Backing into change

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to alert readers to issues that may be overlooked in assessing fundamental changes in the post‐secondary arena.

Design/methodology/approach

Posits that the internet changes the nature of the university as fundamentally as one saw when the Bible was published on the movable type press.

Findings

Open access courses and journals put knowledge into the Socratic Agora, changing the roles of faculty as both educators and researchers. Since knowledge is available with the click of a mouse, the linear Kindergarten to Bachelor's curriculum has been deconstructed and integrated with work and play since age is not a barrier to access. Also, few may opt for a hand‐crafted, packaged, on‐campus experience. As the current faculty, cyber immigrants, retires, the emerging cyber natives will form self‐organizing communities of interest/practice and the function of the university must be reinvented.

Originality/value

The paper is of value to administrators, policy analysts, researchers in the arena of education, funding agencies, foundations and politicians involved with educational change.

Citation

Abeles, T.P. (2005), "Backing into change", On the Horizon, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 3-6. https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120510601590