Bryan Alexander's Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education, and Joshua Kim's and Edward Maloney's Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education (both 2020 from Johns Hopkins University Press) set very different boundaries and take very different approaches to their subject. Yet they are also fascinating to read in imaginary dialog: the one expansive, the other organizational; the one a futurist's set of questions and the other seeking to establish a new discipline and its role in academia as well as on any particular campus. They don't say similar things, but they do offer contrasting and useful perspectives.
Academia Next is by a futurist, and if you're allergic to futurist kinds of thinking, stop here (or skip to below). Alexander is trying to extrapolate likely, possible, or unexpected consequences from visible trends, and ask what are possible, desirable, and aspirational scenarios by 2035. Like other examples in the futurist genre, he might be faulted for inadequately understanding the complexities and contingencies of historical causation, which neither repeats nor hardly ever rhymes (pace Mark Twain). In addition, historical development is hardly continuous improvement in one direction: there are lapses, losses, lacunae, and outright blunders which will be forever hard to explain.
Nevertheless, Alexander's scenarios can be variously compelling and repellant: (1) higher education in decline; or (2) higher education as an adjunct to "health care nation;" or (3) higher education transformed by open resources, scholarship, and enrollments; or (4) the "augmented" campus or face-to-face learning with significant augmented and mixed reality; or (5) more automated learning ("Siri, tutor me") or (6) the self-consciously retro campus that carefully limits digital entanglements. Alexander mentions the very real problems of digital security, and articulated understandings of privacy and self-ownership of data only in passing. The potential growth of a surveillance campus that would rival China's surveillance state carries numerous moral and legal questions. Exactly who is entrusted with all that information, and if outside vendors, then under which circumstances? Cui bono? student, administrator, parent, government official, funding lender, teacher?
Academia Next was published on the cusp of the multiple meltdowns of 2020: pandemic, economy, anti-racism, and paranoid conspiracy-mongering. Although these entangled crises might have disqualified Alexander's futurism, they erve to focus what is at stake in higher education: cui bono? again. Current forecasts for what will change or remain the same in higher education post-pandemic, post-neoliberal economics, post-conspiracy are doubtless premature, and the real gains or losses are bound to be unexpected or only half-expected: things fall apart (and racism, alas, is unlikely to dissipate quickly). Through all that he knew about in early 2020, and learned in subsequent events, Alexander calls for clarity of vision, courage, and persistence: the traditional values of higher education will not be entirely misplaced and some expensive commitments will continue to be worthwhile.
Kim's & Maloney's Learning Innovation is decidedly more modest regarding the future, and grounded regarding current practice. They ask what are the organizational, pedagogical, and disciplinary consequences of presently developing theoretical frameworks, methodological practices, shared challenges, and goals as regards learning innovation? K&M unpack the title words themselves (learning, innovation), and their chapters on changing understandings of learning and institutional change clarify many issues often buried in the bustle of actively producing instruction.
K&M's chapter "Reclaiming Innovation from Disruption" alone is worth the price of the book: they show carefully how "disruptive innovation" poorly serves higher education (especially when devotees to the cult throw shade on anyone who questions it). Higher education is a complex ecosystem; learners are not products; higher education is diverse. The fundamental orientation towards sharing learning, ideas, and plans, right down to budgets, communications strategies, and technical know-how "would shock anyone who has spent a career in the corporate world." It is easier to ask what is not shared than what is. K&M's brief history of PLATO, the 40-year progenitor of all subsequent digital learning platforms clinches their case. The oft-unexamined faith that new technologies will disrupt the future of colleges and universities almost always ignores the history of educational technologies and erases the impact of other sources of change. (This is a pertinent rejoinder to Alexander, as above.)
Academia Next at this date is available in SHU library only in print copy; Learning Innovation is available both in print and online (with unlimited concurrent users, and printing or e-mailing unlimited pages). Learning Innovation is easy to read as long as you can bear to read from a screen. (A leading cause of eye strain during the pandemic.) I hear Buzz Lightyear: "To infinity and beyond!"