CHAPTER 1

The Information Technology Revolution

Higher education institutions do not operate in a vacuum and undergraduates do not declare their major in one either. Any discussion of higher education in general, and the declaration of a college major specifically, needs to start with the driving force behind today’s hypercompetitive global marketplace—the information technology revolution. Dubbed “the most significant revolution of the 21st century” by Cambridge University political scientist David Runciman, the information technology revolution has altered, and will continue to alter, the very fabric of how people work, live, love, communicate, and do just about everything else.² New York Times editorialist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman echoed similar sentiment and declared the information technology revolution “the single most important trend in the world today.”³ Friedman summarized the impact of this revolution as the world went from connected to hyper-connected during the 2000–2010 period thanks to cloud computing, robotics, 3G wireless connectivity, Skype, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, the iPad, and cheap Internet-enabled smartphones.⁴

During the 10 years from 2000 to 2010, world Internet usage increased over 444 percent.⁵ The UN’s International Telecommunication Union observed that one-third of the world’s population, approximately 2 billion people, have Internet access. Just a short 10 years ago, only 300 million people had Internet access. Of the current 2 billion people with Internet access, 555 million have a fixed broadband subscription, and 950 million have mobile broadband.⁶ World population is expected to grow by over a third, or 2.3 billion people between 2009 and 2050. If that occurs, by 2050 there will be a global population of approximately 9 billion people.⁷ With more people alive, it is safe to assume that the number of Internet users will continue to grow. For example, one estimate from the National Science Foundation predicts that the Internet will have nearly 5 billion users by 2020.⁸

The information technology revolution and transition from connected to hyperconnected has resulted in the creation of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) global environment, creating an entirely new set of issues demanding higher education institutions and other organizations large and small to rethink how they operate. Noting the challenging economic times and the need to reconsider how their schools function, 43 percent of New England college presidents surveyed said that they didn’t think “small New England colleges will remain an important fixture within the academic landscape for many years to come.”⁹ Eight in 10 CEOs expect their environment to grow significantly more complex, and fewer than half believe they know how to deal with it successfully.¹⁰ Leaders from organizations large and small are more concerned than ever about the future because of the new requirements to lead in the uncertain and ambiguous 21st-century marketplace. The answer, however, is not to have every student major in a technical field. Fortune 500 CEOs are keenly aware of this as one-third of them have a liberal arts degree.¹¹ The information technology revolution now demands that college graduates effectively demonstrate skills that transcend the knowledge they learn from their academic major. In order to address the challenges, issues, and questions of today’s volatile economy, employers have identified marketing, sales, business, social media, graphic design, and data analysis as six skills relevant for all college graduates regardless of major.¹²

Despite articulating the skills they need in graduates in order to stay competitive, employers believe that higher education institutions are failing to keep up with today’s information technology revolution. Far too many employers believe higher education institutions are “producing graduates in the 21st century with 20th-century skills.”¹³ This skills mismatch has its origins within the priorities of employers and educators. When asked to select the two most important goals for postsecondary education, business leaders placed the greatest premium on preparing individuals for success in the workplace (56%) and providing individuals with core academic knowledge and skills (51%).¹⁴ When asked the same question, education leaders emphasized providing students with core academic knowledge and skills (64%) and preparing individuals to be lifelong learners (47%).¹⁵ Such opposing viewpoints need to be reconciled if higher education institutions want to enhance how they prepare today’s students to solve tomorrow’s problems. Key external stakeholders such as employers and politicians need to think differently and recognize the impact of disruptive technologies driving rapid change across most industries. Instead of viewing college as simply filling workforce development needs, graduating students with narrow technical knowledge, employers and politicians need to recognize that colleges have an obligation to prepare students, in the words of best-selling author Daniel Pink, “for their future and not our past.” “To deal with today, therefore we need not only new knowledge but new ways to think about it.”¹⁶ If future generations are going to help organizations achieve and sustain growth in a VUCA environment, then they also need to learn how to think differently about declaring an undergraduate major.