Entrepreneurs who predict the death of the university have ¡°no idea what they are talking about¡±, ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ's World Academic Summit has been told.

Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University, told the event that such prophets of doom were largely seeking ¡°personal return¡± from investments that they made in technology.

¡°Some people in the private sector have argued that college will go away; those people have no idea what they are talking about,¡± Professor Crow told the audience at the University of California, Berkeley. ¡°[Some people think] that somehow technologies will be put in and take over what colleges will do; those people have no idea what they are talking about either.

¡°They are just largely people seeking some sort of personal return from investments that they might make in technologies.¡±

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While Professor Crow did not specify the technology evangelists he was referring to, a very different vision of the future had been offered in the preceding conference session by Ryan Craig, the author of College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ.

Mr Craig, the managing director of investment firm University Ventures, said that higher education institutions were producing students who lacked the skills demanded by employers and that a degree was a ¡°luxury that many cannot afford¡±.

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He argued that improved data about what employers wanted would allow students to identify their skills gaps and the best educational trajectory for themselves in the same way that a GPS satellite navigation device is designed to provide the best route for a journey.

In such a system, it would be better for most students to take shorter courses of 12 to 18 months in universities to develop the core ¡°competencies¡± needed for their first job, and then return several years later to acquire the skills required for more specialised and managerial roles, Mr Craig said.

¡°Your ¡®GPS¡¯ will provide you with suggestions for what the optimal pathway is for you,¡± Mr Craig said. ¡°I think for very few people will that optimal pathway be a three- or four-year degree in terms of value for money.¡±

Mr Craig emphasised that such a model would allow universities to ¡°develop a lifetime relationship with their students¡± and that leading universities¡¯ traditional degrees would remain popular for the foreseeable future. But the academics in the subsequent session struck a different tone.

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Anthony Monaco, the president of Massachusetts¡¯ Tufts University, described a university degree as a ¡°ticket¡± that prepared students for the lifelong learning that they would need to undertake in an evolving job market.

In particular, he argued that the broad-based approach of a liberal arts curriculum and the critical thinking skills that it developed would remain the ¡°bedrock¡± of 21st-century education.

¡°We feel that this is a very essential part of education, that you not only major in something [and] think about your academic or professional future, but that you learn how to be engaged citizens,¡± he said.

Professor Crow argued that university degrees needed to evolve to reflect more diverse classrooms and to incorporate greater use of technology.

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Meanwhile, Warren Bebbington, vice-chancellor of the University of Adelaide, predicted a ¡°great revolution in university teaching¡± along the lines of the approach taken at his institution, where the broadcasting of lectures online freed up academics¡¯ time to focus on small group discussions and laboratory-based teaching.

¡°The way forward is really the way back, back to the Humboldtian ideal,¡± Professor Bebbington said.

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chris.havergal@tesglobal.com