[p2p-research] Universities Irrelevant by 2020?

Sun Apr 26 15:25:42 CEST 2009

There are Universities that are turning to commons-based methods of
governance and problem solving [1]. These are the Universities that are
positioning themselves for the series of changes that are likely to come.
While many of them are approaching this change in a rather ham-fisted way,
some are also learning. Those that are learning how to apply commons-based
governance/problem solving practices are positioning themselves both for
survival, and for the type of change that they see their students being
ready for.

(Michel makes a great point that in the east, in Asia, that many
Universities are possibly in a different track, fulfilling a different set
of needs. As we know, in the US, Universities are modeled after
corporations, often with a primary focus on procuring and securing money
from practically any source available. This is the type of arrangement that
cannot be sustained. ).

The nature of the change that will like happen in the case of Universities
will not be collapse, but rather dynamic transformation, which includes
collapse or die off of some parts of the system, and change in others.

When we talk about "collapse", we are not actually talking about the
complete eradication/extinction of an ecosystem.

For instance, we can say that the Roman Empire collapsed at around 500AD,
and yet one could argue that successive empires in Europe carried forward
many of the patterns of Rome, all the way to this day in the Republic of the
United States of America, where we still convene a Senate, still arrange
military and state power structures in ways that are remarkably similar in
more than a few ways to Roman systems, etc Parts of the institutions of the
Roman Empire remain with us today. They are cultural inheritances that were
carried forward even though Rome itself ceased to exist.

Another example is inside of your own body, which carries structures,
systems, symbiotic relationships, and adaptations that emerged long before
humans ever existed. Some of them go all the way back to the first organisms
that we know of.

On planet Earth, systems rarely completely collapse and disappear. Instead
that usually change, evolve, adapt, and pass forward those parts that are
still usable.

We are in the early stages of seeing some of the Universities change and
adapt. I think that Ryan can intuit that this change seems very likely to be
coming. But, if I were to describe what I think is going to happen, I would
not say that Universities are going to just be obsoleted into collapse and
non existence. I'd suggest that the *current landscape and configuration of
Universities is what is going collapse and become obsolete*, in those areas
where it cannot be sustained. There are people on the edges of Universities
that are already in the process of changing them, making them more
networked, more commons-based in wealth creation and curating. Consider
these people to be the evolutionary agents in the system (mostly at it's
edges). They are doing it not because they have some kind of fondness or
nostalgia for Universities and want to nurse them along, but because of the
conditions of their existence. They are heavily invested in those
institutions, and yet can see that Universities (especially here in the US)
cannot sustain centering all activity around securing money.

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 3:32 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> undoubtedly the present system will be under great strain,
>
> but I wouldn't discount the power of social demand, higher education is at
> the heart of the social contract, and the allegiance of the whole middle
> class depends on it,
>
> Michel
>
>
> On 4/25/09, Kevin Carson <free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 4/22/09, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> A lot of it depends not so much on the trends in conventional
>> education and in technical alternatives for networked education, taken
>> in isolation, but in the larger economic environment.
>>
>> I'm thinking of a series of cascading crises in which gasoline in the
>> U.S. goes over $12/gal., the supply chains of large corporate
>> manufacturers either collapse or start frantically shortening and
>> relocalizing, the large hierarchical institutions that provided the
>> main market for university grads dry up, hollowed-out states lack the
>> fiscal resources to fund universities at anywhere near the present
>> level and the securities in private college endowments become
>> worthless.  And given the current economic environment and Peak Oil
>> waiting in the wings to return, this is all quite plausible.
>>
>> --
>> Kevin Carson
>> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
>> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
>> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
>> Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
>> http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
>> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
>> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> p2presearch mailing list
>> p2presearch at listcultures.org
>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> 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/
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>

-- 
Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
AIM: Str9960
Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samrose
skype: samuelrose
email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
http://socialsynergyweb.org/network
http://socialmediaclassroom.com
http://localfoodsystems.org
http://openfarmtech.org
http://notanemployee.net
http://communitywiki.org

"Long ago, we brought you all this fire.
Do not imagine we are still chained to that rock...."

http://notanemployee.net/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090426/18e005f0/attachment.html>