Abstract:

Among the primary current and future challenges for survival for universities is their relevance. The pertinence will depend on what kind of human resources prepare on one hand for industry, commerce and services and on the other for tackling societal problems of global change, inequality, lack of democracy, violence, migration, pandemics and others. Their significance will help them to obtain the funding from the governments in the case of public institutions and the income from fees, tuition and other services for students for private schools. Their finances might also strongly depend on external funding from services provided to the private, social and government sectors through contracts for research, consulting and advisory services, as well as of how broad their international outreach becomes because future worldwide competition could become stronger. For some temporary professors in developing countries, one of the main challenges is the survival in the precarious uberization and overworked employment obtained from higher education institutions. In some institutions temporary professors take the most of the teaching load and full time tenure professors teach a very few courses. There might be also competition from teachers hired from other countries in the new long-distance education scenarios, as well as from robots created to teach using Artificial Intelligence. For the students the main challenge is to get the “right” education to be internationally competitive in a post-pandemic world in formal (in universities) and informal (self-taught to get the necessary certifications) learning systems, because one of the aspirations if not the main aspiration of getting education is to obtain a good job. The role of automation can be important although it might not reduce manual work and could not affect employment in highly “intelectual” jobs [1]. Current and future higher education institutions have to create new careers, new curricula for the old careers and not to loose relevance to prepare graduates for future jobs. In many places like in Mexico some public universities must follow the dictates of the government and greatly depend on its new ideas; however, a complete dependence on politicians on how to prepare students for the future might turn them obsolete. New virtual teaching techniques, tools like Zoom and Meet and educational platforms can propel more privatization of higher education. Due to challenges like recurring pandemics, automation, climate change and localized wars, the new careers, curricula of the careers and the upcoming mix of in-person and remote education should lead to form competent professionals capable of developing a more pacific, sustainable and secure world [2]. In this paper the main challenges for higher education institutions, professors and students are identified and some scenarios that they could face in the postpandemic world are outlined.

References:
[1] J. Resnikoff, Labor’ End. Urbana/IL: University of Illinois Press, 2022.
[2] B. de Souza, El futuro comienza ahora. Madrid/España: Akal, 2021.

Keywords:

Foresight, higher education, planning, policies.