ABSTRACT
Looking into the future is something scientists have yet to figure out how to do. What we can do is make educated guesses about what the future will look like. This is what Bert van der Zwaan did in his book Higher Education in 2040. He put a lot of research and knowledge in a crystal ball and asked himself: what would higher education look like in 2040? Considering all the changes that universities have gone through in the past centuries and the speed at which things are changing in our century, this is an intriguing question. What does the future have in store for us? In his book, Van der Zwaan tries to give some answers to this question. He mentions important challenges that universities are facing, the most important one being the decline in government funding. He also suggests some solutions to these challenges — solutions that can have a big impact on higher education, our society, and students. This last group is the one that intrigues me. When I fill my crystal ball with what I know about students and investigate 2040, what do I see? What will the future of students look like? Just like everybody else, I am not able to predict the future. But like Van der Zwaan, I can make some educated guesses. Looking into my crystal ball, I see that students face at least two threats, which I would like to call meteorites. I call them this because these threats are serious and near but not yet definite. Parts of it might have already reached us, but they could also burn up completely on their way towards us. If our atmosphere is thick enough, these meteorites will not reach us. But if we don’t build an atmosphere thick enough, I am afraid that by 2040 we will be hit. And then our universities could be populated by at least the following two types of students: the privileged student and the burned-out student.
