Looking Back from the Year 2030: The Pandemic and American Universities
It isn’t a rosy future or a bleak future. It is a possible future.
“Hi Professor!” Instantly, my EarA56 whispers the student’s name into my ear. “Hi Corbin!” I answer obediently. I hadn’t recognized him at first. “I’ll see you soon at that pandemic teach-in,” Corbin voiced over his shoulder as he quickly disappeared down the walkway.
I was exactly Corbin’s age when the pandemic hit — a Junior in college. How did the coronavirus change us on campus? It scarred us all in so many ways. Even those little pleasures: the lavish all-you-can-eat college buffets. They never quite came back to what they were.
And now, here I am, ten years later, a professor, here at this great university — at UCZ. Join me on my walk-through campus if you will. It is so lovely in this spring sun. I just left a combative faculty meeting that I will tell you about in a moment. Walk with me across the UCZ campus to our university teach-in, “March 13, the 10th Anniversary of the Coronavirus State Of Emergency: What America Learned.”
UCZ has grown in the last decade since the pandemic. Beginning in 2023, as the Coronavirus Economic Depression ravaged universities, Chancellor Davis led the acquisition of eleven surrounding colleges. Of course, university enlargement happened before the coronavirus: there was NYU Abu Dhabi, University of California in Washington D.C., and Middlebury’s (Vermont) acquisition of Monterey (California). These expansions came before 2020, before coronavirus. But all this was trifling compared to the disruption of the 2020s when about 800 smaller American universities were taken over or merged. Now, size and digitalization make for big wins in higher education.
Some academic departments, like mine, are new. Here is my building, the Romanski College of Virtuality, set up with a grant from the billionaire who orchestrated the Sony-Cisco merger.
Oh great! There’s Lily waiting for me by my building. She is my teaching assistant helping me teach “Using Gamification to Win in Politics.” Lily is one of UCZ’s few students from China.
“Wait, Lily … you seem upset. What’s going on?” I admire this smart young woman. After all, she is brave to come over here from China these days when so few still do. I remember when I was a college student, our campus was flooded with Chinese students, until coronavirus and the Trans-Pacific Cold War that followed.
American universities have shriveled in enrollments: there were 21 million students in 2010. Now, in 2030, we’re down to 17 million — dragged down by shrinking birth rates and international isolation.
Lily hesitated. “It’s about Corbin.”
Corbin, her boyfriend, is on the fencing team. Between the old “social distancing” and the new glitzier épée fencing, the sport became hip. The coronavirus crisis sent college sports into turmoil and transformation, beginning with the wrecked 2020 college football season. Then the concussion tragedy of the 2021 season knocked us — and our entire conference — out of football for another three-year pause. Chancellor Davis used that time to double-down on basketball, which paid off in two consecutive Final-Fours. By the time the concussion suspension ended, we lost our appetite for football.
“I can’t believe this awful technology!” Lily groaned, explaining about Corbin. “His Health Passport got corrupted,” she continued. “You heard about the big cyber breach they had? Of course, they said it will be fixed quickly, but…” she trailed. “…and now, I just found out, he is off the team because they won’t let him travel without his Health Passport.” I empathize. I had a similar incident when my iWrist went haywire, corrupting my Health Passport. “I think he’ll be fine; I just saw him rushing to the teach-in,” I assured her.
We’re interrupted by a friendly greeting from Roy and the health cleaning crew, passing by on the campus walkway, with all their spraying equipment, disinfectant bleaches, and a bevy of sensors. Roy’s crew helps keep our campus germ free. Not only do students now get fewer flus, they also get fewer colds. A nice aftereffect of the pandemic.
Roy’s health cleaning crew wears bright blue uniforms, all adorned with the five distinctive letters, T-R-U-M-P, in strong Verdana font. I have to hand it to Eric Trump: we always thought that he was the least talented of the Trump family, but after the Coronavirus Economic Depression, Eric took over. He sold most of the hotels and golf courses, and then transformed the industry of Infection Control, Sterilization and Decontamination and expanded into today’s huge industry of Spatial Health Maintenance. We used to see his family name on tall buildings. Now, instead, it is on vans, uniforms, and equipment sanitizing nearly every organization in the country.
I’m about to enter the teach-in, so I need to fill you in on that combative faculty meeting with Dean Martinez. The meeting was about Netflix Education, rebranded recently to NET-U, which now supplies content for about half our courses. News broke that the company is immersed in a testing scandal. The scandal is reminiscent of the 2015 Volkswagen emissions scandal. Some NET-U executives manipulated the software so that the test scores will show a consistent improvement with NET-U content. As a result, contracts were glowingly renewed every year as university administrators saw real improvement in test scores. We, at UCZ, must now decide if we announce that we are leaving NET-U. That would put our teaching delivery in disarray as we scramble to fill in. Between you and me, even though it is now tainted, I think Netflix educational content is outstanding — just like their binge-worthy Mixed Reality entertainment series that they keep pumping out.
We’re almost there, so I’ll grab a drink from Roomba-Rain, the roaming robotic vending chest that is conveniently rolling by. I wave my hand to stop it and kneel to retrieve an iced tea from the chest.
The teach-in is going to be at our UCZ Heritage Campus in the small outdoor amphitheater. Lily and I stroll in through the Heritage Gate, where per regulations, we take off all our devices, including all our wearables, lock them in the cubbyholes, before we enter this lovely retro campus. This is UCZ’s intimate 1980’s throwback. Students and instructors are sprawled on the lawn with spiral notebooks, pencils, and books — real paper books.
Lily and I are looking to sit with her clique of friends. She spots Corbin first. Corbin senses by my look that I’ve heard about his hard-luck story. He made light of it: “At least now I’ll have more time to be with Lily.”
Coming all the way from Connecticut, Corbin studies here at the Heritage Campus, paying full fare to be in this high-end traditional campus experiential immersion program. But most UCZ students are in other programs with lower price-points. There is the cheapest: full remote online. We call it “Digital+”. It is a full degree, but without access to professors, only teaching assistants and AI learningware. The goldilocks degree program, at the mid-price point, what we call “Fused,” is blended digital with some classroom. I teach in Digital+ as well as Fused, so every so often I get a kick out of going retro by visiting here — the walled-off Heritage campus with all its throwback style and traditional small classrooms.
We plop down on the grass for the teach-in. Lily introduces me to the young student next to her on the grass: “This is Maxima.” Ah, yes, I heard about her, I think to myself. This is Maxima Zuckerberg, the daughter-of. She is here to isolate from the digital world that her father helped build.
Futurists use these creative scenarios to stimulate our thinking. The scenarios help us be proactive to get to the positive futures — and mitigate the bad futures. This essay on the (fictional) UCZ campus also uses some backcasting — namely what was the sequence of events that led us to this particular future.
Some content was inspired by the excellent book Academia Next, by Bryan Alexander, 2019, published by Johns Hopkins University Press
My gratitude to colleagues who commented on drafts.
