Preparing for College and the 21st Century

• In Event: Plugged In: The Potential of Technological Innovations to Improve College Readiness, Access, and Success

Abstract

The dilemma of preparing young people for college is that college undergraduate education itself is profoundly out of step with today’s undergraduates and with the modern world. Colleges are primarily organized around lecture-based courses and colleges continue to offer majors around disciplinary labels that are now, in reality, no more than the names of departments. Cutting edge academic research is no longer rooted in these labels, but in cross-disciplinary approaches to major themes or challenges that require pooled, integrated, and transformed methods and tools. Further, many 21st century skills are not addressed in college or in earlier education in the United States. The current structure of undergraduate education in the U.S. (and much of the rest of the world) exists for efficiency, not quality or relevance.

So we face the dilemma of whether to prepare young people for the colleges we have or for the 21st century. This paper will discuss how learning is being organized outside of school in terms of “passionate affinity spaces” using digital media and the implications this will have for all levels of schooling. Features of this form of learning, contrasted with today’s approaches in schools and college, will be discussed, as well as the ways in which this form of learning could effectively be brought to schools and colleges to create a new paradigm of education.

Author

• James Paul Gee, Arizona State University