“Complex” seems to be the buzzword on everyone’s lips today when asked to describe the future and what it may hold. The technological disruption of seemingly outdated jobs, an increasingly pluralistic and polarised world, as well as serious environmental degradation, inter alia, have been hailed as the slew of significant challenges one would have to face tomorrow. Hence, it is no wonder that critics have been skeptical about the effectiveness of higher education institutes such as colleges and universities in equipping students with the appropriate set of competencies required to find solutions to tomorrow’s problems. However, I firmly believe that higher education systems and institutions are more than capable of breeding pools of students who are capable of producing creative solutions to emerging challenges. Furthermore, I trust that higher education institutes can mold culturally sensitive and articulate individuals. Taken together, such competencies would put them in good stead to meet the needs of the future climate and workplace.
Higher Education: Criticism
Skeptics of higher education stubbornly assert that the archaic regulatory structure and labyrinth of current rules and procedures which govern these monolithic institutes of advanced learning are too inflexible. Ergo, the latter is ill-suited to meet the dynamics of tomorrow’s needs. Some claim that universities tend to place excessive emphasis on rote learning and their curriculums are only relevant for present issues and complexities. What the world needs in the future - resilient and versatile individuals with critical
thinking skills and cultural awareness - simply cannot be produced by such rigid teaching pedagogies.
Higher Education: Proving Critics Wrong
From the outset, such a school of thought seems to be justified, but upon closer examination of teaching pedagogies of colleges and universities across the world, their argument actually fails to hold water. In retrospect, numerous universities ranging from those nestled in the United States to India have had the foresight to speculate the needs of the future and reform their ways of delivering education to undergraduates in a bid to suit the latter. Here are three ways higher education institutes have tailored their curriculums to meet the needs of tomorrow.
Instilling problem-solving skills and creativity. Universities worldwide have long been cognizant of the pressing requirement for undergraduates to possess rigorous critical thinking skills, creativity and ingenuity to solve significant challenges in our complex world. Current and future students must be able to think logically and creatively to solve new problems that stem from multiple causal factors; what that has worked well in the past may not be germane to the needs of tomorrow. With that, schools have implemented various initiatives and new interdisciplinary majors to put students in good stead in facing future issues. This is best evinced by the Singapore Management University (SMU)’s recently rolled-out SMU-X programme, of which purpose is to confer students the opportunity of partnering with businesses and governmental organizations to challenge them with constantly evolving real-world problems. Its effectiveness was evinced by the innovative and feasible recommendations presented by their students to the UOB banking corporation. According to Head of Digitalization Ms Janet Young, the bank has now gleaned better insights on the banking challenges faced by millennials and will be using their recommendations to bolster their services to meet future banking needs. In addition, SMU has introduced the new Politics, Law and Economics major in 2016 to grant students a holistic and integrated framework to comprehend contemporary issues through a multidisciplinary lens, thereby encouraging them to think deeply and analytically. From the aforementioned examples, higher education institutes are adept at meeting the needs of tomorrow; after all, they have in place effective programmes and pedagogies to cultivate critical thinkers capable of managing future quagmires.
Honing soft skills. Universities have shifted from a pedagogy of rote learning to one that heavily underscores the relevance and importance of interpersonal skills such as communication and cooperation. In the future, we will witness a world that is not only more interwoven through breakthroughs in global communications and infrastructure, but also an increasingly more polarised one due to the plethora of differing perspectives and views about contentious issues. Thus, communication skills are ever so vital in dealing with a world with conflicting ideologies and opinions. Students have to learn to argue better, not by being argumentative - and even less so, combative - but by being able to articulate their thoughts and describe their reason for attributing value to that line of thinking. Additionally, they have to be open-minded and agree to disagree depending on the context. Higher learning institutions have long pushed students to debate passionately and class participation has long contributed to students’ grades. For universities such as the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), SMU and Yale, communication studies are now part of their foundation courses and requirements for each student. Internship attachments, capstone projects and even residential housing are offered by these colleges to train them to be articulate and comfortable with working on problems in a team context. Such pedagogies are a far cry from what critics have fallaciously made them out to be; it is unassailable, then, that higher education is competent in nurturing students soft skills which are transferable across future sectors.
Nurturing the heartware. That we are going to face an aging world in the future is hardly surprising. Not only are aging populations most prevalent in affluent societies like Japan and Germany, but they are also increasingly apparent in developing countries such as Sri Lanka. Global warming has bleached a sizeable area of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and also threatened the livelihoods of Bangladeshi farmers whose crops are regularly wiped out by frequent droughts and monsoons. Such entrenched and intractable challenges of today will endure and become those of the future, especially when there is no panacea, no end in sight right now. With this in mind, students today and tomorrow need to be ethically and socially responsible, and globally aware in order to acquire the gumption and purpose to meet tomorrow’s needs. Naturally, universities are definitely not oblivious to these needs - King’s College London, for example, has announced a radically new medical curriculum in 2020, which trains up and coming doctors to also be responsible thinkers, leaders and champions of mental health. SMU, on the other hand, has provided every undergraduate the opportunity for community service projects to advance humanitarian causes. Their efforts were not for naught: according to the university, SMU graduates have performed an average of 140 hours of community service, which is well above the mandatory 80 hours. Students, through university programmes, have proven themselves as engaged individuals who are well aware of the problems that plague the present and future, and more than willing to take action to better the world. Hence, it is irrefutable that higher education is relatively successful in molding socially responsible leaders.
In essence, the view that higher education systems and institutions are outdated and unsuited to meet the needs of tomorrow is short-sighted, for those who subscribe to this strand of argument have failed to observe the different reforms and programmes eagerly implemented by universities to effectively hone their students in becoming versatile and adaptable thinkers. Should colleges continue to seek innovative ways to equip their students for the future, I am positively confident that students will not only look at their adversities straight in the eye but also welcome the ambiguous future ahead with wide-open arms.
