By DAVID MYTON Fasten your seat belts: the academic conference as we know it is encountering severe turbulence as it flies into a storm sparked by climate change – and it may not survive unscathed. It’s estimated that aviation accounts for 2% to 3% of global, man-made CO₂ emissions...
By DAVID WRIGHT Today we build companies that are designed to meet a specified and known need. Most of these companies will not succeed in the future. Today, we educate and develop people based on defined careers or professions – many of which will not exist...
By DAVID MYTON Major global institutions – including academia, industry and governments – are not doing enough to help citizens learn about and adjust to Artificial Intelligence, and neither are they providing sufficient opportunity for lifelong learning. Further, the education provided by traditional universities “is failing...
By DAVID MYTON It is imperative that governments, academic institutions, businesses and individuals consider how to proactively shape a new, positive future of work rather than give way to inertia and passivity. So says a recent White Paper from the World Economic Forum report Eight Futures of Work – Scenarios...
By DAVID MYTON Preparing for a more data-centered approach to teaching, learning, and advising will require a strategy to upskill key institutional roles and develop a clear understanding of what is being measured across multiple platforms, according to a new report. The expanse of data now available...
By DAVID MYTON There seems to be general agreement that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will challenge existing institutions to adapt or, if not die, then quietly fade away. But there will also be new opportunities for the nimble and the shrewd to step up and make their mark. In...
By DAVID MYTON The UK’s new higher education watchdog, the Office for Students, has been keeping an eye on vice-chancellors’ salaries and says that there are signs of pay restraint at some universities “with some vice-chancellors refusing a salary increase”. The OfS, which became operational last April with a mandate...
By DAVID MYTON Reduced return on investment for students, cuts in government spending, and “significant skills mismatches between graduates’ abilities and the jobs available” are driving six new trends in higher education, according to a new report from The Brookings Institution. Authors Emal Dusst and Rebecca Winthrop argue that...
By DAVID MYTON Research: in the words of Stephen Hawking it is “the joy of discovering something no one knew before”. It’s what most academics live for, even if they love teaching. Indeed, research informs good teaching, ensuring that what’s been taught in the classroom is at the...
By DAVID MYTON Whatever the future holds, investment in human capital is “a no-regrets policy” that prepares people for the challenges ahead, says the World Bank in its latest examination of the changing nature of work. Three types of skills, it says, are increasingly important in today’s labour...