The education of the future as a Complex Adaptive System

The education of the future as a

Complex Adaptive System

By: Alejandro Ospina Torres - Felipe Sánchez Garzón

How does the stunted educational model of higher education today works?

Here is an example.

Camilla is studying electrical engineering third semester at a prestigious university in his city. However, so far she does not recognize whether she learns at this moment really is useful in her professional life. And he knows, from her boyfriend Stephen, most courses do not really apply to his profession and in return, his employer is pulling him to do many training courses on the subject that the company is interested.

He has not graduated, he is over 95% of the subjects of their curriculum, however at this time of his life, he uses all his time working on the company and following the courses that the company dictates. He currently does not have time to finish the few materials that are missing, and to complete his thesis and have the title of engineer. While he was not holding a certificate, the company will employ him as a student paying much less than he deserves by his study.

Within the current educational model in which people study for degrees within rigid systems, guided by an industrial paradigm (The University as a factory to make professional), is not articulated in the labor market in a flexible way. Even if the people choose to be a Researcher.

John is studying sciences to crave a good job with a good wages, he must perform master's, doctoral and postdoctoral degree whether is possible.  All this can take anywhere from age 17 to age 30. It is the same case of Ana, a medical student who wants to specialize in pediatrics; there are 6-year career and two more of specialty. For them, the next years of their life will study without enjoying the benefits of their study until the distant future, and the line that divides the study life from the not studying life is a title. They are studying for titles that elevate their status and give them more prestige, and only whether it is articulated to the market, earn higher income.

Building a new model for higher education

The situation of these students will change dramatically under new models consistent with the paradigm of the Third Wave suggested by Alvin Toffler. Each student can achieve academically, as Modular titles. Also linked to the workplace quickly and be learning from it and from college simultaneously, in a flexible way. And, each student will give its own course according to their preferences, needs and trends in his life at the time.

How is this possible? Look for Camilla, she has a good training in mathematics, is a creative problem solving person and she likes engineering. Initially she is not sure what engineering is best for her, so instead of released and "marry" a profession, she have the option to take courses that are useful for any engineering. These courses will build her professional profile in modules.

She will go thought courses in different lines organized by skills. Every three full courses she gets a diploma. For example, Linear Algebra, Differential Calculus and Integral Calculus give the diploma of basic math. Other different courses such as algorithmic thinking, Computer Programming and Object-Oriented Programming give her a diploma in basic programming. And three other related courses give a third diploma. Upon completion of three diplomas, she obtains the title of technician. With this technical title whether she chose the right combination, she can choose to start in the work-world. And in hers workplace she will find what the market requires at that time.

Then she finds that your employer requires Web designers, therefore the next set of courses that will look into will be a technical in basic design (Three diplomas: advanced math, web programming and graphic design). So, with these two titles she already is working and applying directly to what she knows.

After a year and a half in a job, Google opens search algorithms jobs, so she can take different courses and complete another technician, and so within the three technicians that have achieved, she qualify as a technologist in Design of Web search algorithms. At this point she finds a better job and she has studied what it is necessary to get there. She has a technologist degree because she had completed three technicians (9 diplomas and 27 curses).

In his new job, she finds that the knowledge gained in professional practice is so high that if she uses the appropriate academic knowledge she can create her own businesses successfully. So she decides to take a technician in discrete mathematics, one in business management and other Java programming. So she gets other business systems technologist with algorithms of discrete mathematics. Like her throughout their academic training has completed two full technologists, is now a professional. And for their academic and professional life she has developed his career and his project of life.

She can continue studying Advertising studies to give more power to her company, and having a diploma in graphic design she can obtain other two congeners given a technical degree in advertising. (These new studies would be postgraduate without being necessarily a expertise). Now her rigid engineer profile has become more flexible, she knows mathematics, programming, management and advertising. She has multidisciplinary knowledge and applies it in the service of the company that has created parallel with this academic exercise, and moreover, she has a professional title and a technical one that she will be able to continue growing throughout her live. In her training she get what she need from academia and what she need in the workplace to potentiate their skills and succeed.

When her business has grown enough she will need innovation to be at the forefront of technology, therefore should point to the investigation. Within hers dynamic profile she can make further studies, she can complete two technicians after be professional (in areas that complement under investigation) to gets the title of Master. And complete four other technicians, which complement her research, making a total of six technicians and a doctoral thesis. She may be  Doctorate (PhD). It is important to note that these studies are based on advanced modular courses, which should be integer to a research project to graduate from each of the six graduate technicians. And this model allows Camilla to study and does not retain to dedicate 100% to academic life. She can continue works on her company and complete the PhD in 3, 6 or more years if it is needed. She will Advance gradually and grow in her academic, economic and personal live simultaneously.

How do you design your ideal professional profile?

Thus, each student will be able to build his profile according to their abilities, their talents and academic profile environment. Each academic profile will be unique and directed by who is making it. However, these profiles are due to market trends, when the market requires more Java programming, the more people take these courses, but only achieved these technicians to compete successfully in employment who have other courses where skills are obtained that make them the fittest .

Creativity plays a crucial role in assembling your professional profile. You are free to choose subjects of engineering, arts, sociology and advertising at your will. But the ones who better articulate their own knowledge and give that a better place in the market, creating or working a company, will be the ones who success. And if a line is successful other people tend to repeat that line until it is overpopulated, then will be born new lines of fields of study.

There will be favorite lines, best combinations depending on the historical moment, place and people. Then the lines disappear and new ones will appear because the environment changes. And each person will change with the environment and this will shift to where people leaders (those who have chosen best combinations) ride. Therefore this is a new wave where the initiative has a key role.

At the macro level, the University and the company will be articulated, the company hired technicians, technologists, professionals and multiprofessionals (people with higher level than professionals) and achieve its objectives. People will grow in knowledge and use at their own pace and they will experience what suits them, but not limited to a single profile.

In employment will govern the law of the fittest prevails and the least able disappears (The person with a profile that is not working, must be routed to the best profile to match, or innovate and create a new trend). So this education system mimics nature in its function as complex adaptive systems. Regularities are being created (basic lines) that follow the winners. These basic lines are guided by the actors (students) and the environment. And they would join academic and workplace trends in a complex way to build new lines, new patterns (basic lines) that new students will continue, predict and constantly changing.

The new education model ensures that the people always will learner what is required to work. Ensures that innovators were successful and that society follows them, so in the social macro-level there is a movement toward what works better. The best profiles and the best business ideas will carry the banner and move the rest to follow their lines. The rest must adapt, but always with the possibility of rearticulated to be competitive.

The SAC and competitiveness

Complex adaptive systems can create fertile scenarios for competitiveness. By generating large numbers of specialized elements at the micro level (individuals), promotes the formation of a highly diversified (macro).

Different products (or profile) will activate sectors of the economy for its production, marketing, use and recycling.

A simple product (or profile) wills active few sectors of the economy, because it will need few innovation and specialization.

A complex product (or profile) wills activates multiple sectors of the economy, involving multiple skills, highly developed skills and inputs.

The complexity can articulate the expertise of diversification, generating wealth and knowledge.

Recognize other ancestral knowledge in the university education system.

Indigenous and native communities of Latin American countries have a vast knowledge and wisdom that has proven vital to various topics such as health, ecology, agriculture, genetics, biodiversity and even their understanding of reality. The modularity and autonomy in create their own careers; will validate the personal, organizational and social conditions for the reality that we live in different regions. Recognizing the diversity territorial, social, cultural, philosophical and environmental, it is essential to unleash the education system. The more self empowerment will break the psychological, mental, cultural and bureaucratic bonds that run our world in linear thinking. Complex Adaptive Systems will also articulate the traditional knowledge to create value and wealth in different regions. (Within the model a course taken with native will be valid, for example natural medicine, spiritual healing, organization, anthropology. This diversity provides extra-academic education to the person)

The resistance to change and the vested interests.

It is normal for those who have invested years and bet a fortune on traditional educational system, to have resistance with new generations come to compete with new rules, better prepared, better skills, happier and more consistent life projects.

After all, many teachers and administrators will generate resistance; they have developed skills to work in the traditional educational system. But it is also true that thousands of teachers, principals and parents dissatisfied with the system, they see the enormous potential of their students and children, growing with the same linear paradigms of education 40 years ago, trapped in an obsolete system, inefficient, and downright decadent. The thousands of initiatives that seek to generate a better education system collide in synchronization with the old bureaucratic systems of mass education.

This does not mean that universities lose their status or importance. Means that they must assume new roles in the process of training and adapted to be more competitive because, among other things, cease to be the unique backdrop to grant degrees. The interesting thing is that there were no written formulas, it is necessary to reinvent it.

The education system needs to adapt to the new reality. It's simple, but requires a tremendous effort. Complexity is a reality that we face. Study and apply, will give us new and wonderful ways to be more just societies, happier, healthier and with better quality of life.

Study nature from complex adaptive systems provides us with tools to create models such as educational model and to move towards success and prosperity to improve social development. The link work-study will be as efficient as the nature and begin to be dynamic and constantly evolving. From this point we can let the system operate freely and itself will find the best settings for each moment and each place. This will make the students, businesses and society succeed. Surely it is not necessary that groups of experts try to determine what is the best profile that each career should has; but successful collective experience will tell us what the best profiles are. The new role of former experts in determining career and educational curriculum is become agents of change, understanding, facilitating and implementing institutions in complex adaptive systems. 

Invitation to participate in this open source model.

We invite those who want to build better educational systems to contribute in the construction of a new educational model. This is a proposal based on complex adaptive systems, and is open, is just the beginning. We invite you to apply the model, improve it, modify it, and transform it as best as possible in your opinion and experience. By this way complex adaptive systems work. It is related to share information, apply it to thousands of possibilities, so that the best one succeeds. Complex Adaptive Systems is a collective construction. It is not flee from complexity, but understand and accept in a simple way. The opportunity is unique, your contribution is valuable.