Global Universities: Sowing the Seeds of the Future, or Hanging On To The Past? Article by Professor Chris O'Hagan, University of Derby, UK. Discusses global universities, such as Universitas 21, e-University (UK), Global University Alliance. Mentions Chinese plans to serve 240 million students through DL. I will quote just the conclusion: Just as we will see Asian countries play a more dominant economic role over the next 30 years, so we will see a transformation in higher education, with the decline of the traditional, research-led, somewhat conservative university, and the emergence of a new group of global, accessible, distributed universities. Economic forces will merge with new, performative epistemic values in shaping learning and scholarship in the 21st century, and place these distributed, partnership-based universities at the forefront of higher education. Those institutions that continue stubbornly to hang on to their old elitist values will become antiques. Not worthless—perhaps some will be highly sought after in a nostalgic and snobbish kind of way—but antiques all the same. Inflammatory stuff.
I participated in a thread recently at About.com regarding this subject. I contend(ed) that the British system underserves its population. The value of the degree is maintained primarily through exclusivity, not in the inherent superiority of the educative process. The U.S. has almost double the proportion of adults who are college graduates, compared to the U.K. We also have a much greater proportion of tertiary institutions compared to our population size. Access may be our greatest strength in higher ed. Also, universities can be started and purposed to meet particular population or industry requirements. The University of Phoenix is a prime example, existing to serve working professionals to enhance their careers. National University was started expressly because San Diego State University refused to conduct a night-school MBA program for managers at General Dynamics. (David Chigos started National because of this rejection. He once kept the schools' records in the trunk of his Cadillac. National University is now the second largest private university in California.) Could a Union Institute or Fielding get started in the U.K., from the ground up? Ya gotta wonder.
Hi Gert, Please take a look at this web site: http://cpe.njit.edu/DL/ "Bachelor Degrees" and "Master Degrees" don't sound right. Since you have friends at NJIT, it will be a good idea to advise them to change those titles to "Undergraduate Degrees" and "Graduate Degrees" (or Bachelor's Degrees and Master's Degrees). I do not want to create a separate thread for this because I know that NJIT is solid school. Scott L. Rogers (who will start M.S.E. E at Georgia Institute of Technology this fall upon completion of his doctoral studies (Ph.D) in Computer Information Systems)
