Harned, Kahle. (2009). The Evolution of College Courses

It is hard to recognize the similarities between the biology classes of the 1950s and those of today. How will our coursework look in another fifty years? Majors will change from field-centered, such as biology and literature, where classes teach a single, broad subject, to “object” and “issue” focused majors that gather insight from many other fields of study and synthesize it. With the advent of technology infiltrating every aspect of our lives, and with the need for people to work on specific problems, universities will create more and more specialized degrees that revolve around issues and subjects such as water, species extinction, and even Shakespeare. Specialized degree programs will also draw on more outside sources to make a variety of subjects mesh together and make to connections between the different areas of our world.

Utilizing the Internet, technology such as Blackboard, and other programs to integrate knowledge and materials that will allow majors to keep up with our evolving world. Mark Taylor said that the modern universities are based on the model Immanuel Kant proposed. That is a “mass production” model. With technology at the point it is today, and ever evolving, universities will be able to provide specialized majors for students, tailored to their needs. Well known schools such as Stanford University have already put their classes online for the world to see, for free; thus encouraging students to take in subjects they wouldn't normally be able to, in order to expand their education. These classes allow students to partake in a variety of coursework to stimulate their minds beyond what they would normally learn in their major.
Many universities are already working on new degrees and curricula that focus on issues our world is facing or individual fields that focus on just one subject Some examples are courses in environmental conservation and nanotechnology in the science world, or a course on Shakespeare in the literature world. Given time, I believe our universities will migrate to the more focused programs and offerings. Online classes and courses already give students a chance to synthesize new material and learn about subjects that would never be normally offered in their major.

Colleges today are integrating curricula in new and exciting ways, and this will continue and be expanded on in the future. In College Makeover, Robert Connor explains his thoughts that universities should specialize in subjects and offer courses to prepare for what the students are going to be doing in their careers. Under this coursework he advocates that students would engage in learning with other students, thus connecting a variety of ideas in very different fields such as biology, literature, and math. They would sit with students who major in these fields, (or connect online as it may be) and apply what their major teaches to the underlying themes in all literary text. Mark C. Taylor of Columbia University has a similar outlook and he has already called for “radically interdisciplinary education,” where issue-focused majors could “synthesize knowledge from the humanities, sociology, and the natural sciences.”

With college classes becoming more interconnected, professors moving to the Internet, adapting their teaching styles to better suit the medium, and degrees being offered in more specialized fields, current college education is going to evolve and change into something very different in the future. Students will earn degrees that match the requirements of their careers, and they will be able to gain a broader understanding of the world through interconnected classes and new technology.