Writing for Academic Discussion Universities in 50 years

What are your thoughts on how universities will evolve over the next 50 years?  (education)

 

 

☆Let’s Think

Look at the following points related to recent changes in schools. They can be the hints to see universities in 50 years.

Researches: interdisciplinary researches or collaborated researches across disciplines, researches related to the challenges the humankind face, researches to make the world better

Curriculum: four-year degrees not as a means but as the end or goal, vocational training, internships or on-the-job training, complaints from students that the courses are unrelated to their future jobs

Financial factors for students: high tuitions and student loans, limited scholarships, educational disparity

Schooling: home schooling, online schooling, self-directed learning, international school

Systems: authoritarianism, lack of diversity, gender gap

 

 

☆Hints for Points

1.        Campus will be more democratic, tolerant, and inclusive than now. Patriarchy, misogyny, and authoritarianism will be gone. Diversity will be the norm. Half the professors and students will be females.

 

2.        University education will be more flexible. Instead of the traditional-style lectures and other schoolings, online or hybrid classes will be held more often. School years will be gone. Students can take classes anytime and anywhere, according to their conditions.

 

3.        Technological advancements, especially that of artificial intelligence, will make learning experiences more personalized. People will be able to take courses that match their needs and conditions.

 

4.        In 50 years, climate crisis will force universities to focus on the solutions. They will be integrated into an international institution to tackle the impact of global warming globally and interdisciplinarily.

 

5.        Colleges, or the first four-year part of university, will disappear or become something like amusement parks partly because of diversification of learning styles and partly because of the decline in intelligence of the human race caused by factors such as infectious diseases, pollutions, and dysfunctional society. People with learning abilities and aspirations will directly belong to graduate schools, library archives, museums, research centers, laboratories, and the military.

 

 

☆Sample Answer for Ideas and Expressions

【Thesis】I think universities will be totally commercialized in the future.

【Supporting Details】Due to neoliberalism, governments in the West have been cutting costs of public organizations and institutions. National universities have been merged and they have been required to make profits. Science departments have been prioritized compared to the humanities departments because the former is more commercially profitable than the latter, and applied researches are more funded than fundamental researches for the same reason. The private sector has been involved in funding and researches in universities. Tuitions are 10 to 40 times more expensive than in the 60’s, and student loans, which didn’t exist then, now keep those who graduate in debt until they are in their 50s. The change has been going on for decades and it does not seem to stop. Therefore, it can be expected that universities will be completely for profits in the future.

【Counterargument-treatment】Academia may want to protect the freedom of studies, but it won’t do anything in the end. It has never really resisted any government policies. In the end, universities, including private ones, are subsidized by the government and they have conformed to the status quo, expelling dissenters.

【Conclusion】Unless each citizen becomes aware of the ill effects of neoliberalism and stand up to fight it, public resources, including universities, will be consumed by capitals, which siphon money from the bottom 90% to the top 10%. (230 words)

 

 

Write your response in 10 minutes. Show each other your responses. Write down questions or suggestions to each other’s response.

 

 

                                                   DRAFT