The role of universities in a highly technological age


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It has become important to consider the long-term impact and disruption that accelerated technological change and intensified economic globalisation will have on universities, as well as on social and economic life.

As the world becomes more interconnected and interdependent than ever imagined, technology has generated enormous amounts of wealth, higher incomes, rapid urbanisation and reduced poverty. But it has also sharpened and intensified social inequalities and created political disruptions that threaten to tear societies apart.

Technological acceleration and economic globalisation have done little to address global issues such as climate change and to impact the greater common good as represented by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Meanwhile, populist movements in several Western societies around the globe continue to divide societies with a fear of the ‘other’ and a denial of selected scientific truths.

Universities push back by doing what they do best – building trust through free enquiry, ensuring that impersonal criteria are used to establish scientific facts, promoting the open communication of ideas, supporting the next generation of critical thinkers, placing value on a diversity of types of intelligence and working for the common good and growth of an enlightened public.

Universities are, however, facing the challenge of how to align their core missions with the rapid emergence of technological innovations such as artificial intelligence, big data and algorithms, facial recognition, biosensors, augmented reality, gamification, blockchain, cloud computing and other yet-to-be-created technological innovations.

These can become disruptive, but they can also be tapped for their potential to improve how students are selected, how courses are offered, how student learning is programmed and evaluated, how higher finance is managed, how knowledge networks are organised, accessed and expanded, and how more graduates can be prepared for entrepreneurial jobs, smart cities and sustainable development.

The innovation race

Much of the impetus behind artificial intelligence grew out of places like California’s Silicon Valley with the support of scientists at universities like Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley. However, Asia and its universities, science parks, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have begun to wrestle that lead away.

The direction of technological copying has reversed itself as China’s internet giants’ super apps, social commerce and other key technology models are being copied in Europe and the United States.

China has invested in new technologies on a massive scale and artificial intelligence (AI) is a core element of that country’s strategically planned future. All leading research universities are establishing AI institutes and engaging with business, industry and government, locally and globally.

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area initiative will create a new global centre for technological innovation that will increase university collaboration between South China and Southeast Asia.

There is already a rising demand for new courses. Universities in the region have begun to offer an array of courses to anyone on artificial intelligence and robotics, blockchain, data science analytics, e-commerce, virtual reality and the internet of things.

The demand is also driven by a perception about the future of the labour market and changes in the workplace. In 2018 a Microsoft study found that, driven by the digital economy and artificial intelligence, 85% of the jobs in the Asia-Pacific will change by 2021. According to the study, half will become higher value work roles and require massive reskilling.

A study by McKinsey and Company also identified that technological change has reshaped Asia in the years 2010-20. These two major global companies, Microsoft and McKinsey, highlight technological and economic disruptions, but not as disinterested parties. The future growth and survival of these organisations depends heavily upon an unlimited digitalisation of higher education and the economy in Asia.

What about equality?

McKinsey and Company has gone so far as to declare that Asia will experience an historically extraordinary disruption (even though Asia’s past 50 years have seen and overcome civil wars, ethnic conflicts, foreign invasions, trade embargoes, starvation, social instability and collapse, terrorism, as well as climate disasters such as typhoons, tidal waves and earthquakes).

The McKinsey 288-page report, based on “years of research” by a company worth US$10 billion with 27,000 employees, failed to give any mention to inequality in Asia.

The Bank of America and the economist Thomas Piketty have shown that Asia is and will continue to be the most unequal part of the world in terms of income. The World Economic Forum put widening inequality on record as “one of the key challenges of our time”.

The McKinsey and Company report mentions the word ‘consumer’ 10 times, ‘productivity’ 19 times, and economic ‘growth’ 48 times. It mentions ‘climate change’ only three times, ‘women’ only twice, and the word ‘education’ appears twice (about educational quality and teacher education). Education becomes digital literacy.

Innovation and critical thinking skills

It may not be surprising that Asian universities are coming to lead the world in the implementation of a liberal studies curriculum. Critical thinking skills are more essential than ever in a disruptive digital economy that challenges one to check the veracity and control of information as it struggles with more fake news and social media, ubiquitous hacking and intensified surveillance of citizenries.

The core values and mission of the university as an institution have a greater responsibility in a world in which there will be 4.7 billion internet users by 2025, 75% of whom will be from emerging economies, even as opportunities for higher learning are also increasing.

AI innovation like facial recognition technology may improve safety at schools, universities and workplaces. Biometric data can be used in addition to test scores to allocate students to the ‘appropriate’ courses of study. AI algorithms may also provide split second cognitive data via a teacher’s cyber-linked eye glasses, even while a student is considering how to address the class with an answer to a mathematics question.

As universities enter the AI era, ethical questions begin to arise. Who owns a student’s cognitive and biometric data? Who should have access to it and how should it be used?

Alibaba’s Jack Ma may be correct when he stated last year that “AI will transform the way we perceive and think of the world”. How it will transform our thinking is a question that has only begun to be studied.

Yuval Noah Harari poses a key question: “What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?”

Will that mean the end of intuition? Like any other technology, questions arise about power, control and intention. Do universities have a responsibility to set out principles that ‘disrupt the disruptors’, ensuring that AI technology does not lead their fundamental mission astray?

Human vs machine

At the very least, there is a question of balance in the realm of higher learning. The culture of AI algorithms carries with it a focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). It encompasses an ability to track and monitor everything. It values explicit, verified data feeds and facts. It prioritises information efficiency, econometric logic and human capital.

The culture of AI algorithms requires it to be balanced with a focus on the human rhythms – a culture of higher learning that focuses instead on humanity, ethics, creativity and intuition. Human rhythms engage only with what matters. They encompass what is implicit, holistic and sentient. They prioritise embodied cognition, emotions, meaning, relationships, wisdom and spirituality.

Disruptions need to be addressed by such a balance in higher learning. Universities should engage effectively with technological disruptions by remaining mission-focused not mission-fuzzy; and by remaining market-smart, not market-led.

As competitive institutions, universities must be margin-conscious in making decisions about the programmes they offer and the research they support. They must avoid any tendency to be margin-whimsical when it comes to the lure of AI for assessing quality.

Gerard Postiglione is honorary professor and coordinator of the Consortium for Higher Education Research in Asia, University of Hong Kong. Email: [email protected]. This article was first published in the current edition of Higher Education in Southeast Asia and Beyond.

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