Projecting the university of the future--say, ten to twenty years out--is a favorite occupation of higher educational leaders, planners, and pundits. It is not clear what difference is made by one projection or another, or even who takes such projections, or predictions, seriously. But the exercise is still worthwhile, if only because it causes us (or should cause us) to contemplate the forces that will determine this future and how that future might be purposefully affected.

The university of the future will be a function of many factors or forces. Some of these vary greatly by country; some seem quite universal. Some are predictable, others not at all. In attempting a prediction, it can be useful to view the university as the consequence of three exogenous, or external, forces:

• growth, or the pressure for expansion;
• the changing availability of (especially public) resources; and
• changes in the need or demand for particular kinds of teaching, learning, and scholarship.

To these forces, we must add three conditions:

• the standing reform agenda;
• that which is technologically possible; and
• that which is and has been: tradition, or the force of inertia.

Growth, or the pressure for expansion. The first exogenous force is the pressure for expansion, itself a product of three factors: (1) the growth in the number of 18-24 year olds, or the future potential university population (a function mainly of birth rates); (2) the current participation rate and the implied expansionary potential therein (i.e. the smaller the current participation rate the greater the expansionary potential even with a stable population); and (3) the ideological and political pressures to accommodate this potential university population (a function of history and culture and of the answerability of the government to the will of the people).

In the US, there is very little net national pressure for expansion due to a near saturation of potential demand, an apparent diminution of political concern for the very poor or the otherwise educationally by-passed, and a slow growth in the college-going age cohort (for almost 20 years the age cohort nationally was actually declining). There are however, significant regional pockets of very considerable population growth: California, Texas, Florida, and most of the still sparsely populated, but fast growing states of the Southwest. But were higher education to be a responsibility of the national governmental, as it is in almost all other nations (Germany, and Canada being notable exceptions), the United States would feel virtually no significant, or at least no problematic, expansionary pressure upon its higher education system. In most European countries, similarly, the sheer force of massification, or expansion of the university-going population, is largely behind them (although the absence of non-university sectors in many countries continues to put significant pressure on their universities).

However, in much of the rest of the world--including the population giants of China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nigeria as well as most of the rest of the so-called developing world--the combination of population growth and very small current university participation rates will make pressure for expansion one of the significant forces acting upon universities for the foreseeable future.

The declining availability of (especially public) resources. Even in the affluent nations of Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia/New Zealand, and much more so in Russia and the new nations of the former Soviet union, as well as virtually all of the developing world, the most pervasive force-that is, the force of greatest consequence to the future of the university-is austerity, mainly attributable to the loss of public revenues. Some of this is due to the stagnation, or even collapse, of underlying economies. But even robust economies are suffering from insufficiency of public revenues. This problem is attributable in part to the increasing ability of potentially taxable resources (both businesses and persons) to escape or otherwise avoid taxation--itself a function of the increased globalization of both production and finance. Another part of the problem is a growing unwillingness of electorates to bear taxes, a problem compounded by the increasing difficulty of raising public revenues without taxation-that is, through borrowing and deficit financing (another consequence of globalization and the need to maintain the strength of national currencies.) Still another source of insufficient public revenues is the increasing competition for what limited public dollars there are: from elementary and secondary education, public infrastructure, environmental protection and clean-up, and the growing burden of retirees on public pensions.

In any case, in almost all universities in all countries, but especially in universities in poorer and/or developing countries, and even more so where the austerity is matched by unrelenting pressures to accommodate more students, the future of the university will be consumed with the twin tasks of coping with the continuing insufficiency of public revenues and the need to supplement these shrinking funds with revenues from students, parents, corporations, and entrepreneurial activities.

Changes in the nature of, and/or demand for, particular subject matter. Such curricular changes originate in large part from outside any particular university. The origin maybe the changing frontiers of the disciplines themselves, especially in basic and applied science, to which universities and their faculty must respond. The force for new subject matter may also lie in the changing needs of business and industry. These changes are felt especially in the more market-sensitive sectors of postsecondary education such as short-cycle, vocational education and other-non-university sectors. The wrenching changes in what faculty actually do has been especially traumatic in the universities of the once highly centralized, regimented economies of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China--to which, along with all of the other forces for change (in addition to the diminution of public revenues) must be added the obsolescence and/or irrelevance of many of the academic programs and faculty, together with much of the physical plant.

To these three forces must be added three conditions to complete the stew from which the future university will emerge.

The standing reform agenda. The first of these is the standing reform agenda, originating from students, politicians, administrators, and even from many of the faculty (even though faculty are the objects, or targets, of much of the agenda). In the case of universities in Europe, North America, and other nations that draw on a combination of the classical Humboldtian tradition of scholarship and the newer emphases on access, service and attention to undergraduates, there is a long-standing and rather consistent reform agenda. This agenda urges:

• more attention to students and especially to undergraduate, or first degree, students;
• more attention to, and better performance in, the craft of teaching;
• more attention, ultimately, to student learning;
• more faculty allegiance to institutional mission, as opposed to the more personal goals of individual scholarly recognition;
• more recognition of the need to produce efficiently whatever this mission calls for;
• less disciplinary and/or departmental hegemony, and more interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship; and
• more useful service to corporations, government agencies, and to society generally.

In fact, this long-standing, conventional, reform agenda is actually not a particularly good predictor of the future, precisely because it has been the reform agenda, more or less, for the better part of half a century or more--which ought to suggest to the prognosticators that there must be reasons why institutions and faculty and perhaps even students, do not, in the end, sufficiently want it. Or perhaps they merely want other goals and rewards more (such as prestige or stability or the absence of political conflict), which divert attention and resources from, for example, increased attention to teaching or interdisciplinary ventures.

However, this conventional reform agenda is like a spring that will continue to push in the direction of greater attention to first degree students and to the craft of teaching even if the opposing forces continue, for some time, to be strong enough to resist any real movement. But if other things should lessen this resistance--such as new ideologies, or technological possibilities--then the reform agenda gives a good clue as to the likely direction of change

The technologically possible. The second condition, also sometimes confused with a real prediction, is that which is now, or which soon will be, technologically possible. University leaders and faculty get especially excited about the new information technologies and their possible application to instruction:

• digital information transmission, and the almost unlimited capacity of broad band optical fiber connectivity;
• sophisticated interactive software in connection with affordable (at least to upper middle class Europeans and North Americans) personal computers; and
• ubiquitous televisions and videocassette players.

All of this, or course, gives rise to thrilling possibilities: full multi-way interactive video capability for synchronous distance teaching and learning; synchronous, asynchronous, and near-synchronous internet connectivity; videocassettes and video- and audio-enhanced computer software for self-paced, asynchronous, instruction. But what of all this will actually be adopted, where, and for whom depends not simply on the pedagogical potentialities, nor even on the costs and benefits, of such technologically enhanced teaching and learning. The likelihood of adoption depends on why faculty and universities behave as they do, and why students behave as they do--which may, but more likely will not, lead to the maximum application of all that instructional technology has to offer.

Inertia: what the university has been and is today. The final condition that matters (possibly more than any other) is the force of inertia, or what the university is and has been. The university we have today is no accident; rather, it is a product of history, culture, and public and private demand. For example, the American elite private colleges and universities are largely insulated from changes in student demand by a large and affluent applicant pool that will study just about whatever is offered. Similarly, they are largely cushioned from the vagaries of public finance by their large endowments and relatively inelastic demand, which in turn permits a high private tuition. In short, while these universities will continue to change, in some respects profoundly, these changes are likely to be mainly faculty-initiated and continuous, as opposed to wrenching and discontinuous.

However, where universities and other forms of postsecondary institutions are more vulnerable to exogenous forces--be these changing student demands or declining revenues--and where they have been permitted to respond, many have changed profoundly, albeit still more deliberately than businesses or industries under similarly challenging external forces. The American private regional colleges and the former British polytechnics, are examples of such institutions being forced--but also being allowed--to change. In contrast, the universities of the former Soviet Union are examples of institutions buffeted by the most wrenching external forces--particularly in public revenues and in student demand-- but being very constrained in the kind and extent of the changes they are allowed to make in response, and therefore, at least arguably, becoming more dysfunctional.

So some change is likely, even if the magnitude and speed of this change is often overestimated. But if there is to be change, what is it to be? And what are the policy stakes?

There are three possible arenas of "big change" in the university. First, what is to be taught and learned, or the future curriculum? Second, how is that curriculum to be taught and learned, or the future pedagogy, or instructional production function? Third, who is to be taught, and for how long, and/or at what public expense--or the future of accessibility? Let us consider each.

The first arena of possible change--the curriculum--has been the object of much political scrutiny, at least in the US, but is probably not, as a policy matter, worth the time or the energy so consumed. In spite of the ferocity that the American press and a handful of largely polemical books have ascribed to the battles supposedly fought over that part of the undergraduate curriculum that is common, or "core," most students at most colleges and universities will continue to take a mixture of that which is required, which changes slowly because it is in the interest of the faculty that it does so, and what they think will enhance their access to good jobs and social standing, which changes only a little less slowly.

The second arena--how the curriculum is to be taught, or pedagogy, or the process of teaching and learning--has received the lion's share of attention, speculation, and prediction. The dimensions of teaching and learning--and thus, the dimensions of possible change--seem to be three, and I shall present them in the form of questions.

First, will teaching and learning continue to be largely didactic and passive--that is, in which the teacher teaches and the student learns (or fails to learn)? Or will the future bring more genuinely active and participatory learning?

Second, will learning time continue to be mainly a constant, and university-determined, as in fixed terms or semesters? Or will that which is to be learned become the constant, and the time required to learn it be made to vary, as in self-paced learning?

Third, will the teacher and learner continue to be proximate in time and space? Or will more teachers and learners be physically separated, as in synchronous distance learning, or separated also in time, as in asynchronous, self-paced learning?

Different combinations of answers to these three questions provide the ingredients for most of the pedagogical variations today. For example:

• It has become fashionable, at least in the US, almost to belittle the didactic, fixed-term, proximate instruction, although such instruction, for many or even most traditional students, may be particularly cost-effective.
• Distance instruction can be (and often is) still didactic and teacher-paced--as in the all-too-common "talking heads" of broadcast television.
• With videotapes and inexpensive videocassette recorders to break the limitations of broadcasting, instruction can finally become more genuinely self-paced--and perhaps more accessible--but will be less costly only to the degree that fewer faculty and staff teach more students without loss of effectiveness.
• With the addition of personal computers, the right kind of software, and ubiquitous access to the Internet, instruction can be more active and distant and self-paced--and thus, at least potentially, more productive by virtue of both lower costs and enhanced learning.

For the present, however, strong forces will hold much of higher education--and particularly the traditional university-- in largely conventional pedagogy. Financially, most technology has thus far not been employed to substitute for faculty, which is the traditional source of productivity gains in industry. It has been an additional expense, perhaps bringing additional output, and thus additional productivity, but not offering diminished unit costs in the way costs are calculated in the academy.

A second conservative force is the substantial autonomy of the professorate, coupled with what has been described as the "loose technology" of the higher education production process. A widespread and affordable technological revolution in university instruction would take a kind of institutional authority and imposed teaching style that is almost incompatible with the university as we know it.

Third, insofar as universities, largely through the actions of individual faculty, develop new instructional technologies--and they will, increasingly--the spread of these technologies is limited by a kind of mercantilism. Institutions and individual faculty mainly want to be providers, or exporters, of their new developments, not users or importers.

Finally, the consumer demand that drives the successful incorporation of much cost-reducing and benefit-enhancing technology in the rest of the economy is only marginally present in traditional university education. This is not merely because of demand-distorting subsidies, as is often charged (mainly by those looking for further excuses to reduce public revenues to universities), but to the nature of the traditional student demand itself. The traditional-age, well-prepared, and well-motivated student goes to a university, alas, only in part to learn. He or she also goes in very large part for the pleasant socialization provided by a collegiate experience that is shared by large numbers of like-minded young adults. He or she goes for the prestige and the "career positioning" provided by the university. These goals are perfectly compatible with all sorts of expensive instructional technology, as long as these forms do not separate the student from other students or from the campus environment. In other words, as long as the technology does not replace more-or-less regular classes, attended with other students, and presided over by a professor. But this is not the Brave New World of distance education or the virtual university.

Do the virtual university, distance education, and self-paced learning have a place in higher education? Decidedly. But not, I would submit, to revolutionize the traditional university, which will continue to be the dominant provider to the traditional age, well-prepared, and academically ambitious young adult. Rather, the enormous potential of technology as well as new organizational forms of higher education delivery are likely to take place more on the important and growing peripheries of traditional university education.

In countries that have not yet achieved mass higher education, this periphery may include those of traditional university age whose parents cannot afford tuition and living expenses and whose governments are unwilling to provide grants of subsidies-but who, with sufficient motivation, may be able to learn via distance modalities. For more educationally advanced and wealthier countries, distance education and other forms of technologically-mediated instruction are more likely to supplement and enrich traditional university education, but may also come to dominate the growing and potentially vast arenas of corporate training, continuing professional education, and further education for recreation and personal enrichment.

The most potentially significant big change lies in the realm of access: Who is to be taught and for how long and/or at what public expense? Higher education is costly. The per-student costs of research universities, with low teaching loads, expensive technology, supported graduate and post-doctoral students, and internationally competitive salaries, are especially high. Most of the nations of Europe are well beyond what Martin Trow once labeled "mass higher education," signaled by a high percentage of secondary school leavers seeking university access--often, on the European Continent, as a constitutional right to all holders of the academic secondary leaving certificate. However, the number of new entrants continues to rise. Furthermore, the amount of higher education partaken of per entering student has also been rising, through the prolongation of study and the accretion of degrees and credentialism.

At the same time, and as discussed above, governments everywhere are besieged by competing claims on public revenues and constrained in the accumulation of those revenues by the increasingly easy exodus of taxable enterprises and by new limits on deficit spending. There is not enough money from public treasuries. The solutions to the new austerity of higher education will be some combination of:

• less spending per student in the traditional universities, mainly meaning fewer regular, fully-credentialed faculty per student;
• more students shunted off to lower-cost, short-cycle forms of tertiary education;
• more rigorous standards, including more stages or levels, even within the first degree, at which point students deemed to be insufficiently performing can be turned out of the university system, thereby lowering overall enrollments (and costs);
• a greater share of the costs formerly borne by taxpayer (whether costs of instruction or the costs of student living) being borne instead by parents or the students themselves;
• governments encouraging the formation of private universities and colleges--in some case (Latin America and East Asia in particular) avowedly as institutions to absorb the burgeoning demand for higher education at minimal cost to the taxpayer; and
• governments rushing to embrace new technology-based forms of tertiary education, less for the added access or the added learning that these forms make possible, but for the lower costs that they are thought to promise.

These trends are not diminishing. Most nations have developed non-university alternatives to lessen the hegemony of the research university model. Thus, the American community college (indeed, most American four-year colleges, public and private), the German Fachhochschulen, the Dutch HBO, the French Institutes Universitaires Technologies, and at one time the British polytechnics were all created to provide what was thought to be "more appropriate" forms of tertiary education for more students at lower public costs.

Universities everywhere are increasingly turning to non-public, or non-tax originated, revenues. In 1997, even China declared tuition to be fully consistent with their latest version of Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong-Deng Xiaoping thought. Private institutions, often fragile and of uneven quality, are springing up all over the former Soviet Union and East Europe. Chile's higher education system, substantially privatized, sufficient in capacity, and evidently stable, is the model held up to developing nations by the World Bank. Only Europe clings to the sanctity of tuition-free mass higher education, and cracks are appearing in this principle.

What is at stake is not the accessibility of publicly supported higher education for the well prepared and academically ambitious, to which all nations are committed, to the limits of their capabilities. What is at stake is the access that nations have attempted to provide for those who are only marginally prepared for, or even only marginally interested in, the academic challenges of the traditional Western university.

These are the students who now begin, but often do not complete, a true university first degree. But these are also students, many of whom will come from less privileged families and peer backgrounds, some of whom will succeed, and those only because they were given opportunities, either financial or academic, that are now being called into question.

These are also students who almost certainly are gaining personal benefits from their higher educational experiences (in addition to some public benefits that accrue to us all), even if they do not graduate, and even if it could be said, albeit only in retrospect, that they would have been better suited to a shorter cycle higher education to begin with.

Finally, these are the students that some governments are saying need not be accommodated at public expense, at least at the traditional university. The public payoff is thought to be insufficient. And a combination of diminishing financial assistance, rising tuition, more rigorous entry and even second-stage examinations, and more rigorous academic criteria for the continuation of financial assistance, will lower their numbers in the universities.

So the question is whether the newer forms of higher education opportunities will accommodate these students with the equivalent access to jobs, careers, social standing, and personal fulfillment as the traditional universities might--but probably would not--have.

Such a scenario, then, projects a future higher education in most countries featuring:

• Ever more diversity in the organizational and institutional forms through which higher, or tertiary, or postsecondary teaching, learning, and scholarship take place, with much growth outside of, or at least peripheral to the traditional university.
• The traditional universities--those holding to established forms and principles of research, advanced education, and first degrees primarily for the academically well-prepared and motivated--will look and operate much as they do today, with curriculum, instructional methodology, and scholarship determined mainly by the permanent faculty.
• The traditional reform agenda will continue to be a beacon for, but will not substantially alter the substance of, either the traditional Humboldtian research university or the non-university forms that emulate the main features of this model.
• The use of technology will increase greatly, particularly in the processing, storage, and transmission of information among both faculty and students. Technologically-mediated instruction--distance education--will dominate the expansion of higher educational in those countries that are still below the threshold of mass higher education. In the more developed world, with more resources and where the expansionary pressure is minimal, technology will impact the curriculum and pedagogy of the traditional universities only minimally, and mainly as "add-ons," at additional cost.
• True labor- and cost-saving technology, however, will profoundly change the method and timing of both teaching and learning in those deliverers at the periphery of the traditional university: short course vocational training, corporate education, professional in-service education, and all forms of continuing and recreational postsecondary education.
• The traditional university will hold less hegemony over these alternative forms of higher learning, research, and service.
• Accessibility, at least as we have known it in America, will be diminished at the traditional university for those who are less prepared and less motivated.
• The costs of all forms of higher and postsecondary education will continue to shift away from the taxpayer and more to the student and parent, placing a premium on need-based financial assistance, student loans, and traditions of parental savings and financial help to their children.

In short, I see a future university that will be much like the present one, at least in curriculum and pedagogy. I do not see the end of the university as we have come to know it. I believe there will be significant changes that are largely foreseeable and other changes, perhaps dramatic ones that are quite unforeseeable. But I do not believe that the university is on any more of a "cusp of radical change," at least in the US, than it was in the decade of explosive growth in the 1960s, or the decades of explosive federal research expansion in the '50s and '60s, or the decades of political turmoil of the '60s and '70s--or for that matter the wrenching challenges of the Great Depression years of the '30s, or of the Second World War of the '40s.

Insofar as profound changes are very possible, I only hope that the most likely--a significant lowering of access and participation--does not come to pass.

And in the larger arena of what we in America have come to term "postsecondary education"--that is on the periphery of traditional university education--there may be profound changes, particularly those wrought by technology. In these changes lie great opportunities.

12/17/97*