RETHINKING POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION - Why Universities and Colleges Need to Change & What Change Could Look Like

There is a great deal of talk about a “transformation” taking place in post-secondary education, linked to changes in the nature of work, technology, and the challenge of financing education at a time of austerity. The New York based journalist, Thomas Friedman, for example, writing in the New York Times in January 2013, imagined a different future for colleges and universities:“I can see a day soon where you’ll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world — some computing from Stanford, some entrepreneurship from Wharton, some ethics from Brandeis, some literature from Edinburgh — paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion.” It is through these market based mechanisms - the thinking goes - that colleges and universities will be transformed. He’s still dreaming the world is flat, he can dream on.Similar sentiments are found in a recent provocative document from Sir Michael Barber(former advisor on education to Tony Blair).