On March 1, UH Foresight held its Spring Gathering and the Student Needs 2025+ research teams for the first time revealed their baseline and alternative scenarios for the future of Learning, Working, Participating, Playing, Connecting, and Living. Below are a few scan hits that informed their findings and how they fit into the overall trends.
“They’re Watching You At Work,” The Atlantic
Meticulous performance stats aren’t just for baseball players anymore. Companies are looking for and finding ways to collect real-time data to assess and predict work performance using what they call “people analytics.” The Student Needs 2025+ Working team created an alternative scenario called “Welcome to the Jungle,” where competition for jobs is fierce, and based mostly on what you can prove you can do and much less on your diploma or resume. The development of this technology and companies’ adoption of it could be that scenario’s precipitating event.
“Loneliness is Killing Us,” AlterNet
Doctors have quantified the effects of the loneliness disease, warning that lonely people are nearly twice as likely to die prematurely as those who do not suffer feelings of isolation. Being lonely, it seems, is a lot more worrying for your health than obesity. The Connecting and Living Teams both found connection in the future to be much more all-consuming than it is now; almost all experiences, possessions, and ideas will be shared with others–virtually or in-person. Could this future be a “vaccine” against the disease of loneliness? Or will the sheer amount of connection dull its benefits and leave us all wanting more?
“Meet Hatsune Miku,” USA Today
This USA Today story reports on the rise of “vocaloids” — animated characters that will sing lyrics and music using voice synthesizing technology. Users put their lyrics and music in to the game and the character of their choice will sing it. The Playing Team discussed the relationship between game providers and users, and vocaloids are indicative of a larger trend. Up to this point, game providers have set the agenda of how to play the game, and some users have hacked that agenda to meet their own needs or desires. In the future, providers and users will increasingly synthesize their efforts: providers will allow users to create more of their own experience and, as is the case with vocaloids, the providers can reap enormous benefit from the contributions of the users.
The University of Houston Foresight program is exploring the future of Student Needs 2025 and Beyond for the Lumina Foundation, a leading higher education foundation with a goal of raising higher educational attainment levels from 40% today to 60% in 2025. We are tasked with providing Lumina a view of how student needs are evolving over the next dozen or so years. Put simply, could changes in student needs alter the equation of what higher education will need to providing by 2025 and beyond?
To map the student needs landscape of the future, the Houston Foresight program has assembled a team of two dozen faculty, alums, and students organized around six teams exploring evolving student needs related to living, learning, working, playing, connecting, and participating. We are using Houston’s Framework Foresight process to produce forecasts of student needs and identify the implications and issues they suggest for higher education.
