15 Trends Shaping the Future of Higher Education
The Educause 2020 Horizon Report has identified 15 social, technological, higher education and political trends that are influencing teaching and learning in higher ed today — and will have a lasting impact on tomorrow.
"Anticipating the future is human nature …. Anticipating the future is risky …. Anticipating the future is necessary." Those bold statements opened the latest Educause Horizon Report, an annual forecast and analysis of education technology trends in higher education. Its goal: "to inform decision makers and help learners, instructors, and leaders think more deeply about the educational technology choices they are making and their reasons for doing so."
For more than a decade, the Horizon Report organized its predictions according to an adoption timeline: time-to-adoption of one year or less; time-to-adoption of two to three years; and time-to-adoption of four-to-five years. The 2020 report has broken from that format, in the "first major revision of the report's methodology, structure, and content." It cited criticism of the report's prediction track record (see, for example, The Horizon Never Moves" from Hack Education), moving away from the time-to-adoption structure while recognizing that "our thoughts about the future are rooted in the present and how it has changed from the past." The result: a focus on the evidence, data and scenarios behind the ed tech trends that will inform decision-making today and in the future.
The 2020 report named 15 trends across five categories: social, technological, economic, higher education, and political. In the social sphere:
- Well-Being and Mental Health. Colleges and universities "need to support the increasing numbers of students who report experiencing anxiety, depression, and related concerns," the report said. "Faculty and administrators will need to navigate more frequent encounters with students seeking well-being and mental health help, since students who do not have effective intervention services or treatment available to them will likely be less successful in academic and social activities."
- Demographic Changes. These shifts are "leading to a new outlook on how higher education must serve students in the future." In particular, "increasing numbers of nontraditional students and changes in the concept of the 'typical' student will continue to force institutions to consider alternative approaches to higher education."
- Equity and Fair Practices. Here, the report pointed to the increasing prevalence of equity and diversity goals, including institutional goals for equity completion outcomes that are tied to funding.
In the technological category:
- Artificial Intelligence: Technology Implications. The report predicted that AI will increasingly be used "by human instructors for providing feedback on student work and for helping with other 'virtual teaching assistant' applications," noting that the technology "may also have applications for refining language translation and for improving access for students with visual or hearing impairments.
- Next-Generation Digital Learning Environment. The NGDLE is "creating a transformational shift in how institutions architect their learning ecosystems for learners and instructors," with an emphasis on open standards, the report said. As a result, both learners and instructors will have more freedom to experiment with new approaches to education.
- Analytics and Privacy Questions. The growth of analytics in higher education has, in turn, let to student privacy becoming an increasingly important consideration. Here, the report advised that "institutions will need to be more proactive in protecting student and employee data and must make careful decisions around partnerships and data exchanges with other organizations, vendors, and governments."