Future Worlds

Intensified effects of climate change result in accelerated movements of populations and increasing food and water insecurity. Rapid global mobilisation to support sustainable change impacts industry, government and society. A backlash against insularity opens borders and increases immigration to parts of the UK. The government introduces staggered tuition fees based on ability to pay, opening up higher education to new sectors of the domestic and immigrant population. Universities are placed under pressure to clearly define their distinctive contribution and to open up greater choice to students. This will result in greater differentiation: providers will be either local, regionally defined with strong links to local employers, or they will be international brands with strong federated links to other global brand institutions. The proven negative cognitive effects of ubiquitous technology creates a greater public demand for privacy and strong, off-grid countercultures.

Automation of many types of manual and professional work prompts greater global demand for higher education as a route to advanced skills and knowledge, while a lack of meaningful employment for large portions of the population threatens to dramatically increase wealth inequality. The emphasis of higher education shifts toward creative, critical problem solving and social skills as science disciplines increasingly converge with the creative arts and humanities. There is a move from content and curriculum to university as an ‘experience’. Female professors and BME academics reach equitable levels for the first time, but the greater proportion of academics are still on precarious contracts. Augmented, virtual and simulated realities are normalised in professional work, education and leisure, while educational neuroscience and the development of new, seamless brain- computer interfaces opens up new possibilities for extreme cognitive enhancement.

The boundaries between employment, education and retirement become looser. The decline in part-time study reverses and education over a lifetime has become the norm for the increasingly ageing population. Universities are no longer the main provider of higher education, as options to study become available from specialised private and industry sources, open platforms and systems which directly link individual tutors and students in a new economy of provision. Earning a degree becomes less important as badges and micro- credentials become respectable markers of educational value. Despite intensive urbanisation globally, the concept of the individual campus becomes less important as more people choose to study from home, work or at leisure. Virtual mobility becomes a defining feature of higher education and apprenticeships, lifelong learning and hybrid models of distance and campus- based education become the norm. Ethical norms shift to create greater social tolerance for individual profiling based on genetic screening, datafication and ubiquitous surveillance. Smart drugs for cognitive enhancement become safer, more popular, and more readily available.