Higher education will be increasingly changed by powerful
global forces. The National Intelligence Council (NIC) has recently released a
very interesting report describing their view of the forces at work in the
world, and some possible futures for the year 2020. The NIC is a center of strategic thinking within the US government, reporting to the Director of National Intelligence. I recommend that you
look at Mapping the Global
Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project.
Among its many findings, the report predicts that globalization will be "a force so ubiquitous that it will substantially shape all the other major trends in the world of 2020". It is likely that China and India - as well as a few smaller states - will emerge economically and politically as major global players. Both China and India are well positioned to become global technology leaders, and adoption of new technologies will be the key to maximizing the benefits of globalization. By 2020, China probably will have the world's second largest economy, and Asia will have displaced the West as the engine of international economic dynamism. Political Islam will continue to increase in global impact. Insecurity on all fronts- political, economic, and cultural - will be globally pervasive, and there will be no abatement of the factors that feed international terrorism.
Reading this report, one can pose a number of questions that relate
to the future of higher education. For example, what would be the role of
the American research university in a world in which
the United States is no longer the dominant engine of growth in the
world's economy, and of the
world's innovation and research? How would we carry out our missions if
large-scale intrusive security measures are judged necessary to prevent
deadly
attacks? And what might our missions be under such circumstances?
As the saying goes," predictions are difficult, especially if they
are about the future." This report does an interesting and informative
job of looking at the future, and adds lots of appropriate caveats.
But it should make you think about the changes that various futures
could impose on our institutions of higher education.
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