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What is next? Futuristic thinking for community colleges
Author(s) -
Ramage Thomas
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
new directions for community colleges
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1536-0733
pISSN - 0194-3081
DOI - 10.1002/cc.451
Subject(s) - variety (cybernetics) , perspective (graphical) , politics , presidential address , presidential system , context (archaeology) , public relations , political science , happening , sociology , engineering ethics , computer science , public administration , engineering , geography , law , history , archaeology , artificial intelligence , performance art , art history
Today's society is marked by massive political, social, and scientific transformations on a daily basis. However, these transformations are rarely discussed in the context of what it means to be an educated person. Our efforts to forecast, even for periods as little as five or ten years out, have been predicated on the assumption that the current rate of progress will continue into the future. A brief analysis of data—at all scales and scopes, in different time scales, and for a wide variety of technologies ranging from the electronic to the biological—illustrates that our notion of static rates of change is incorrect: Change, progress, and advancement are all happening at an accelerating rate. This chapter provides a presidential perspective on these trends to suggest that students of tomorrow must be educated in very different ways our institutions must adapt to be ready.