Youth perspectives on three speculative futures for higher education

Abstract

Higher education futures have become an increasingly popular area of scholarly research, as researchers, educators, and institutions grapple with the changes to higher education exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of scholarly work in this area involves the creation of scenarios or design fictions to think about education futures. In this paper, we examine the under-explored perspective of youth ages 18-25 on design fiction futures. We designed three distinct scenarios describing higher education in 2033 to elicit feedback from youth. Specifically, we were interested in examining what futures youth found hopeful and what futures they found to be otherwise, and their reasons for this thinking. Descriptive and thematic analysis of survey data (n = 181) revealed that (a) those futures which confronted climate change were the most hopeful, and (b) those futures which indicated lack of affordability, reduction of choice, and increased surveillance were the least hopeful.