Higher education, particularly at the four-year undergraduate level, faces challenges on many fronts today, including cost, value, equity, and relevance.
Academia would be well served to confront these challenges and shape new models to ensure that the attributes that make education valuable are preserved as academia evolves. We believe that there is a fundamental difference between education and training, between a job skill and a life skill, and between operating and creating.
If academia leaves a vacuum, the solutions that emerge will likely blur these lines, and society will be the poorer for it. However, the runway is limited. The economic model of educational institutions, precarious to begin with, is hardly popular with students, parents, and the media. COVID caused a further disruption; remote education replaced the in-person teaching out of necessity during the pandemic, but tuition fees were not generally reduced.
This highlighted a question that will linger for years after the pandemic: If remote education is worth the tuition, then what is the worth of college?
The question we address in our white paper is how educational institutions can evolve alternate models that can overcome some of these challenges. [edited by author]
I've been waiting for something like this. I'm SO excited to dig into this more, and I love it so far. Do you think the basic principles (laid out in the executive summary) also apply to k12 education, or would the approach be different? Seems like the principles would be similar with maybe less of an emphasis on skills, but I'm curious about your thoughts.
I think you can apply the basic principles to K12 education - especially "cost/affordability" of the education. We here at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, in Mumbai, India are currently working on creating smart "low cost" physical textbooks which combines the affordability of a physical textbook with the Extended Reality based learning content, which can be experienced by a smartphone/tablet. This not only allows the learner to experience a immersive learning right from the textbook itself but also allows the instructor/teacher to teach complex subjects in a very cognitive friendly way. And all this can be achieved at a one-third of the price of a fully smart classroom. We developed a couple of prototypes for bio-science topics for middle school students, and the initial response was great. Hopefully by next year we will have the first prototype ready.
love it, where can I learn more of your technology ?
Great initiative! Looking forward to collaborate and contribute!
I love this idea about building a new education institute. I would really like to be part of this for I am working on building a new type of university in The Netherlands. The merits and direction of ideas really align very well. I would love to help and materialize this idea perhaps interesting to collab with NEI and RCI Aspire project. HOpe to hear from you. Thanks in advance. Regards Ricardo Abdoel