Higher education has faced many challenges since its meager inception. However, higher education today faces its greatest combinations of challenges: economic uncertainty, accountability, globalization and emerging technologies that are daunting to learn and intimidating to implement. VUCA accurately describes this complex, evolving and dynamic environment confronted by global higher education. Therefore, global higher education institutions are attempting to develop the capacity to adapt and modify the new models of knowledge, information and change. In the Industrial Era, work got done in silos with adherence to process and the cult of efficiency. However, this type of working will no longer suffice in an era characterized by flux and change--the VUCA world.
Globalization has forced higher education into a new world, a world of change, instability and ambiguity, shaped by an increasingly integrated world economy, technology, an international knowledge network, and other forces beyond the control of higher education institutions. Futurists predict that the education systems of tomorrow will be drastically different from those of today. They forecast innovative approaches to teaching and learning will proliferate and will be used more effectively because of technology and telecommunications. Traditional universities historically have been producers of knowledge in the form of human capital, research, and scholarship and are now challenged to tap into the expanding need for lifelong learning. The need and desire for higher education are growing, but higher education is challenged to make significant changes driven by globalization and technology.
As a result of changing missions, quality assurance in global higher education has ascended to the top of the higher education policy agenda in many nations. In order to hold universities accountable despite limited governmental support, many nations have adopted performance-based university funding strategies. Increasingly citizens and bureaucrats in many countries are asking more frequently what tangible benefits the society is receiving for the revenues being spent on higher education. The marketing, selling and financing of higher education has had both positive and negative effects on the future of global higher education because stakeholders are increasingly asking whether students are learning and whether institutions are providing a quality of service that justifies their cost. How do global higher education institutions develop and initiate techniques and programs to promote quality assurance for teaching and learning? Globalization and accountability create an atmosphere in higher education where knowledge and information are more vastly prized and more highly globalized than are localized economic concerns. Can quality assurance provide the framework for the implementation and development quality higher education in a climate of change and ambiguity?
Global higher education leaders face the most explosive political environment in the history of higher education in the world due to decreased financial resources coupled with increased accountability. As revenues become scarcer, calls for accountability continually increase the five often-competing forces driving change in global higher education. In order to gain a more holistic view of accountability, the authors focus on five major shifts in global higher education: 1) Supply: financing; move from state-supported to state-assisted; 2) Demand: students; by 2020 minority students will be the majority; 3) Delivery: competition; faculty, f2f, online, technology, etc.; 4) Structure: new structures in different locations, internationalization, no longer brick and mortar, brick and click; 5) Productivity: management by objectives and results orientation.
Green schools are places for children to learn and environments for leaders and teachers to flourish. In this chapter, the authors examine why green schools are more inviting, more receptive to creativity, and more open to learning for everyone. Further, the authors postulate that creating a positive environment for learning is tasked to today's green school leaders who are using authentic instruction to academically challenge students and engage them in issues that have personal or social significance. Finally, the authors conclude that green school leaders are environmental advocates influenced by the need to take action, to inculcate problem-based learning strategies, and to increase knowledge about the environment; yet, maintaining the balance of creativity and cooperation is critical to the effective operation of green schools.
The technological revolution of the past two decades has changed higher education; technology use in higher education, particularly with respect to the implementation of social media, has yet to reach the expected potential. Technology offers higher education students and faculty an array of options to learn, network, stay informed and connected; however, social media use comes with risks and consequences. Personal use of digital technologies for social media communication is one thing; social media use by professors for communication with students is another. Can social media be used in higher education to improve learning through student and faculty collaboration? Are there less than desirable results in the interaction of social media and higher education?
Many business and political leaders speculate that globalization is rapidly connecting all aspects of international political, economic, cultural, and social life. One of the most used aspects of globalization is the continued development of instructional technology, particularly e-learning. As a result, e-learning and distance learning technologies have accelerated tremendously during the last decade. e-learning necessitates changes in development and delivery of instructional content, including altered instructional methods and the expansion of support services for e-learning activities. These new information technologies significantly influence most aspects of higher education, both globally and locally. Changes in teaching and learning have impacted everyone associated with applying technology to the global delivery of learning services. E-learning has increasingly become the vehicle of choice for many higher education institutions and corporate clients who are actively engaged in creating diverse international markets for their goods and services.
With student population on the rise globally, colleges and universities face daunting new challenges to accommodate the increased demand for services (Marginson, 2006). The historic threshold of 100 million students worldwide has been crossed and the prospect of reaching the figure of 125 million students will be attained before 2020 (NCES, 1993). Important increases in student numbers are reported in all regions, particularly in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Arab countries, and in Eastern and Central Europe (Altbach & Balan, 2007).
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