Higher education has fallen woefully behind in the race
to keep up with technological change, according to a former dean for graduate
education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.
In an effort to close that gap, Dr. Christine Ortiz is
planning a new kind of residential research institution to keep up with
advances while preparing students for life in the 21st century. The yet-to-be
named institution would allow students to design their own learning paths and
work with faculty to build an individual curriculum. Ortiz’s team has already
developed software for computer-guided intelligent curriculum design that
integrates science, technology, and humanistic fields.
By the end of 2016, she hopes to have started several
pilot programs and to incorporate as a nonprofit in Massachusetts. The plan
calls for her institution to be open to students by 2020.
“Technology
is accelerating, and modernization and expansion of the higher-education system
is desperately needed,” Ortiz said in an article for TechRepbulic. “Our higher-education system is still stuck in the Middle
Ages.”