New politics, fragile economy, ageing student market, a society rapidly absorbing new technologies. Any one of these presents challenges to our sector, but together these form the complex reality of our working lives.
So what? How can we respond to these pressures? What’s going to help us cope? Better still, how can we succeed?
At JISC we’re thinking about big, but already we know we need to do more with less and we want to help the sector to become agile. It’s a challenging time in education, but it’s also a tremendously energising period.
Whether or not evolution or evolution of strategy is required depends entirely upon your organisational situation. Nevertheless it helps to know where you’re headed. Common sense (and Kotter) tells us that strength of vision is a vital element of change. JISC’s vision is one of easy and widespread access to information and resources, anytime, anywhere; a vision with technology and information management at the heart of research and education.
So how does that help? Well, now more than ever, we believe that technology offers a genuine opportunity to transform not only the delivery of higher education and research undertaking, but also education institutions themselves. Crucially we argue that it’s not so much exploration of technological challenges that is required, rather a greater understanding of the potential of technology. Simply put: knowing what’s possible.
That’s why we are leading and contributing to a series of events throughout 2010, to stimulate debate and provide a platform for exchanging ideas on the future of the higher education sector. And further, through this blog we will champion the role technology plays to enable education institutions to achieve their missions through these uncertain, but fascinating times.
Excellent post Louisa. Especially given the Browne report, JISC needs to be able to express simply and clearly what we are about and why what we do is worthwhile to a sector struggling with any number of pressures and issues.
Hi Louisa,
No question that these are ‘uncertain’ (or ‘interesting’ as the Chinese proverb has it!) times and that this is likely to result in a higher than normal amount of ‘organisational flux’ within the sector: whether that be as institutions assess whether their existing strategies and processes are still fit for purpose and offering maximum ‘bang for their buck’ or, even more seismically, merge, de-merge or (God forbid) disappear altogether.
Thankfully though, institutions need not just be at the mercy of events and the tools and guidance are out there to help them assess what the future might hold and to make appropriate preparations for it. We at JISC infoNet have certaily seen an increase in interest in our Scenario Planning http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/tools/scenario-planning resource in recent months as people look for tools to help them anticipate future challenges. We are also beginning to work closely with institutions such as Beaumont College as they look to review and refine their strategic processes. There’s more on this from our own Spotlight Blog http://jiscinfonet.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2010/08/19/demonstrating-the-value-of-jisc-infonet%e2%80%99s-resources-with-beaumont-college/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+jiscinfonet%2Fspotlight+%28Spotlight%29
It may be a rough ride ahead, but at least through the work of JISC and JISC Advance the sector has many of the tools it needs to steer a successful course through it.
http://pebblepad.wlv.ac.uk/webfolio.aspx?webfolioid=2249398
I’m currently thinking on similar lines, with developments in technology the university structures must change and what we consider to be education will change also. The future may be brighter than we think!