Recognizing the accelerating pace of change in higher education, Georgia Tech’s Office of the Provost formed the Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE) and charged it with thinking boldly and broadly about the ways in which the Institution, poised to enter the second half of the 21st century, can be an even more effective innovator in education.
Composed of more than 50 faculty members, students, staff, and a board of external advisors, CNE has a broad charter to inquire into all aspects of the Institute that might impact Georgia Tech’s ability to prosper in a changed educational world. In February 2016, the Commission began a discovery and data gathering phase to assemble facts and statistics about the Institute and larger global trends in higher education.
This report on Drivers for Change is the first in a series of Commission reports that will provide a window into CNE findings and activities. It consists of analysis of five major factors that will most directly affect education over the coming decades:
- Demographic trends and shifts
- Socioeconomic forces
- The changing nature of students and their learning needs
- Advances in the science of learning and teaching that can be anticipated
- How an institution organizes for deliberate evolution and development to meet the need for continuing innovation in higher education.
Faced with different students, a changing socioeconomic climate, learning and teaching transformed by science, and the workforce demands for future skills, a 21st century Georgia Tech is likely to be quite different from the Georgia Tech of the 19th and 20th centuries. CNE will utilize findings like the Drivers of Change report to peer into possible futures for the Institute and higher education in general.