To The Academy
Re: The Future of Continuing Education
from a State and National Perspective
From: Edward G. Simpson, Jr.

Discussions about "change in the academy" are becoming numbingly pervasive. In a recent Forbes magazine article, Peter Drucker noted, "...thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won't survive...." That may not come to pass, but many of us are not sure. Drucker goes on to say that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as health care without any visible improvement in content or quality. He notes that lectures and classes are already being delivered off-campus by satellite and two-way video at a fraction of the cost. Residential institutions are outdated and unneeded, he believes.

Whatever the form of our universities after the next generation, Drucker, writing in an earlier article for The Atlantic Monthly entitled "The Age of Social Transformation," speaks convincingly about the global spread of the knowledge society in the 21st century. "Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge society, but in many if not most developed societies they will be the largest single population and workforce group. And even where outnumbered by other groups, knowledge workers will give the emerging knowledge society its character, its leadership, its social profile. [The knowledge workers] may not be the ruling class of the knowledge society, but they are already its leading class. And in their characteristics, social position, values, and expectations, they differ fundamentally from any group in history that has ever occupied the leading position."

Those of us in continuing education feel the pressure of change as well. We watch carefully the various trends in the process of social transformation. Writing in the Futurist, Harland Cleveland has wrestled with "the limits of cultural diversity;" the "trilemma" as he calls it, "is the mutually damaging collision of individual human rights, cultural human diversity, and global human opportunities." If we take the influence Drucker is predicting for his knowledge workers society, then Cleveland's premise is that to make progress, the world's citizens must act upon an understanding that culture is not a synonym of civilization.

John Gardner has written in another Futurist article that "a vital community reconciles group purposes with individual diversity. On the larger scene, the diversity is supplied not by individuals but by subgroups--national, ethnic, religious, linguistic, whatever. In either case, the goal is to achieve wholeness incorporating diversity. That is the transcendent task for our generation, at home and worldwide."

How do we in the academy shape the design and content of the educational programs we provide in recognition of the potential impact on values held by the people whom we educate? And what do the processes of change mean for us for the future?

There are three emerging themes that I think are affecting us as practitioners of education for the future. They are (1) workplace training and education, (2) new alliances and models for delivery of continuing education programming (impacting the academy), and (3) organizational change and adjustment in mission for the academy.

The increasing need to "educate the workforce" has influenced discussions of governmental funding of education from cradle to grave. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal felt (at the 80% level) that "technological change is the biggest reason for the widening gulf between rich and poor over the past 15 years. If workers had better educations, more could qualify for higher paying jobs, allowing the middle class to expand again." Please note this observation comes at a time when we are laying off thousands of highly educated workers.

With regard to new alliances and models, we are finding that our institutions can no longer depend on everyone beating a path to our door as has been the case in the past. The "marketplace" for education is getting highly competitive. New arrangements of institutions, partnerships, public and private cooperative efforts, and consortiums are springing up every day. The Western Governors Virtual University may establish a new educational model--and note it came as a political initiative, not an educational one. In the age of technology, new alliances are possible on an international basis, which is not just based on geographic proximity.

Finally, institutions will face organizational change and adjustments in their missions with regard to continuing education. The program expectations from the increasingly diverse audiences who make demands for educational access will likely force re-examination of the ways we maintain and ensure participation, academic integrity, and our institutional viability. Whether we like it or not, economic factors and politics are redefining what, in another day, we might have described as our ecumenical programming responsibility. We are being pushed into a more segmented market response--sometimes identified as "mass customization"--and yet the range of contents desired has narrowed.

This unique time provides us a set of circumstances that give opportunity for responses in program development and delivery to audiences that need relevant and applicable knowledge and skills. This is a time of opportunity that might be put into perspective by a thought from Ashleigh Brilliant, "Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to."

Edward G. Simpson, Jr., is associate vice president for public service and outreach at The University of Georgia and is director of the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, a position he's held since 1983. This "To The Academy" is adapted from a keynote address he made at the annual meeting of the Georgia Adult Education Association, held in March in Savannah, Georgia.

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