[p2p-research] Universities Irrelevant by 2020?

Thu Apr 23 22:04:22 CEST 2009

I believe the boundaries of the university are fracturing as are most
institutions confronted with p2p.  I agree with Andy that the more
structural an institution is, the harder and longer it is to get
transformation.  Universities are pretty darn medieval in many respects from
my experiences at 5 of them as student, employee and sometimes teacher.  And
those sorts of entities also lack a certain resiliance.  They cannot change
well when confronted with crisis.

If there is a persistent financial downturn, if the rates of e-learning
uptake continue, then the boundaries of universities as concepts will
continue to erode--perhaps sharply.  "Irrelevant" is a heat word.  It is
meant to spur just what we are doing--trying to gauge a spectrum of data to
come to some revised interim conclusions.

Trends are not saturation, but relevance does entail maintaining a certain
dominance.  Will universities be the dominant venue of higher education in
11 years is answered as yes, no or not a good question.  Wiley seems to say
no.  I must admit 11 years seems a bold guess--but I can't disagree with the
trend.  It would be easy to say it is not a good question.  I really wonder
more what will surplant their relevance however much is lost.  It is hard to
imagine their relevance will increase (at least for me.)

Budgets for the next few years in places like California and Florida are
going to be horrific.  Endowment losses at some of the big privates have
been considerable and cuts have been in the press.  I'm not sure
conventional education and degrees will hold their staying power as means to
acquire increased economic and social status.  The erosion will take time.
But as a new owner of a Kindle, I look at my bookcases as something loved
but as obsolete as a record turntable.  It is easy for me to love books and
to hope they continue, but frankly, I can't see the trend changing course,
so the discussion is about timing.  I feel the same about university
budgets, power, presence and relevance.  The trends suggest and continued
move down.

Ryan Lanham

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 10:37 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> The car industry is different, dependent as it is on cheap oil, but outside
> of the US it is in difficulty, but not yet dying, the middle class dream of
> owning a car is alive and well in Asia
>
> but an institutional setting for learning, where people congregate and
> people specialize in learning, transmitting knowledge, augmented or not by
> p2p learning, that's a different matter for me
>
> I follow downes and siemens, and never heard them say universities would
> disappear in 11 years, rather, I see them patiently working on constructing
> alternatives
>
> It would be of interest to have their view on the future of universities as
> well as a timescale, so I've cc'ed them just in case,
>
> Libraries by the way, are also experiencing a revival, even in the U.S.;
> again, their function will change and they will adapt, but I see few signs
> of their disappearance, they still have very important social roles to play;
> remember that only 1 billion or so people are wired for the moment,
>
> Michel
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Well, Michel, I think you know or know of George Siemens.  He and Stephen
>> Downes and others aren't saying things all that far from what this guy Wiley
>> is saying.  If you had asked me in 1990 whether GM could be on the verge of
>> bankruptcy and irrelevance, I'd have said you were delusional.  I'm sure the
>> horse shoe-ers on Main St. in Palo Alto in 1905 thought they had work for
>> life.
>>
>> Acceleration is real.  In labs now they are move terabytes a second
>> through wireless.  IBM has said Moore's law can go on for at least 2 more
>> decades....extrapolating (looking at what Microsoft is planning for in their
>> labs) you are talking about enormously fast machines with incredible data
>> absorbing capabilities...no use in building them if they can't be built at
>> prices people can afford.
>>
>> Something's got to give?  Who needs a library?  Who needs a lecture hall?
>> Who needs a dorm? It might all become an exercise in "those were the days"
>> type sentimentalism for the past.  Are universities become Disneyland?
>>
>> Ryan
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> In 11 years? Ryan, that is delusional ...
>>>
>>> It takes generations for this type of change to occur
>>>
>>> we're barely starting to talk about peer and self accreditation, there
>>> are no sedimented practices yet
>>>
>>> of course, more and more people, like us, will learn more and more
>>> outside channels, finding universities irrelevant for learning (which is why
>>> I'm hesitating so much to do a phd, the only benefit being social
>>> recognition, not learning per se), but for the mass of the population, and
>>> the mainstream institutional world, there will be a long mutual adaptation,
>>> until new trust forms are sufficiently developed for general acceptance of
>>> learning.
>>>
>>> one should never confuse one's own situation, with the general reality;
>>> things will change, and sometimes non-linearly, but I think it's a very safe
>>> bet to say universities will be there in 2020; not only that, seeing from
>>> Asia, there growing like hell, (just as newspapers by the way, there's no
>>> crisis here, on the contrary)
>>>
>>> Michel
>>>
>>>   On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 7:16 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>>  I'm not the only lunatic....
>>>>
>>>> This from Kurzweil's group...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *************************
>>>> Universities will be 'irrelevant'
>>>> by 2020
>>>> Deseret News April 20, 2009
>>>> *************************
>>>> Universities will be irrelevant by
>>>> 2020 in a world where students
>>>> listen to free online lectures on
>>>> iPods, course materials are shared
>>>> between universities, science labs
>>>> are virtual, and digital textbooks
>>>> are free, says Brigham Young
>>>> University professor of psychology
>>>> and instructional technology David
>>>> Wiley....
>>>> http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=10454&m=44482
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ryan Lanham
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
>>> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
>>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>>
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>>>
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>>>
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>>> http://www.shiftn.com/
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>
> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
> http://www.shiftn.com/
>
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