The Distributed University for Sustainable Higher Education

ISBN-13: 9789811665059 / Angielski / Miękka / 2021 / 94 str.

Richard Frederick Heller

Spis treści

Section 1. Some context: from first to fourth generation universities

Section 2. The problem with universities today

2.1 Managerialism creates burdens for academics with no evidence for its benefit

2.2 Business imperatives override educational imperatives

2.3 Needless competition between universities leads to duplication

2.4 Research imperatives, including for academic advancement, override educational reward systems

2.5 Local educational needs are ignored for overseas student income

2.6 Global inequalities in educational need are ignored

2.7 Universities have not kept up with the way young people gain information

2.8 Environmental sustainability is ignored

Section 3: solutions

3.1 Develop trust in academic staff to replace managerialism

3.2 Focus on collaboration – and a new taxonomy

3.3 A proposal for a global collaboration between universities that would reduce competition and standardise quality - an 'International baccalaureate' for higher education (to be called the International Degree Programme)

3.4 Utilise volunteers as untapped educators

3.5 Move to online learning

3.6 Place education in a framework of environmental sustainability – the Distributed University

3.7 Use Open Educational Resources

3.8 Take advantage of modern technology and the fourth industrial revolution

3.9 Develop a true global perspective to reduce global inequalities in access to, and benefits of, higher education

3.10 Reduce reliance on overseas student fees and develop the ‘Global Online Learning’ programme

3.11 Plan E for Education – increasing online public access to higher education

Section 4. But how can we afford it?

Section 5. A case study – Peoples-uni, and Conclusions

O autorze

Emeritus Professor Richard Heller has a medical degree and doctorate from the University of London, United Kingdom. He was Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Community Medicine, and Director of The Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and consultant general physician at the John Hunter Hospital until the year 2000. From there, he was Professor of Public Health in the University of Manchester, United Kingdom, until his retirement in 2006. Richard has had a leadership role in the International Clinical Epidemiology Network, an organisation originally funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, for capacity building in medical schools across the developing world, and developed a distance learning masters course in the University of Newcastle. He subsequently built a fully online masters course in Public Health at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Richard was also the founder and coordinator of the People's Open Access Education Initiative (Peoples-uni), which aimed to provide Public Health capacity building in developing countries at low cost, through e-learning using open access resources on the Internet, and leading to an MPH degree. His research interests have been in the causes and prevention of heart disease, the implementation of evidence-based practice, and developing measures to describe the population impact of disease risks and the benefits of interventions.

Blurb

This book is open access and discusses the re-imagining of the higher education sector. It exposes problems that relate to the way that universities have become over-managed business enterprises which may not reflect societal, national, or global educational needs. From there, it proposes some solutions, including three innovative programs, that make universities more responsive to needs, as well as reduce their impact on the environment. The central idea of this book is developing the ‘Distributed University,’ which distributes education to where it is needed, reducing local and global inequalities in access, and emphasizing local relevance in place of large centralized campuses, with a low impact on the environment. It emphasizes the distribution of trust in place of managerialism and collaboration in place of competition. By focusing on distributing education online, this book discusses how the higher education sector can be set up to adapt to the changes in the ways we work and learn today, and which will be required to adapt to and take advantage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.