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence/
Recommended Reading
Aoun, J. E. (2018). Robot-proof: Higher education in the age of artificial intelligence. Education Technology Insights, February-March 2018, pp. 11-12. Retrieved from https://www.educationtechnologyinsights.com/magazines/February2018/LMS/
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