THE UNIVERSITY OF THE 21st CENTURY, BETWEEN TRADITION AND INNOVATION in Socrates Almanac, Oxford (UK)

Come back

Pdf version

Abstract

The university in the globalized and interconnected knowledge society reached an important turning point: we are at a crossroads between stasis and renovation, atrophy and renaissance. Traditional universities should be able to reinvent themselves and come out of atrophy. Their transformation is no longer an option, but it is more than ever an unavoidable imperative.There is an ongoing massive generational clash within our universities; the criticisms at the university system emerged within the end of the '80s and the ‘90s can be defined as the "waiting ideas": waiting for the new Web implementation and a new generation of students, so called digital natives, able to effectively call into question the old system. Mark Taylor, from Columbia University, raised an harsh academic debate, publishing on the 26th April 2009, on the New York Times, a challenging article entitled "End the University as We Know It". “Graduate education — as his article started - is the Detroit of higher Socrates Almanac "Prime Business Destinations —- 2015" learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans)”.