At 19:14 24/12/2012, you wrote:
(AC) Longish article but interesting. Subject: Quadrant Online - Can Universities Survive the Digital Revolution? http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2012/12/can-universities-survive-t he-digital-revolution
(KH) Martin Davies compares the future of higher education with that of newspapers so far. His long (and pretty thorough) article leads him to write these two sentences towards the end: "It is no exaggeration to say that we might be witnessing the death of print media. We may also be witnessing the beginning of the end of the universities as we know them."
We won't see the death of print media (and possibly not of some newspapers). Symbols written on cave walls or on paper are the only way of accurately describing past operations or, in the case of scientific papers, of being the means by which someone else can precisely repeat an experiment in order to possibly disprove a new finding.
As for universities, I think they'll fall away steeply anyway because all jobs of what I call the 80-class are gradually disappearing due to automation or or being dumbed-down. (And, if Europe's birth rate is any guide, the numbers of children and young people will start declining substantially in about a decade.) Young people will not continue to be conned -- as they have been until recently -- that if they get a degree then they'll have a job for life, or even get a job at all. As for those who learn via a website, their numbers will decline for the same reason.
However, the very brightest, innovative scientists, on whom the future depends, don't go to university to qualify for a job -- as 99% of students do at present -- but because they are individuals with a huge need to discover. Strangely, they are usually no more intelligent than the "ordinary" bright when measured on bog-standard IQ tests. Usually what happens in the case of the highly creative young scientist is that he is recognized as such by an older gifted scientist, and will then be fast-tracked by one means or another into suitable areas of research and suitable personal supervision. This is what universities are really about and what they were originally about in Bologna, Paris and Oxford in the 11th century. So I think universities will survive -- maybe to a tenth or twentieth the number they are now.
Keith
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