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Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

Alex Usher offers a three-fold case for pessimism about the future of universities in Canada. First, he says, "the outlook for more higher education public funding is almost non-existent." Second, he says, we don't have "coherent theories of growth where higher education and skill development translated into future growth and prosperity." And third, "there are unprecedented levels of exhaustion and ... layered on top of widespread (though not universal) governance practices that are perfectly designed to serve the universities of the 1970s" that make it difficult to come to agreement." I think we both agree that "educational institutions, both individually and collectively, are monumentally self-centred," and that they need to enage with the public, but I think we would differ on the nature of this engagement. I don't think it's simply about economics and prosperity. We need to be more aspirational than that.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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