Why Is Academic Innovation a Necessity?
The value of many universities has been brought to question over the last few years. They drive income inequality, their methods are rooted in the past and they are often highly elitist. How have the universities survived through changes so far?
The answer is that these universities are resilient precisely because of the innovations that happen within but are hard to see from the outside. Some say that AI is a threat to higher education, but two new colleges were founded recently. One of them is based on the idea that new models of education (because of AI) are necessary. MIT established a new college which integrated AI research into traditional disciplines.
New approaches are integrated with higher education. Universities mesh their ideas with technology advancements and educate a new generation of professionals. The usual story with universities is that they don’t want to change. There are critics of all professions that say that universities could really bring forward more innovations, as is expected of them. However, some people claim that the university survived specifically because it was so open to innovations and because it remained dynamic, not static.
Historically, universities have always evolved — not at the pace most would have expected, but still — and anything that happens when it comes to innovations will be assimilated. New York Times announced that MOOCs will drive people away from universities. The same goes for General Assembly. All of these are more practical and focused on the career building.
But what happened was completely the opposite from what everyone projected. Universities embraced these new technologies and repurposed them to allow their students to learn better and get some practical knowledge. There are Master’s Degrees as well coming from selective universities now.
“In recent years, all of the companies that have tried to go alone have done less than companies that connected with universities. For-profit university industry has lost more than half of its students,” says Fred Efron, a regular contributor to Assignment Writing Service and BoomEssays.
Critics of the universities say that startups are the source of innovations and that universities should be more like them. But innovation is inherent to universities because they use these innovations to improve their education and their methods. Universities innovate just like big companies — by hunting for new ideas. Some of the biggest innovations by Google or Apple weren’t even their innovations but those that they got from outside of their companies.
Universities take a similar approach where they acquire expertise and knowledge of other colleges and universities as well as their innovations.
“Purdue University acquired Kaplan University and this relationship combined the recruiting process and technology of Kaplan with trust that Purdue has as well as their expertise and they launched Purdue University Global. They plan on creating more similar programs for other universities.”, says Mia Talerico, an author at Essayroo and Essay Services.
In every single case, innovations or threats from the outside have been used by universities to improve their education and their system. They have repurposed every single threat into something that can benefit both the students and the staff. Universities have been a force driving change and creativity since the very start of higher education. History has shown that incorporating ideas from startups has helped the universities change things for each new generation. Education entrepreneurs have made changes by working with universities rather than competing with them. Higher education is thus, not going out of fashion or business any time soon. Institutions will grow or fail because of their differing abilities to adapt to new markets. Academic leaders should learn more about the history of higher education and see new strategies and moves they could make. By using what is built in the outside world, universities can thrive.
Chloe Bennet works as an educator at Paper Fellows and Custom Paper Writing Service UK. She loves writing articles where she deals with subjects like education, innovations and so on. Chloe curates a blog content at OX Essays.
