Making Higher Education Affordable and Accessible to Millions Globally -The New Strategies
Politics / Educating Children Mar 27, 2016 - 06:48 PM GMTBy: Dr_R_M_Mathew
Higher Education, especially Universities, is heading towards a crisis of identity and relevance. For many, universities are just an extension of high or higher secondary schools and hence brought under ‘tertiary’ education. However, till recently, universities were unquestionable and sacramentally holy institutions charged with higher learning.
With prolonging global economic crisis, almost all universities are forced to make major downsizing of budgetary allocation resulting in increasing fees and opting for self-financing and thereby making universities beyond the reach of lower and middle income families. Both the university graduates and employers are getting realized that university education has become irrelevant with obsolete skills and knowledge and the graduates or even the highest degree holders are practically incompetent to do something innovate and independent.
They Fear Knowledge
Knowledge, Skills and Expertise determine the Quality of the People and also their social, economic, political and cultural life. Any faith or ideology or social-political system that denies these three strategic factors to the people is taking back the people or the nation to the Primitive Age of Savages and making them radicalized.
All types of Terrorism and Religious Fundamentalism prevent people to acquire the New Skills, Knowledge and Expertise that Empower them, other than acquiring the limited edition of religious knowledge and specialized skill or expertise in killing people or bomb-making and exploding. This is the basic challenge of Islam as a faith or socio-political system leading to its extinction.
The changing and dynamic world
In this fast changing and dynamic world, every adult must be equipped with the latest skills, knowledge and expertise that empower him or her and above all equip with new values and culture based on Tolerance, Universality and Adaptability so as to become one with the Humanity. Otherwise, the income and employment opportunities of millions will be lost besides getting alienated even in one's own society. This is the basic challenge of Higher Education.
Universities Questioned
Higher Education is getting unaffordable and unmanageable to the Needy and Knowledge Hungry Millions. The basic strategy of Universities everywhere is to prevent the free flow of Knowledge and Expertise and monopolize them just for the sake of their own chosen few. Universities are the most inefficient and ineffective systems in Knowledge Processing, Knowledge Consumption - Production, Skill Acquisition and Scientific Productivity.
Even after spending 8 to 10 years in universities, that too with a very high financial commitments for individual or families or the nation as a whole, the Skill, Expertise and Knowledge that acquired by even a highest university degree holder is insignificantly low or inappropriate. And he or she is unfit to engage in socially productive activities other than becoming a teacher or a political party worker or activist without much expertise.
The Alternatives
It is high for the Humanity to find out alternatives to the incompetent, highly capital and technology intensive universities and formulates Global Strategies to make Higher Education affordable, cost-effective and socially productive with new philosophy, organizational structure, theories of Skills Acquisition, Knowledge Consumption-Production and Scientific Productivity.
We have to redefine universities as the centers for advanced skills, expertise and knowledge and reinvent the New Systems of Higher Education and the New Technology of Knowledge Processing, instead of Information Processing, to deliver Quality Higher Education for all those who want it. With the capital outlay, technology and manpower, of a handful of universities, we can extend higher education to the millions globally, if we adopt new visions, missions and strategies.
Knowmatics based Dynamic Knowledge Bank and Mega Knowledge Corporations and the effective social application of Mathew's Theories of Knowledge Consumption-Production offer New and untapped vistas of Higher Education to millions at affordable cost and easy access, that too with the Expertise and Experiences of the Best Brains, Professors, Scholars, Scientists, Master Craftsmen or Artists.
For more details about Knowledge Banks, Mega Knowledge Corporations, Mathew’s Theories of Knowledge and Knowmatics, visit 1) :http://www.slideshare.net/drrajumat... 2) http://www.slideshare.net/drrajumat... ; 3) http://www.slideshare.net/drrajumat... ; 4) http://www.slideshare.net/drrajumat...
No Innovation for the last 2600 Years
For the last 2600 years, since the time of Aristotle's Academy, no innovation has been made in the field of higher education, other than sacramental or religiously following what Aristotle had done. Information Technology has been put into application in Higher Education without any notion of the basic task of the Universities in Knowledge Consumption and Production. As a result, IT has been emerged as the most inappropriate Technology for Higher Education.
These questions have been dealt at length in my paper 'Knowmatics- A New Revolution in Higher Education', Journal of World Universities Forum 4,1, 1-11, 2011. A very brief video presentation of it can be found in the following link , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p0....
My latest work related to this topic is : Mar 19, 2016 - 06:05 PM GMT ‘Delivering Quality Education for All Under the Threats of Islamic Terrorism, Refugee Crisis and Budget Cuts - New Roles of UNESCO, Internet, Google and Facebook’ http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/ Article54496.html
Prof. (Dr.) Raju M. Mathew
My recent writings on these topics appeared in the Market Oracle (UK) can be found with the help of the following link: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/UserInfo-Dr_R_M_Mathew.html
Prof. (Dr.) Raju M. Mathew
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