Survey probes how ‘whirlwind’ forces will affect higher education

By Wagdy Sawahel. Technology experts believe market factors will push universities to expand online courses, create hybrid learning spaces, and move towards lifelong learning models and different credential structures by 2020, according to a new report. “But they disagree about how these whirlwind forces will influence education, for the better or the worse.”
The views of experts were outlined in a 27 July survey titled The Future Impact of the Internet on Higher ducation, authored by Janna Quitney Anderson of Elon University, and Jan Lauren Boyles and Lee Rainie of the Pew Research Center. The US-based Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon conducted a non-random, opt-in online sample of 1,021 internet experts, technology researchers, university directors, venture capitalists and Ivy League professors recruited via e-mail invitation, Twitter or Facebook. The report says a major driver of the debate about the future of the university is its “beleaguered business model”, the ballooning cost of higher education and student debt that is now upwards of US$1 trillion. Some believe the sector is as susceptible to technological disruption as other information-centric industries like the media, music and movies.