The future of college education is a constantly moving target. Everything, starting from online courses to new learning styles is impacting the educational landscape. And educational leaders are developing new strategies almost every day to leverage these developing opportunities and challenges. So, let’s see the five main ways higher education is set to change in the near future.
Remote and Distance Learning
With the technology developments and covid 19 pandemics, the online format of higher education will continue to grow, as many students saw how convenient and safer it is. And because of it, there are going to be more websites and applications that will provide the students with educational materials or help them with their assignments. For example, websites like Studyhippo with essay examples exist even now and are used to fill in the gaps that distance education simply can’t provide regarding written tasks. Also, in the past, students didn’t have the option to choose, and every student had to sit in the same class with the same materials and subjects to learn about and needed to deliver the same results during exams. But this approach is set to change that completely. So, the remote learning and online courses that we witness right now are just the beginning of what is still going to come.
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Another prediction is that educational facilities will start to use Virtual Reality technologies more often in college and school in the near future. So just imagine learning about history while being simulated in a historical environment that you are learning about. That can be so mind-blowing but efficient as well.
Prioritizing of Skills such as Problem Solving, Leadership, and Critical Thinking
We have seen many different skills come and go through the centuries, but these three are essential for every aspect of life. Unfortunately, current higher education doesn’t even express downplay to those skills but doesn’t nurture them either. As many studies showed that exactly these skills are the ones that every hiring manager looks for in candidates. So, there is a possibility that those three skills will be taught to students separately by experts in those fields soon.
New Subjects and Degrees Will Emerge
Subjects like English Language, Science and Mathematics will no longer be the main subjects. We aim towards a smarter world with smartphones, smart cities, smart grids, smart homes, etc. So, we can expect subjects that will support that, such as branches like electrical engineering, programming, and computer science. Also, recently many health essays state that doctors’ and engineers’ degrees have become more popular. And some research shows that due to the covid-19 pandemic, medical degrees are in high demand because students started to realize how important such specialists are for the whole society in every part of the world.
Less Paper will be Used
The global warming and sustainability campaigns will be frowned upon strongly in the years to come. Meaning that we will all use way less paper. And traditional books will be replaced with eBooks, textbooks with software for writing, and every test or essay will be written remotely. Many experts are even working on it to make sure that remote exams can be taken without cheating.
Conclusion
Education has changed so much over the past 15 to 20 years, and nowadays, the learning and curriculum teaching has already extended way beyond the four classroom walls and will surely continue to do so. And as education changes, students and teachers need to adapt and grow in order to suit the needs of the future. However, there is no magic button to press and ensure that those predictions for higher education will happen and bring success in the future, but some form of them will indeed happen because only through those changes will we be able to bring closer to a more efficient way of education for the kids of tomorrow.
