Writing Your Scenario

Introduction:

Welcome to the USC 2024 mini-scenario exercise. This exercise has been created to focus attention on the speed of change, uncertainties in the world that arise from disruptive technologies, complexity that leads to rapid changes in expectation of higher education, and ambiguity around the evolving habits of students, research advancements and other issues relevant to USC’s future. The exercise will be run by the USC Annenberg Scenario Lab. We hope the scenario writing exercise will expand USC’s collective imaginative repertoire and help frame our conversation regarding USC in the year 2024.  The long-term objective is to begin to generate more “foresight” in the university about changes taking place in higher education in the US and globally. We hope to expand the conversations that will take place as USC implements its strategic planning process and focuses on the integration of the many strategic plans that have been offered since the release of USC’s new strategic vision.

The method we are using is a much-shortened version of scenario planning, a widely used technique for guiding discussions about the ways organizations and societies might respond to different imagined (but always plausible) alternative futures. Scenarios, in this sense, are realistic stories written about the future—what it will be like, how societies and organizations become their future selves through the interconnected influences of long-term social, technological, economic, environmental and political “drivers” that to some degree we can identify today. Scenarios are not forecasting models that attempt to predict the future and they do not depend on deterministic or dominant structures.  Scenarios are best understood as stories that are intended to encourage new and expanded dialogue about likely possible futures. So long as scenarios are reasonably plausible, there is no “right” or “wrong” scenario, and many different scenarios should be discussed in a strategic conversation in order for faculty leaders to inform themselves and enhance their decision-making processes.

This online scenario planning exercise is simple but takes some thought: you are to write a short narrative about the medium-term (10 years forward) future of USC.  They only need to be one to two paragraphs and they are not fact-filled nor do they need be highly likely to happen. They should be plausible and in keeping with USC’s values and culture as you understand them, the general character of higher education at leading research universities, and your own professional experiences.  A number of readings and videos are available on the website that might be thought-provoking/useful to the exercise. This story-writing exercise requires no special artistic skill or strenuous creative effort.

Instructions:

Please write a one to two paragraph scenario about USC in the year 2024.  Because this committee is university-wide and focused on integrating school/college strategies, please contextualize the story at the level of the university as a whole with examples from any unit, department or function.  Your story should address at some level one or more of the foci of the “USC Strategic Vision:” 1) Transforming Education for a Rapidly Changing World; 2) Creating Scholarship (and Education) with Consequence; and 3) Connecting Individuals to the (Community and the) World.

Below are some examples from a different scenario workshop that was focused more generally on administrative and institutional issues that might be helpful examples. These are stripped of references to any actual university.

When you are finished writing your scenario, please post it below.  Please note that the exercise is password-secured from the public although the rest of this website is open. Your password for the exercise is in the email that directed you to this website. The password is not individual–you will be able to view each other’s submitted scenarios and you are encouraged to read them. We also suggest that you write your scenario in your word processing software and cut and paste it into the link below in order to prevent data loss should the website experience difficulties.

Generally, people enjoy the imaginative and creative element of the experience and we hope you will as well. If you have any questions, please contact Patti Riley (priley@usc.edu).  Please post your scenario as a comment reply on the USC Documents Responses link by midnight on March 13. Remember to sign your reply!

A) The Ivy+

It is the year 2024 and over the last decade, the relative wealth gap between the “Ivy+” group (the powerful elite set of the 20 or so wealthiest private US universities), and the next tier of premier universities quadrupled in the US. While the Ivy+ group had been enjoying year after year of record-breaking fundraising, outsize investment returns, and ambitious new expansions for the past decade – making them the envy of the universities the world over – the rest of the US university landscape has been undergoing a general decline. Ivy+ university administrators are confident that this is a sustainable “long boom,” and talk of a so-called “higher education bubble” has almost disappeared for Ivy+ universities. With their unprecedented political clout, the Ivy+ group captured the lion’s share of government funding while reductions in federal and state budgets have steadily cut back public university teaching and research funds. Many well regarded public universities have been forced to radically reduce both the quality of their teaching and the scale of their research. Some notable large state systems are working hard on their strategy to recreate themselves in the model of private universities. Elsewhere in the private school sector, many less privileged private universities are doing moderately well but only at the cost of giving up many traditional university values and practices, and fully embracing the market-driven needs of industry and commerce. The “Ivy+” group is regarded as the last safe refuge in the US  for the traditional university ideals of research, teaching, and public service – while also being, with the cushion of their immense wealth, the unrivaled center of innovation in the US university landscape.  The “Ivy+” group has become used to styling themselves as the only “true” universities, a breed apart from the others.  Most other, much less selective, large universities in the US increasingly rely on adjunct professors to teach many of their undergraduate and masters level courses online as they have hugely increased their enrollments and attempt to compete with for-profit online universities for students, especially the aging, non-traditional student. The goals of these institutions are no longer about transformative faculty or student selectivity but educating the masses and succeeding on a volume business model and its economies of scale–or any other way that works.

B) The 99%

It is the year 2024, and mass protests about unjust inequalities have been an everyday and dominant feature of American politics over the last decade. Arguably starting with the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, these protests grew slowly, but fueled by global protests about economic inequality they started to spread in 2016, and intensified. US politicians on both the left and the right have become used to talking openly of how the “American Spring” demands radical reforms.  The left is concerned about addressing inequality across all sectors of society, while the right, led by an entrenched Tea Party, has focused on private universities which are generally seen as the genesis of the problems in America since they produce so many of the government and private sector leaders. Critics have successfully persuaded most of the public that the existing US university system is inherently unjust and untenable. The issues are access to high quality degree programs and research that better serves the common cause of reducing inequalities and promoting grassroots democracy (although many of the grassroots movements are typically at odds with each other). With a mandate to prioritize equal access to teaching and research while challenging elitism, US public university systems, most notably large state systems, have been enjoying a major renaissance – they have received generous new teaching and research funds, from the government as well as private donors, that rival the elite private universities.  In contrast, elite private universities now receive public approval ratings as low as Wall St. investment firms and congress and are seen as undemocratic defenders of entrenched inequalities.  At many highly selective universities, diversity is still not easy to locate and many women, ethnic minorities, those from non-elite backgrounds, and many faces of “others” are still not wholly integrated into university cultures whose public service and access programs are acting as mere fig-leafs for historical practices that are reproduced on a daily basis.

C) The “Moneyball” University

It is the year 2024 and over the last decade, Silicon Valley circles have dominated the discourse that sets strategy in US higher education.  A strong pro-technology stance that cherishes entrepreneurialism while also being skeptical of traditional values that limit individual freedom, as created an almost singular focus on technological advancements in highly selective universities. From big data analysis to massive nano-research programs, computational approaches define most fields. Influential media owners who made their money in online industries have convinced the majority of the public to consider traditional university education experiences and research environments – both in public and private universities – as inefficient, outmoded, and damaging to the potential of individual talent, as well as national productivity and innovation. The traditional bachelor’s degree is now popularly seen as a waste of time and money compared to the possibilities of shorter innovation-focused programs. Similarly, graduate school and university research programs are criticized as too slow to change and formerly niche players like Singularity University, are now the most prominent educational leaders. Many new programs and policies now exist nationwide to encourage and support young people – and even old professors – to abandon traditional university aspirations in favor of entrepreneurialism or corporate careerism have proven highly popular. Formerly elite universities now primarily attract mediocre high school students who want drink and party for four years. The U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and similar government bodies – except for the defense sector – have been severely cut back. There is far greater corporate involvement in the “Moneyball” universities that create curricula that almost solely educate students in entrepreneurial, pro-enterprise, pro-technology ideals as opposed to their ‘old-fashioned’ private university competitors.

D)  The Global Augmented Virtual University (GAVU)

It is the year 2024, and over the last decade, global networking platforms, augmented reality tools (Google glass version 20.4), and quantum technologies have become the dominant means by which the majority of higher education is conducted.  Formerly highly selective universities (from about the eighth ranked to 25th ranked in the US ten years ago) found that their stars faded in global rankings, where they dropped into second and third tier global rankings to somewhere between 75th to 93rd best in the world, and they no longer attracted the best students or faculty.  Although advancements in communication and information technology enabled the global augmented university system along with early forays into telework, telemedecine and online learning it was also driven by huge student demand in very large countries like China and Brazil. Add the problems of turbulent weather patterns, increasing damage from devastating storms, and unimaginable environmental degradation in the developing world, along with traffic gridlock, sky-high jet fuel prices, and the lack of sustainable water sources all around the world, there was a push to “learn in place.”  University “aggregators” reworked MOOCs and brought advanced virtual reality tools like Cisco’s “telepresence” to the masses and created mobile technology enhanced networks wherever students lived. The best faculty around the world teach undergraduates in virtual classrooms that appear “real.”  The traditional privileging of physical space and face-to-face interaction became obsolete. In the higher education sector only research labs with heavy investments in hands-on tools require physical plants.  In the US, much of the inspiration for these new virtual partnerships came from experiments by traditional universities such as MIT’s OpenCourseWare and public university systems that were pushed by the need for radical reform in the face of severe budget pressures have been among the most aggressive partners. With remarkable success in reviving their fortunes and academic prowess as well as their international reach, these public universities sold off the bulk of their physical campuses in favor of VR and social media based teaching while their physical research facilities have been rationalized and redistributed to cheaper areas. In many of their university faculties, most members now telecommute – including technical researchers who are increasingly using VR and robot technologies for their laboratory work. Most private universities, which sought to preserve the ‘prestigious’ traditional experience of students and professors gathering together daily on impressive physical campuses, or stretched themselves building physical campuses around the world have been slower to adapt and are under heavy pressure to reinvent themselves.