The final chapter talked mainly about the need for colleges and universities to fully embrace the notion of lifelong, intermittent, on-demand learning. Aoun argues that institutions of higher education need to be more aligned with the needs of businesses and recognize that the provision of short, targeted content on demand will be more beneficial to many lifelong learners than multi-semester courses of study. (He even envisions a continuing "subscription" to one's alma mater.)
Aoun argues that industry-university partnerships to provide industry-specific training can be a win-win arrangement for all concerned (industry is all business, and colleges are in the business of teaching). He also suggests multi-university networks, both local and global, could help provide the various "building blocks" of knowledge that lifelong learners would need to access over the course of their career.
As I've undoubtedly written in previous blog posts, I'm not a huge fan of the "college as job training pipeline" idea, though I recognize that it is probably a necessity to some degree. Aoun seems to think that this enlightened view of educational opportunity will lead a renewed appreciation of teaching (as opposed to just research) on college campuses. (I think that adjunct professors earning poverty wages would probably beg to differ.)
For Aoun, the future is bright:
By appropriating our routine work, machines will offer human beings a chance at liberation from drudgery, freeing us for more creative employment. Tomorrow's jobs will require us to deploy our creativity and higher-order capacities in the service of our companies, our economy, and society. (p. 148)
I'm not as optimistic. Not to get too political, but if the past is prologue, we don't need to just be robot-proof, we need to be global capitalism-proof, which I don't see happening anytime soon.
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