So many forward-looking articles are framed this way, asking what students will want. But the much more relevant question, to my mind, is this: who will the students of the future be? This matters a lot. I don't think it's acceptable to assume that educational institutions in most places will continue to serve only a small and privileged proportion of the population. To remain relevant, they must serve an entire population. This story, meanwhile, suggests that "students who want to secure lucrative 'new economy' jobs as they arise will be looking to gain skills quickly (and) need short, bite-sized credentialling programs." It speaks to a model of higher education as job training. But again, I think we need to define 'student' more broadly. To develop a whole-of-society approach we need to think of higher education as social infrastructure, and resist cherry-picking those areas we think will be most profitable for educational institutions.
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