Higher education in the 21st century - Perspectives on an emerging body of literature

This paper summarises the major themes in the body of writing which purports to describe what higher education will look like in the 21st Century. Some reasons why change might be far more pervasive in the first decade of the 21st Century than in the last three decades of the 20th Century are the increasingly harsh economic environment of higher education, the increasing integration of higher education with the world of business and industry, and the widespread use of information technology. It is suggested that the only constituency from which there will be opposition to the scenarios depicted in the 21st Century higher education literature is faculty of colleges and universities. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.