Higher Ed 5.0

1.0

In the beginning, higher education was a way to organise pre-existing networks of knowledge—wandering scholars and local experts—into guilds, which were Universitas.

This was a form of organisation—clustering the scholars and fostering a network of students by giving them certain privileges. There were no buildings—only communities! One became a Master by studying with a Master for a while and securing approval from the Master.

Let's label these the community universities, which were to be seen all over Europe and some parts of Asia.

2.0

Thereafter came the Enlightenment universities, discipline-based organisations to certify 'true knowledge', a more formal state-sponsored institution. They were formed as a response to the avalanche of knowledge that print technology unleashed, a tide that the Encyclopedists had failed to classify and control.

Their job was to preserve the truth from the churn of ideas, opinions, imaginations, tales and memes. Nietzsche best described what this 'truth' was:

What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthromorphisms - in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people; truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

Let us call these knowledge universities, starting with the early German enlightenment institutions that led to the model of the modern research university.

3.0

Thereafter came the state. Perhaps we should connect this with colonialism, which was based on a hierarchy of knowledge and the export of truth—or truths—to societies or communities that differed in beliefs and practices. The institution of the university as a government department was sustained by the power of granting degrees, which, in turn, were the entry requirement for government positions—and, therefore, to middle-class lives. This was like a modern manifestation of the Guozijian, the imperial college of ancient China, made into a worldwide phenomenon by the powers of the empires.

This avatar—degree universities—was sustained by the power of the state or the empire. At its core was a hierarchy of knowledge connected with a sense of moral and civilisational superiority earned through the power of arms, which, in turn, was made possible by the technological and financial prowess of the sponsoring empires.

4.0

After this came the market Universities. When the expansion of democracy made the state impotent as a tool of profit and control and the embedded empire, one that was sustained by the consent of the governed, rose, higher Education had to be reconfigured as a tool of elite agreement—in benign terms, 'soft power'. This 'soft power' was manifested by firmly attaching 'higher' education to what we love—a good life—one of security, comfort, and recognition.

What sustained this version is an implicit agreement between the owners of capital and providers of labour about specific competencies, the ways of thinking, doing, belonging, and being that would unlock progression and success in a multi-tiered civilisation. Knowing-how pushed out knowing-why in higher education priorities: Everyone seemed to have agreed on the WHY, and there was nothing else to discuss.

5.0

At this moment, that implicit agreement about competence is fraying. Democracy has gone too far, imposing a more significant cost and demanding moral responsibilities from businesses. The reshaping of jobs by technology has come to the suburbs near us. The consent architecture of the new empire is being challenged, primarily from within, by its new caesars, who started to take it for granted. An elite revolt, partly manifested by an elite flight to extra-territorial jurisdictions (such as Dubai) and partly by the step-by-step reversal of affirmative action and progressive consensus that marked twentieth-century politics, is reshaping all conversations.

Power is now reconfigured as network power, a decentralised form emanating from expectations instead of instructions, codes and practices. Everyone is free to choose from a menu of given choices. This phase is also defined by the dispersion of the knowledge networks, not just because the tools of connecting, consuming and certifying knowledge already exist but also because they have become the norm. The dispersion of state power into algorithms, the dematerialisation of wealth creation, the virtualisation of money and credit, the automation of well-turned speech and psychological reinforcements: Lifelong learning, careers as entrepreneurs, the need for reinvention of self, all confirm that all that was solid had melted into the air. New aspirations must be created for its own sake. The good life story is broken, but nothing is there to replace it.

All the terms we use to describe the emerging forms of higher ed - virtual university, online university, digital university - limit the imagination to a technological interface with a centralised core: the seat of authority, the source of knowledge and the certifier of expertise. But new conceptual categories will be needed as the veil lifts and real changes come to be. It's a toss-up between 'ephemeral' or 'democratic', what higher ed 5.0 will be. For this, we must defer to the judgment of history. But, at the least, we can see a new shape and form of higher ed, changing the unchanging.