This article from Planning for Higher Education's January 2010 issue, is the updated results of an ongoing environmental scanning process by Herman Miller. We've decided to share it with the larger higher education audience, so please do let your colleagues know that this is available here. The embed below, is from SCUP's publishing presence on Scribd. We'd like to call your attention to the authors' trend #7:

Advances in technology will drive ongoing changes in all aspects of college and university life and offer new opportunities to enhanced and broaden learning experiences. ... There is no service of activity conducted in higher education that will not be affected by advances in technology. t is time to conduct a comprehensive and holistic institutional review of this rapidly growing tool.

There will be a related conversation on SCUP's Linked in group of ~2,500 participants (newly named the Integrated & Well-Planning Campus) this week, beginning in the afternoon of Tuesday, June 21, led by SCUP board member Michael Hites of the University of Illinois Administration and Kelly Block, also of the University of Illinois. They are presenting a half-day workshop on Sunday, July 24 near Washington, DC, titled: Designing IT Governance to Facilitate Decision Making Across the Organization. It's the kind of workshop you want to attend when you consider the quote above about the impact of technology on everything and everyone.

People who plan need to find relevant and credible information streams. SCUP provides those streams. From @SCUPNews, the society's daily environmental scanning tweet stream and the weekly SCUP Email News • to publications like Planning for Higher Education and Trends to Watch In Higher Education • to networks on LinkedIn and Facebook • to the society's annual, international conference and idea marketplace (July 23-27, ~DC)

We've titled this post "Are Students Brains Changing Faster Than Higher Ed Can?" It's actually an untitled item from the Learning section of 2010's Trends to Watch and takes the form of an observation with related thoughts.

"Trends" is written by SCUP's director of education and planning, Phyllis T.H. Grummon, who will facilitate SCUP's Pacific Region's June 10 Trends in Higher Education Symposium the Claremont Colleges.

Learning

Observation

Changes in the learning environment, sometimes very subtle, can affect the performance of students in classrooms.

• Exposure to the letters “A” or “F” at the start of an examination seems to have an affect on how well students score. Subjects receiving an analogies test with the label “Test Bank ID: A” scored significantly better than students with “Test Bank: F”, with a “Test Bank ID: J” scoring in the middle.
• A study of high school students found that the gender of the images of scientists affected test scores for females. When all male examples were used, girls’ test scores were lower. They increased when textbook pictures were either all female or equally divided. 
• Recent research reports that a variety of skills are enhanced by playing action video games, including better visual selective attention and better focus.

Our Thoughts

Technology is also introducing changes in the environment. Our interaction with it appears to be influencing how our brains are wired. The power to increase learning comes with the reality of our evolving nervous system The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, (2010) Carr, N., W. W. Norton).

• Math software developed by the University of California-Irvine, based on neuroscience research, significantly increased the passing rate on a state examination in 64 of the lowest performing elementary schools in the state.
• Devices that track eye movements while reading on a screen can now be combined with software that infers a reader’s progress and provides help when eyes pause on words or names.
• Informal learning through television, video games, and the Internet has increased students’ abilities with visual-spatial reasoning.

This content was previously unavailable to the public. SCUP members and those who attended SCUP–45 in 2010, can download the entire 49-page booklet of SCUP-45 executive summaries here. The document, below, cannot be downloaded, printed, or copied from—only viewed.

After SCUP–45 in 2010, SCUP commissioned executive summaries of 20 plenary and concurrent sessions, which became a 45-page PDF resource available to SCUP members and SCUP–45 attendees only. Starting this week, we will be bringing the contents of one executive summary out each week for everyone to see. This is the first of 20. Read it and see why you need to be at 2011's premier higher education planning event! Registration is open now.

So, what do you think. Will we look back in 40 years and see nothing but the memories or bones of academic libraries? Or, will there still be units performing related duties that we still label, or at least think of occasionally, as libraries?

This blog post links to three, related commentaries. What do you think from the unique perspective of a SCUPer? Reply in the comments below, or go to SCUP's LinkedIn group and engage with the discussion there. Be sure to share not only your thoughts, but links to related resources. Thanks!

Early in 2011, before most of academia was even out of winter holiday hibernation, Brian T. Sullivan of Alfred University wrote a letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education, which is written from the perspective of a 2040 autopsy on the body of the dead academic library. His autopsy concluded that the death of the library could have been avoided by more realistic planning now.

In summary, it is entirely possible that the life of the academic library could have been spared if the last generation of librarians had spent more time plotting a realistic path to the future and less time chasing outdated trends while mindlessly spouting mantras like "There will always be books and libraries" and "People will always need librarians to show them how to use information." We'll never know now what kind of treatments might have worked. Librarians planted the seeds of their own destruction and are responsible for their own downfall.

As you might expect, there was a lot of buzz in the comments.

Nearly three weeks later, The Chronicle published another opinion, by Patricia A. Tully of Wesleyan University, who writes (labeling Sullivan as a Cassandra) that the end of the library is a long ways off:

Mr. Sullivan ends his article by stating that librarians "planted the seeds of their own destruction and are responsible for their own downfall," and he implies that this was in part by participating in the digitization of print materials and the development of a variety of online, unmediated services. But librarians should not be resisting these efforts to increase and enhance access to content—a central value of our profession is to make content as discoverable and accessible as possible to as many people as possible.

And in leading these efforts, we are not making our professional obsolete. Librarians in 2050 will be doing the same thing we are doing now—making content accessible to our users. We will be doing this very differently, of course, just as we are doing things very differently now than we did in 1960. The library will look and operate differently, and perhaps provide a different kind of experience for students and faculty. But the library's end is a long way off.

 Then, last week, James C. Pakala of Covenant Theological Seminary (St. Louis), asserts that Sullivan's autopsy report "Overlooks Libraries' Other Roles," saying that libraries do more than serve undergraduates, and also that faculty and staff require a great deal of information searching and analyzing assistance.

And as to IT taking over libraries, the opposite tends to predominate, owing to such factors as librarians' faculty ties, organizational ability, relational skills, etc. Ironically, the last Educause Review issue of 2010 even warns that campus IT operations could fade as technology becomes ubiquitous and consortia or other competitors beckon.

So, what do you think. Will we look back in 40 years and see nothing but the memories or bones of academic libraries? Or, will there still be units performing related duties that we still label, or at least think of occasionally, as libraries?

This blog post linked to three, related commentaries. What do you think from the unique perspective of a SCUPer? Reply in the comments below, or go to SCUP's LinkedIn group and engage with the discussion there. Be sure to share not only your thoughts, but links to related resources. Thanks!

What next for architects? What are the big issues to be faced in the next decade? In Architectural Record, Clifford A. Pearson, assembles recognized experts to share their expectations.

Among them is SCUPer Bob Berkebile of BNIM (Kansas City, MO) from SCUP's North Central Region, who has made valuable contributions to sessions at SCUP's international and regional conferences. Bob has worked diligently through professional organizations such as SCUP, AIA, and USGBC.

• William F. Baker on Structures
• James P. Barrett on BIM
• Robert Murray on the Economy
• Bob Berkebile on LEED
• Paul Nakazawa on Big Firms
• Rickey Burdett on Cities
• Sheila Kennedy on Materials
• June Williamson on Suburbia
• Alexandra Lang on Criticism
• George Baird on Theory

You'll need a free registration, and to log in, in order to read this 2011 outlook by ASUmag's Mike Kennedy.

And older students will continue to make their way to college and university campuses with the expectation that they will have access to an affordable, high-quality post-secondary education on a secure and welcoming campus.

Meeting those expectations will be more difficult as education institutions have to lay off instructors, aides, custodians and other personnel; raise class sizes; eliminate programs no longer seen as affordable; delay or cancel needed facility expansions and equipment upgrades; and defer the upkeep that enables facilities and equipment to last longer and continue to perform effectively.

Some of the areas covered include: budget/funding, community colleges, construction, sustainability, technology, and enrollment, leadership.

Fast Company has published a new article and resource from Anya Kamanetz (author of DIY-U). Reacting to a grant of $100M from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to the city of Newark, NJ, she thinks the money is being spent the wrong way. "Is it possible to craft an education platform that's as participatory, offers as much opportunity for self-expression, and is as magnetic to young people as Facebook itself? That would be a theory of change worth testing."

Attached to Kamenetz' essay are 13 "Radical Ideas" from a variety of education leaders. They are short, but some are provocative. SCUPers will especially like Radical Idea #13: Build a Better Classroom. The focus of all is on K–12, but here is a Blog U post with suggestions for higher education. 

The Economist gave us a holiday treat this year, a fairly deep dig into the value of a Ph.D., titled The Disposable Academic. (That'll give you some idea of the thrust of it.)

One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It isn’t graduate school itself that is discouraging,” says one student, who confesses to rather enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What’s discouraging is realising the end point has been yanked out of reach.”

Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.

This is a brief video talking about and sharing images of the development of a 12'x12' intelligent solar roadway prototype; a roadway intended to carry communications and to generate enough power to pay for itself. Apparently, you can lock up the brakes on a glass road without destroying it. We can definitely see a campus using this as part of its overall carbon management, as well as for the smart connections. The primary researcher says that over time asphalt will become too expensive and these kinds of materials will become cost effective. The Solar Roadways project just won the GE Ecoimagination challenge prize.

The Futurist has just published its Top Ten Forecasts for 2011. Two of them relate directly to higher education.

The notion of class time as separate from non-class time will vanish. The Net generation uses technologies both for socializing and for working and learning, so their approach to tasks is less about competing and more about working as teams. In this way, social networking is already facilitating collaborative forms of learning outside of classrooms and beyond formal class schedules.

The future is crowded with PhDs. The number of doctorate degrees awarded in the United States has risen for six straight years, reaching record 48,802 in 2008, according to the National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates. One-third of these degrees (33.1%) went to temporary visa holders, up from 23.3% in 1998.