There’s nothing like putting yourself out there with some bold predictions for the future, especially when they pertain to higher education and libraries. For example, let’s say I predict that robots will makeup 30% of all faculty by the year 2050. You might say I have no idea whether that will ever really happen, but on the other hand you might not be 100% comfortable saying it never will happen. So my attention was captured by an article titled “25 Predictions for the University of the Future”. By future I assume the author means 10 or 20 years out there, maybe more. I’m expecting some bold ideas. Maybe even some that involve robots, flying cars or librarians as university presidents (Ok, that last one never will happen).
Instead, as I perused the list I did a whole lot of eyeball rolling. Maybe by future the author meant tomorrow. Put another way, whoever came up with this list didn’t seem to want to put him or herself too far out on a limb with these predictions. Let me share a few and you can decide for yourself.
There will be more of an emphasis on distance learning: Whoa! That one is a shocker. There’s absolutely nothing going on in higher education right now that would possibly suggest that higher education institutions, in the future, will focus on education for people who aren’t right on campus. But it’s just crazy enough of an idea to actually happen. (See also prediction #4 on students taking a mix of online and in-class courses – now there’s a wacky idea – maybe they’ll call it “blended learning” in the future).
Technology innovation will be a priority: It’s quite possible that in the future, in order to survive, higher education institutions will finally have to start finding innovative ways to use technology. Let’s hope most of us get over our luddite ways so that we can get the technology innovation started before it’s too late.
Libraries will continue to become more tech-focused: I often complain that libraries are left out of these higher education projects, but now I’m finally able to proudly say that the author of this list didn’t ignore us with this bold and futuristic vision of academic libraries becoming tech-focused. I think that means using more technology. Imagine that – a future where academic libraries leverage technology to support teaching, learning and research. I hope I’m still around when it happens because it sure sounds exciting.
Universities will have a more global perspective: Perhaps in the future we’ll see American universities opening campuses in other countries, and then encouraging their faculty and students to travel abroad to gain a global perspective. We might even see students from foreign countries add global diversity to domestic higher education. This sounds like it could really improve the quality of higher education.
Reading these 25 futuristic predictions has put me in the mood to make some predictions of my own, which is something I tend to avoid at all costs. I’ll usually prefer to say something like “we need to create our own preferred future” which gets me off the hook. But here are a few things I think we can expect in our future:
Academic librarians will communicate with their users via mobile devices. In the future many students will carry handheld devices and use them to send messages to each other. When it happens we want to be where the students are.
Academic libraries will become social centers on campus: Innovative academic libraries of the future will offer amenities like cafes and lounge areas where students can hang out and socialize. It doesn’t have to be all about books and research chores. Some may even allow students to eat food in the stacks and make a little noise.
Academic librarians will be more involved in teaching: I know I’m just dreaming here but I can’t help but believe that someday in the future forward-thinking faculty will finally believe collaboration with academic librarians is a good thing and can actually help students achieve better quality research and writing.
Students will increasingly start their research using Google and Wikipedia: Despite the high quality resources provided by academic libraries, for reasons that will not immediately be well understood, students will prefer to head for free Internet resources to begin or even complete their research tasks.
I hope my daring predictions left you stunned and amazed. It sure was a challenge to step out on a limb and do some truly visionary thinking about the future of academic librarianship. For those of you who will soon be planning your spring 2010 programs, I’m available for presentations about the future of academic librarianship. You never know what I’ll be predicting next.
This is the funniest post I’ve ever read on here. Thnx StevenB!
The article would be funny if everybody recognized these “predictions” as the current state of affairs. Unfortunately many librarians still see these as radical and hard to adjust to.
Great, funny writing StevenB. A robot for a professor? Highly possible if you ask me :). But nothing on that list sounds very ‘futuristic’. Lots of people, students included, already use Wikipedia and the internet to do their research. Quite a shame really because the quality of information/resources that one can find in academic libraries cannot be topped by what the internet can provide. Well, at least for now. Can anyone see this happening in the future? Learning by downloading desired information straight from the library’s mainframe computer into your brain… I do.
You predict that “Academic librarians will communicate with their users via mobile devices”. Today we can already see that universities communicate with their students via emails and SMSs. Some of them even use social networking to do so. I guess it won’t take long until they use other methods…