In my hometown newspaper, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, the headline story in today’s paper highlights that tution at the University of Minnesota—a public institution—is expected to increase to over $10,000 next year. Undoubtedly, this will set off a great bout of handwringing by the elite twittering classes that education is falling out of the reach of middle-class and even upper middle-class families. Their future prognastications will grow even more dire as these pundits extrapolate out ten years (which is when my own kids will be attending college) using an ever escalating cost of tution.
Will things really that bad?
I don’t believe so because many people are failing to “jump the curve.” In the future, I not only believe college education will be lower—it might be dramatcially lower.
Impossible you say? MIT’s innovative open course ware program — which allows anyone to access MIT’s college courses—is now available free on-line. Other schools such as the University of California at Berkeley are also joining the movement. And there is every reason to believe that more and more schools—especially those with huge endowments—will join.
If this happens, the number and quality of free college-level courses will soar. As it does, the economics underlying today’s existing colleges and universities could come crashing down.
In the future, I’m convinced that it will matter less where you received your college degree and, instead, more emphasis will be placed on the knowledge a person can demonstrate. (It will also be critical that they demonstrate an ability and willingness to engage in life-long learning). And the reality is that much of this knowledge can now be obtained free, on-line.
The question existing colleges and universities—as well as the politicians—who will all be clamouring for more money (to control rising costs) need to ask themselves is: Are they prepared to “unlearn” their reliance on money and “relearn” a new way of doing business?
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
