Abstract
Globalized higher education has created many challenges for faculty including the uncertainty and rapid change in the missions, faculty, and teaching. In this volatile environment, faculty are constantly bombarded with changing goals, job expectations, and how to deal with technology for teaching and learning. What are faculty to do? Since professional development is limited, most faculty must make the adjustments on their own with little institutional support. A possible answer for this dilemma is resiliency, which positions the faculty member to be their own best cultivator of the future they desire in higher education.
TopWhat Are The Challenges Facing Global Higher Education?
Global higher education is part of the 21st-century society--an increasingly global, digital, and dynamic environment (Barber, Donnelly, & Rivzi, 2012; Flavin, 2017). Scholars, opinion leaders, and institutional decision-makers who actively shape the academic landscape have attempted to predict how the field of higher education will be influenced (Altbach, 2012; Bass & Eynon, 2007; King, 2013). The future of academia is complicated, challenging, and uncertain; higher education faculty need to expect change and disruption to remain consistent as the higher education market becomes increasingly global in nature (Anderson, 2015; Barrett, 2017; Englund, Olofsson, & Price, 2017).
Globalization and technological changes, while presenting tremendous challenges bring vast opportunities. Globalization, for example, vastly expands the pool of potential customers for products and services. Niche talents that used to be of interest only to a small fraction of people may not be of much value locally because the total population is small in a given community. In the globalized world, the potential customers could be seven billion people. Even a small fraction of seven billion can be significant. Additionally, talents that may be of little value in a given location can be very valuable in another. Globalization and technology today enable products and services to reach almost any corner of the world (Zhao, 2015, p. 130).
Using emerging technologies as an accelerant, higher education institutions are separating from traditional brick and mortar physical spaces and venturing into a virtual mélange of educational models used in the global digital economy (Dee, 2016; Ng’ambi, 2013). Technology has now become central to the global changes: reshaping social, economic and cultural life while creating a colossal change for higher education, particularly faculty who are now required to teach using technology (Englund, Olofsson, & Price, 2017).
Key Terms in this Chapter
VUCA: An acronym used to describe the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of specific conditions and situations.
Resiliency: An ability to recover from or adjust to change.
Globalization: Is a process of interaction and integration among the people and governments of various nations, driven by trade, investment, and education assisted by technology.
Change: To make or become different.
Mentoring: A professional relationship in which an experienced person assists another in developing skills and knowledge to enhance professional and personal development.
Technology: Electronic or digital products and systems.