CONCLUSION

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

1947 SIXTY YEA R S 2007

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

The Global University of the Future

University of Maryland University College has always been ahead of its time. From the first courses provided throughout the state of Maryland in 1947, to its distance education programs offered via computer 60 years later, UMUC has had a visionary approach to higher education. As one of the few universities that focused on providing educational opportunities for adult, parttime students, UMUC early in its history established itself as an innovator and a leader in higher education programs around the world. UMUC’s willingness to adapt to change and to experiment with new processes, new programs, and new services became a tradition within this otherwise nontraditional institution. And its local, national, and global successes helped transform higher education for adult students during the second half of the 20th century.

Previous leaders of UMUC were well aware of the fundamental changes occurring in higher education from the end of World War II to the turn of the new century. In a 1994 address titled “The University of the Future,” then President T. Benjamin Massey described the evolution of teaching and learning from the Middle Ages to the Information Age:

Since the earliest universities of medieval Europe enthroned the lecture as the key approach to teaching, students have been coming to a place, taking notes, learning from books and materials specified by their professors, and reciting what they learned on examinations. The new technologies associated with computers, multimedia and interactive video, and telecommunications are freeing students from a specific lecture hall and lecture time, opening up the libraries of the world, and providing powerful new teaching methods for faculty. At the same time, these technologies are encouraging students to master their course material by actively learning rather than passively acquiring knowledge and skills. Seven hundred years of pedagogic tradition is falling away as universities become more learner-centered.

As UMUC looks forward in the 21st century, it recognizes the challenges created by a rapidly changing and highly unpredictable world. From its past experience, the university knows that to survive it must adapt to those changes as they occur. But merely reacting to change is no longer sufficient for any large organization in the modern world. As UMUC president Susan C. Aldridge pointed out in 2007, “In securing its future, UMUC must stand ready to anticipate, engage, and embrace the change that lies ahead by always leading one step ahead of it.”

Today’s leaders at UMUC believe that as the world continues to change at a rapidly increasing

speed, our race for knowledge becomes more critical than ever. Thus, in addressing this challenge, the university must build on its unique legacy to advance yet another new paradigm for higher education. UMUC envisions a model that empowers students to become “knowledge leaders,” individuals who embrace learning as a lifelong pursuit, rather than simply as a means to an end. And in doing so, these students will become the vanguard of new knowledge and innovation, sharing what they know through vast global “communities of practice,” connected by highspeed technology.

President Aldridge’s vision for UMUC in the 21st century not only recognizes the challenges of a rapidly changing world but also sees them as opportunities for UMUC to be “the global university of the future.” Looking beyond the traditional model of a “bricks and mortar” campus, UMUC seeks to create a new education prototype, a contemporary global university that serves as more than just a structure where learning occurs. Such an institution will reach beyond the student base it has customarily served to connect widely dispersed students and faculty from many different cultural, linguistic, educational, generational, and socioeconomic backgrounds into a vibrant learning community that can address 21st-century issues.

To achieve that goal, UMUC will need to keep its academic programs and services highly responsive to both a changing workforce and a changing world; create new opportunities for its faculty to conduct and disseminate applied research in such relevant areas as next-generation e-learning technologies and effective cross-cultural teaching and learning techniques; and deal effectively with issues related to transnational distance learning regulations, intellectual property rights, and academic standards. UMUC’s leaders also recognize the need to anticipate and meet the rapidly evolving learning demands of its students, particularly in regard to planning ahead for the coming “cyber generation,” whose approach to learning will be very different from that of previous generations.

UMUC’s student market includes adult learners from around the world, who already know a great deal about who they are and what they want to achieve, who have the capacity and motivation to participate directly in the design and direction of their own learning, and who expect a highly competent faculty with realworld experience and exceptional teaching skills. Therefore, in looking to the future, UMUC will need to merge knowledge from the fields of information technology and data communication with those of cultural anthropology and cognitive science in order to design effective online curricula and classrooms for students from different cultures and with different learning styles. The university will also need to recruit and retain a strong core of global faculty who are not only well versed in the latest teaching technologies but also understand that their role is changing from communicating content to cultivating wisdom in the virtual classroom.

In looking to the future as an exemplary and competitive global university, UMUC knows that it must continue to provide superior support services to its students throughout the lifelong learning process. With the click of a mouse, today’s university students can shop the higher

education marketplace for academic packages— not only for relevant courses and convenient degree programs but also for administrative processes that make it easier for them to transfer course credits from one institution to another, register for classes, apply for financial aid, and pay their tuition. UMUC realizes that it must respond to these expectations by combining technology and teamwork to make students’ academic journey as seamless and painless as possible from start to finish. And in a world of distance education, where students are located all over the globe, it must also work to promote a feeling of connectedness to the university community by linking those students with mentors and tutors, online clubs and honor societies, scholarship opportunities, and future colleagues in their field of study.

None of these goals will be attainable without UMUC’s developing a sustainable business model that enables the university to meet its current demands without compromising its future needs. As the university continues to increase its enrollment numbers while also creating other ways of generating revenue, it will need to use state-of-theart data collection and analysis to assess its progress on all fronts, drive its decision-making processes, and promote its image to the rest of the world. In addition, UMUC hopes to collaborate with its institutional colleagues and its stakeholders—students, faculty, staff, alumni, and partners outside of academia—to promote new public policies favorable to adult learners, including policies that support funding for innovative education programs that do not easily fit within the context of traditional higher education.

Finally, President Aldridge envisions UMUC as a global university that will enable its learners to achieve their education goals with a sense of mastery and satisfaction unequaled among similar students at other institutions. “In creating a truly global university for adult learners,” said Aldridge, UMUC will “embrace an educational model that is based not on the pedagogy of old, but rather on ‘andragogy,’ a model first defined by educator Malcolm Knowles as ‘the art and science of helping adults learn.’” She went on to explain,

This concept is based on the premise that unlike children who arrive with clean slates for us to fill, adults come to the learning table with their slates chock full of prior experience and preconceived notions. So in meeting their academic goals, they are looking for ways to connect the dots between what they already know and what they need to learn, with teachers who facilitate rather than dictate the process. With andragogy, we can actually channel that experience and challenge those beliefs to generate opportunities for learning that are highly applicable within a framework for knowledge exchange that is ultimately ageless. And in doing so, we will gradually make a critical shift in our academic culture—from teacher-directed to learner-centered education.

“We must create the future by inspiring and consolidating visionary change,” said President Aldridge in 2007. “As we enter our next 60 years, we have updated UMUC’s mission to underscore its role as an open-access, public university, while also capturing the essence of that role—that of

cultivating students as successful, lifelong partners in a worldwide learning community.”

As UMUC looks forward in this new century, it has a rich history of experimentation, innovation, and achievements forming the foundation of that future. And as it embraces the challenge of expanding the frontiers of higher education today, UMUC continues to be an instrument of change in a changing world. As one educator described it, this global “university of the future” will be an institution that takes nothing for granted about the content of higher education or the way in which it is delivered—an institution that always says, “All things are possible.”