In the last few decades, it seems like nearly every aspect of life and society have been vastly altered due to the technological revolution. But one area that has largely remained the same, has been higher education. Sure, students now bring laptops and tablets to class, and professors have begun to implement various devices in their teaching methods. But as Gordon Jones, dean of the Boise State University College of Innovation and Design says “Universities may be at the cutting edge of research into almost every other field, but when it comes to reconsidering the structure of their own, he said, “they’ve been very risk-averse.” 

The traditional four-year university model has existed for centuries and has not changed even as higher education costs have skyrocketed, leading many to question the validity and efficacy of our current system. Bret Stephens, a former Wall Street Journal contributor writes “We need to reinvent the model root-to-branch. That’s one of the reasons I’m against making college available to all: You are merely funneling more students into a system of increasingly dubious value.”  

However, change is slowly coming to universities. A recent report found that more than 200 educational institutions now have senior roles with words such as “innovation” and “digital” in their titles. These changes are possibly due to one of the largest disruptors to higher education in recent years: MOOCS and online learning. MOOCS, or massive open online courses on sites such as Coursera, Udemy, and Edx, emerged as a popular and viable method of learning in 2011 and 2012. Since then, colleges have scrambled to adapt, adding online courses to their curriculum and giving students more opportunities to help them learn the best way possible. Today, a variety of ambitious concepts involving technology are being developed and tested that could drastically change higher education. 

One of these experimental methods is the idea of college on a subscription basis. For a monthly fee, students could take whatever courses they want and have access to advising and other resources. Georgia Tech is already considering piloting one of these models and Boise State currently has its Passport to Education program which costs $425 a month for six credit hours or $525 for nine. This subscription model would be cheaper than in state tuition and also encourages students to move more quickly through their curriculum. Certainly innovative, I’m not sure how viable this plan would be but I think it’s too early to be ruled out.  

Another interesting change to higher education would be the use of Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Learning Assistants. Georgia Tech currently has a virtual learning assistant named Jill Watson, based off of IBM’s supercomputer and the university is also working on creating virtual tutors that could possibly be rolled out within 2-5 years. Even at Penn State, many students are using a service called Packback for their classes. Packback is an AI-supported online discussion platform which invites students to post questions while other students respond with helpful answers. The site’s algorithm monitors these discussions and provides helpful feedback, in essence replacing the role of the professor as the moderator. 

I believe these advances and research into changing higher education are beneficial and necessary if we want to improve our current system of higher education. Besides simply following precedent, there is no reason we have to keep following the same path of a standard, one-size fits all, 4-year degree. Hopefully with the use of technology, we can improve the system with regards to duration, educational quality, and cost.