HED 535G - Disruption and Higher Education

Credits: 4

This course will examine the future(s) of higher education in the current moment of societal, cultural, and technological “disruption”. It will take the role, relevance, and function of higher education as a question, thus allowing us to ask foundational questions of how it might look otherwise and what is is supposed to actually do. The course will provide conceptual tools and case studies by which to understand “disruption” in higher education and examine several key issues and drivers of such disruption: for example, the demographics of the “new student majority”; technological advances in online learning, data analytics, and MOOCs; the disinvestment from public higher education; and the unbundling and adjunctification of faculty work. Ultimately, the course will ask – and expect students to begin to answer – how this current moment allows us to create (or perhaps prevents us from creating) a better postsecondary educational system.