The Academics of 2020 and Beyond

I participated in the 2010 Association for Tertiary Education Management (ATEM) Central Region Annual Conference yesterday and wanted to touch on several issues I found interesting.

Firstly, a presentation by Mark McCrindle from McCrindle Research discussed Australia’s ageing population and how this would have an impact on the workforce, particularly in the industry I currently work in – tertiary education. Demand for education is expected to start outstripping supply in the next 10 years, and I think this will be the catalyst for a fundamental shift in the provision of education services, particularly at a university level.

In 2020, Generation Y (those born between 1980-1994) will represent 21% of the population but 35% of the workforce. Second only to Generation X who will represent 21% of the population and 36% of the workforce.

McCrindle remarked that it takes an academic 10 years to get to the first rung of their career, compared to as little as 3 years for professionals. As the Baby Boomers retire from the ranks of academia, there will be less and less lecturers, tutors and professors around to educate future generations. Generation Y (and to a similar but probably lesser extent, GenX) are being taught to become industry leaders, to run businesses, to innovate, to go out and solve the world’s problems – not to become academics.

So where does that leave us? Thankfully, in a position that I would consider a welcome and undoubtedly a very well received change. Industry leaders will become the new academics. Market Research 101 might be taught by Mark McCrindle himself, or New Media Technologies may be taught by the CEO of Google. What better way to prepare students for their future careers than to be taught by the representatives of industry – their future employers? Education would be tailored towards career prospects, and there would no longer be a great divide between what academics want to teach and what employers want graduates to learn. If I were going to uni in 2020 and could look on the staff pages of the institution website and see an ‘all stars’ team of new gen academics, I’d enrol in a heartbeat. After receiving such inspirational teaching, I could certainly see myself giving back to the next generation of students…