American architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller, who served as a professor at the University of Southern Illinois Carbondale, noted in the 1980s that human knowledge doubled with each century.
Then, the studies indicated that at the end of the Second World War it doubled every 25 years.
Currently, due to the great technological advances facilitated by the development of Information and Communication Technologies that allow access to all types of data instantaneously, it doubles every 13 months.
According to IBM, it could even be doubled every 12 hours thanks to Internet advances.
The fundamental conclusion of this discovery is that what we study today, in a couple of years can be completely obsolete, as well as the skills acquired for a profession.
A student who starts in a degree course can get to graduate and have in his mind a pile of obsolete knowledge.
This fact explains in a practical way why Education should be constantly renewed in order to update itself with the latest teaching trends dictated globally.
In fact, there are 4 megatrends able to completely change the way we think about teaching.
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Education as an investment
Contemporary students begin to consider education as another good, for which to analyze the profitability of the investment.
That is, the advantages offered by the selected training in terms of job placement, professional satisfaction and level of life achieved.
Given this, universities should look for ways to calculate the real value of the training offered.
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The resurgence of the universities’ alternatives
Traditionally, universities were associated with prestige in training.
However, in recent years there has been a proliferation of different institutions of higher education that have positioned themselves as alternatives to the University.
In the contemporary era, the diversification of the educational offer of the universities causes a return in the confidence and preference towards these centers.
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Short-term courses
The short courses that transmit knowledge or specific skills have began to grow in popularity.
Basically, this is because they allow a better balance between what students learn and what they need to practice their professions.
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Distance training
Far from becoming extinct, the tendency to distance education grows steadily.
In fact, for a matter of physical space the next few years will be characterized by an increase in the online educational offer and the preference of students for this type of training will be higher.
More and more universities and students are changing their mentality adjusting to the demands and possibilities of the technology era.
Given this, these trends will continue to rise promising to question each of the traditional aspects of education and thus create an adapted education to the digital world.
