What do youths need out of education today?

College education, even 50 years ago, was a luxury in most countries, with only a small portion — perhaps just 1 per cent — of the population attending college.

Today, in the United States alone, college students number more than 15 million, or nearly 5 per cent of the population.

In the early days, colleges that were residential in nature were geared towards developing clergy with moral grounding and shared values. The curricula focused on classical languages (Greek and Latin), logic and mathematics.

What fuelled the big jump in college enrolment was increased institutional focus on the practical application of knowledge instead. A major reason for this was growing urbanisation, which required higher levels of education.

New structures emerged to serve the needs of ever-larger enrolments of students. The lecture format was an efficient mechanism for faculty to share knowledge, and continues today to be the primary model at most of our schools and universities.

However, in the last decade, we have seen an accelerating change in the world. As I have noted repeatedly in previous pieces, information and knowledge are at our fingertips, along with the increasingly sophisticated tools to tap them, so the need to memorise or write notes has altered dramatically.

But only a few can exploit the situation as we lack the training and, therefore, the skills to use the new technology. These new tools have profoundly changed how people communicate, chat, learn, influence and are influenced — yet, the potential of new approaches and delivery mechanisms for education have not been fully implemented.

Should our definition of learning needs for students change? What are the basic elements that students need to function in society — depth or breadth of knowledge? Mastery of knowledge or the ability for lifelong learning, or both?

Should communication skills include not just reading and writing, but also use of the new media? How important is it to learn how to search for and use information critically?

DEVELOPING Lifelong LEARNING

These are some of the fundamental questions to answer as we move ahead — otherwise, there will be a disconnect between what students learn, what societies want and what individual professions and employers need and want.

College education, especially at the undergraduate level, can no longer be focused just on mastery of knowledge in a given area, nor should it create the expectation that what students learn is all that they will need for a lifetime.

There is a profound propensity for disruption and rapid change in this new era where entire job classes may be replaced, necessitating retraining in new skills.

At the same time, specialised knowledge in fields like logic and statistics is becoming increasingly valuable, along with critical thinking and teamwork. Employers want graduates who have the capacity to learn.

It is clear that institutions need to rethink and redesign curricula to reflect the shift from only teaching content to enabling students to develop lifelong learning, especially as the core skills in this new world include the ability to work with rapidly evolving technology.

Faculty staff and teachers need to adapt their courses. The world of learning is evolving from a teacher-centric to a student-centric environment.

We have entered the era of personalised education, where students are learning more from the Web and their peers and less from traditional classrooms.

How well universities and colleges respond and develop to meet these challenges will be the new parameter of success.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

K Ranga Krishnan is Dean of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore. A clinician-scientist and psychiatrist, he chaired the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at Duke University Medical Centre from 1998 to 2009.