Society of College and University Planning Fellowship Project
The Future of University Planning in 2040:
Using Foresight Analysis to Look Ahead, Adapt and Innovate
All foresight projects stem from the belief that the future will look different than the present. The question is one of degrees. What we can’t know is whether the future will unfold at the current rate of change or whether it will sharply accelerate in response to a paradigm-shifting disruption (e.g., the pandemic, A.I., climate change, etc.).
While planners may be highly-attuned to helping their colleges and clients plan for the future—designing buildings that will be relevant in fifty years or developing academic programs for careers we cannot yet envision—we do not often have cause to turn our attention to the ways our own profession will be susceptible to change.
For my fellowship project, I will undertake a comprehensive foresight analysis to explore what university planning might look like in 2040. Guided by the Thinking about the Future Framework (Hines & Bishop, 2007) and Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything, Even Things that Seem Impossible Today (McGonigal, 2022), I will follow a systematic, evidence-based process to identify trends, and drivers of change and develop competing scenarios of plausible futures.
At its best, strategic foresight is a form of collective intelligence. I will invite SCUP members to participate at key intervals to strengthen the analysis. Foresight work adds value by prompting industry leaders to think through future scenarios and their implications. And the work is enhanced when industry leaders play an active role in sharing their perspectives.
Presentation at the Upcoming Society of College and University Planning (SCUP) conference in Philadelphia, PA
July 22, 2024
1:30 - 2:30 pm Eastern
Are you prepared for the future of higher education? With constant change and disruption, “the future” will look very different than it does today. As a planner, what data sources are you using to develop a better understanding of what may lay ahead.
The session will include an overview of the systematic methodology employed by professional futurists and strategic foresight. The session will provide some data on how widely these methods are being used in college and university planning and evidence-based scenarios of plausible futures about higher education.