Bryan Alexander predicts the future of higher education

Sarah Daponde Arts & Features Editor Arts & Ideas hosted “Higher Education in the Storm of the Future,” a lecture held by Bryan Alexander, on April 14. The event was held in the Heineman Ecumenical Center and over Zoom. Yumi Park Huntington, professor of art history and interim coordinator of Arts & Ideas, introduced Maria Alessandro Bollettino, professor of history and director of CELTSS. Bollettino described Alexander as an “internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher working in the field of higher education’s future.” Alexander, a professor at Georgetown University, is the author of several books, including “Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Climate Crisis,” “Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education,” and “The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media.” His newest book, “Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Looming Academic Crisis,” was published this year. “Thank you all for coming here and thinking together,” Alexander said. “I think that the best gift you can give someone is your attention - so thank you for giving that gift to me.” He runs an ongoing research project called “The Future of Education Observatory,” which includes the tracking of a series of trend lines impacting higher education. The three major categories he discussed included “polycrisis,” current issues, and the ways in which higher education could be headed. “There are major forces acting on what we do,” Alexander added. He described a “polycrisis” as a social science term for a situation with multiple, overlapping crises. The examples he gave included the Russia-Ukraine war and the COVID-19 pandemic. Alexander said another major topic affecting higher education is the development of artificial intelligence. There are a whole series of current challenges with AI, including its threat to business models, law, culture, the climate, and education. “There’s also the quality problem,” he added. “Humans will put up with a lot of bad technology,” Alexander said. “But it’s really risky to have an AI hallucinate.” He presented some scenarios of where AI and education could be headed, which he said were based on trend lines. Alexander said eventually, everyone might have to collectively agree on academia over AI or AI over academia. Alexander said, “There’s one possibility that over the next, say, five, 10 years, we decide as a species - humanity - we think that academia is better than AI.” AI is reliable, and sometimes creepy, he said. Professionally trained people may always be more trustworthy. However, he said it is possible “the world may decide that AI is actually better than the academy.” Because academic cheating is made easy with AI, a degree could be seen as less valuable, Alexander said. “Somebody gets a biology degree - did you really? Did you really take all those steps?” he added. There is a spectrum of how people view new innovations, he said. Alexander said on one side are the innovators, who get excited over new technologies. On the other side are the laggards, who refuse new inventions. In the middle are those who adapt to technology as it becomes popular. “So think about cell phones. When they first started off, a few people have them, few more, then suddenly - whoah! Everyone goes nuts for them,” he added. He said the technology itself doesn’t matter as much as how people proceed with it and adapt to it. With AI, Alexander said the time to “act boldly” about it is now. Alexander said everyone should read more science fiction. He added, “If you’re not reading science fiction, you’re not really prepared for the 21st Century.”