The Possible Future of Academe According to Norman. (January 27, 2013)

Norman Augustine (77) is the retired chairman and chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation, a member of PCAST during the George W. Bush administration and currently serves as chairman of the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee. His January 25, 2013 editorial in Science "They Never Saw It Coming" is a warning ostensively to US academe but applicable to that of most nations.

After a short preamble he writes:

Which brings us to what may be America's greatest asset after its democracy and free enterprise system—and also the most resistant to change: its higher education system. Indeed, with the exception of religious institutions, it is difficult to think of any more intransigent entity. The canonical student, professor, book, blackboard, and piece of chalk have survived for centuries as the ingredients of pedagogy throughout the world.

He then warns that the combination of "the technological revolution accompanied by declining U.S. financial support for higher education and the advent of globalization" has the real potential of:

the university of the future [having] no library because students will carry it in their pockets; and that there will be no classes, as adaptive, interactive, computer-taught sessions will have taken their place. Lectures will be provided, courtesy of distance learning, by a few world-class professors located around the globe. Biometric identity verification will permit examinations to be held far away from any campus, with instant grading accomplished by teaching-assistant computers. Universities will operate 12 months a year. Departments will cease to exist and tenure will disappear, the victim of mounting financial pressures... The lack of face-to-face interactions among students and faculty will certainly diminish the educational experience. But with tuition now ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 per year, all but the wealthiest of parents and students may get used to the idea. Most damaging will be the further bifurcation between the wealthy and the poor, with children in the former group attending the best campus-based institutions that manage to survive.

Dr Augustine gives no specific advice as how to avoid a cliff of academe except that governments must give better support for higher education, and tertiary institutions must become more efficient and adaptable.

He concludes with this similitude:

When I became the chief executive officer of a large aerospace company, the Berlin Wall had just collapsed. Had I been told that within 6 years 40% of all the people in the industry and three-fourths of its companies would be gone, I would have said, "Not possible." It happened.