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KNOWLEDGE ECONOMIES & THE
FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Jonathan Blackledge
400th Anniversary of Sir Francis Bacon’s publication Novum Organum
Francis Bacon, 1561-1626
Purpose of the Presentation
• To evaluate the current HE system in the UK and consider how
it can be improved in a way that Bacon might have approved of.
• The basis for this is that for Bacon, education, was an
indispensable aid to moral progress in society.
Read not to contradict and confute,
nor to believe and take for granted
... but to weigh and consider.
• My purpose in a Nutshell:
To weigh and consider
the state of HE in the UK
A bit on my own background …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwOJ3Rd_IjI
Success as a Knowledge Economy:
Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility
and Student Choice
Department for Business Innovation
and Skills, May 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtTonOUIAcI
Context
New Organum:
Concerning the interpretation of nature, 1620
“Those who have taken upon them to lay down the law of
nature as a thing already searched out and understood, … ,
have therein done philosophy and the sciences great injury”
On education:
“… becalmed ships, that never move, but by the wind of other
men’s breathe”
Bacon’s view of fellow students at Cambridge University
From the Lord of Reason
“We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education
has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence
and freedom of thought”
Bertrand Russell
Contents
• On the Revolutionary Times of Francis Bacon
• On Education
- Some Important Trends
- A Brief History: The Bismarck Effect
- Education and Industry: A Historical Example of Significance
• On the Future of Higher Education
- What is the Goal ?
- Requirements and Strategy
- Example Case Studies
• Concluding Remarks
• Some Final Thoughts
On the Revolutionary Times of Bacon
• Bacon’s underlying philosophy:
Look at nature for what it is, and not for what you might want it to be
• The heliocentric Copernican model, first published in 1543,
had created a disturbance in the force throughout Europe.
• Example of new ideas seeded by the social effects of the ‘Black Death’.
- It did not put mankind at the centre of things
- It did not put Rome at the centre of mankind
- It was fuel to the fire of the protestant reformation of
which Bacon was a part (a devout Anglican)
- It significantly inspire Bacon’s philosophy of science
Galileo and Bacon
Dialogue Concerning Two Chief World System
Galileo Galilei, 1632
• Galileo’s trial and house arrest is an icon of the ‘phase transition’ when
the scientific traditions of southern (Catholic) Europe moved to northern
(Protestant) Europe (especially in England & Holland)
• Galileo died on Christmas day 1642; the same day that
Isaac Newton was born!
• Francis Bacon had died in 1626 but his influence catalysed the phase
transition that occurred, one that Galileo had prophesied.
• Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Oliver Cromwell:
… the father, the son and the holy ghost?
Bacon and Cromwell
I beseech you, …
think it possible you may be mistaken.
Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)
• Cromwell introduced a comprehensive range of new schools, college
and academies in which science and technology took a precedence.
• This caused considerable offence to the traditional academic establishment
and was treated by this establishment as a form of subversive criticism.
• Cromwell seeded the scientific and technological dominance of
England in the 18th and 19th centuries - the Industrial Revolution
What was going on in the big picture ?
The same thing that is still going on today - a revival of the
albeit under the guise of Monotheism
~ 1500 years when Pagan Science lost
out to Monotheistic Theology
What did the Greeks do for us?
- Philosophy (Socrates)
- Mathematics (Pythagoreans)
- Medicine (Hippocrates)
- Democracy (Polytheism)
- … and so much more
Great virtues of their society:
- No racism
- No sexism
- Intrinsically multicultural
- No neurosis & no nonsense!
The greatest empire of all
An empire of the mind
Monotheism .v. Polytheism
J M Blackledge,
On the Chirp Function, the Chirplet Transform and the Optimal Communication of Information,
IAENG International Journal of Applied Mathematics, 50(2), 2019.
http://www.iaeng.org/IJAM/issues_v50/issue_2/IJAM_50_2_10.pdf
• Proposes a method for processing ‘cosmic noise’ in the ‘Search for ET’.
• Based on a EM modulation method for transmitting binary information through
noisy environments that is optimal (paper does not prove this unconditionally).
• Section XIII. COMMUNICATING THROUGH THE ‘WATERHOLE’
- Proposes where to ‘point’ our radio telescopes
to optimize the reception of intelligent signals.
- Suggests that the longevity of intelligent life
is better served by development on habitable
planets orbiting two or more suns, thereby
eliminating monotheistic values and their
detrimental effects on an ‘intelligent society’.
Social Systems and Statistical Mechanics
• By considering
Einstein’s evolution equation for an open Levy distributed system
it can be shown that:
Continuity Equation Diffusion Equation
• For a social system, this result may be interpreted as:
Continuity of one idea Diffusion of many ideas
Central Limit Theorem
Disruptive Technologies(to ‘open’ the system)
Disruptive Concepts
Blackledge et al., Econophysics and Fractional Calculus: Einstein’s Evolution Equation,
the Fractal Market Hypothesis, Trend Analysis and Future Price Prediction,
Special Issue on Mathematical Economics: Application of Fractional Calculus, 2019
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/mathematics/special_issues/Mathematical_Economics
An example of specific importance to Bacon
Continuity of one idea Diffusion of many ideas
Disruptive Concept Martin Luther, Wittenberg, 1517++
Disruptive TechnologyPrinting, 1436++
Veni, Creator Spiritus
An example of specific importance to us
Continuity of one idea Diffusion of many ideas
Disruptive Concept Перестройка,1985-1991
Disruptive TechnologyInternet (1980++) & WWW (1990++)
On Education
“Talking of education, people now days have got a strange
opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures ...
… I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures,
except where experiments are to be shown. You may
teach chemistry by lectures. You might teach the making
of shoes by lectures”
Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson
1766 James Boswell
Some Important Trends
German apprenticeships: a model for Europe?
• 50% of school leavers in Germany go
straight into industry.
“This is partly because of the traditional apprenticeship system, which allows young Germans who don't go to university to train and qualify in companies” http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35532713
• Germany has the lowest youth unemployment in
Europe - 7% (one of the lowest world wide)
• In the UK, the cost of education is rising but employers say
that graduates are increasingly unprepared for the workplace.
Most countries now have an increasing focus on apprenticeships
17
G 20 countries: Promote quality apprenticeships
Britain: will create 3 million apprenticeships by 2020
Current Problems and Solutions:
Nothing New!
“Those who do not remember the
past are condemned to repeat it”. George Santayana
A Fundamental Reality:
Accepting and using the technology of others,
means that you end up accepting their control
Solution: High Quality Technical Education in
A Brief History: The Bismarck Effect
• Masterminded the unification of Germany in 1871.
• Introduced a state education system with a broad curriculum
and a social welfare provision that was decades ahead of UK.
• The Beveridge Report (1942) was based on many of his ideas.
The British Response
1881 – Central Institution of the
City & Guilds of London,
South Kensington, London
Now known as Imperial College
The Triple Helix Concept
Teaching + R & D
University
based Teaching
& Research
Industry
based
Collaboration
“The interaction among university, industry, and
government is the key to innovation and growth
in a knowledge based economy”
Henry Etzkowitz
The Triple Helix: University-Industry-Government
Routledge, 2008
Education and Industry:
A Historical Example of Significance
On the Decrease in Entropy of a Thermodynamic System by the Intervention
of Intelligent Beings, Zeitschrift fur Physik, 53, 840-856, 1929
So what is the vision for the future of HE in the UK ?
Develop a new set of colleges so that
What is the goal ?
• Virtual campuses
- Distance learning (e.g. Arden University – ‘Online University Experts’)
- Work-place based learning (e.g. City and Guilds London Institute)
- Employability
• New curricula
- Interdisciplinary
- Continuous change
- Industry focused apprenticeships
• Abolition of Micky Mouse Degrees in Micky Mouse
disciplines from Micky Mouse Universities!
=
What is required ?
21C HE workers (not academics) will need:
• To have worked in industry (for at least five years)
• To have training, teaching and learning qualifications
• To have Leadership and Management qualifications
What is the strategy ?
• Apply the equivalent of the Island Hoping Strategy
adopted by MacArthur in the Pacific War (1943-45),
i.e. go around the problem rather than confront it!
• Start with a clean slate and fund new FE Colleges
- Academic staff replaced with industry consultants
- Colleges manage apprenticeships and work-based learning
- National Vocational Qualifications awarded by City and Guilds
- Professional Qualifications awarded by relevant institutes
• Current HE institutes that see the writing on the wall may survive!
Provides a solution to the
Angry Dinosaurs Problem
Example Case Study
The National College for Digital Skills
• In 2014, Microsoft identified 100,000 Tech and IT jobs in
the UK that could not be filled for lack of appropriate skills.
• In December 2014 Prime Minister David Cameron announced the
establishment of the first College of its type since 1993.
• College ‘opened its doors’ in September 2016
The mission of the College is to work with industry to design
and deliver an institution that provides the education and
support needed for all its students to progress into highly skilled,
computing‐related roles.
https://ada.ac.uk/
University .v. City and Guilds:
Reality .v. the Class Struggle
A Turing Colossus Computer T Flowers
Emerging Security Technologies & Education
Head of MI6 warns of Huawei security concerns
Alex Younger, signaled security concerns over the Chinese telecoms
group Huawei … Beijing’s growing dominance of emerging technologies
Why? Because Beijing are educating their people properly in STEM.
It may be in their interest that ‘we’ carry on just the way we are!
https://www.ft.com/content/40b35b84-f6ff-11e8-af46-2022a0b02a6c
Concluding Remarks
• The cost of education is rising but employers are saying
graduates are increasingly unprepared for the workplace
• Workplace based learning provides a solution to the
traditional provision and university‐related debt:
to Earn as you Learn
• There is a lack of parity of esteem between vocational and
university educational pathways due to the Class Struggle
Concluding Remarks (Continued)
STEM now has pole position in HE (world-wide) but these subjects
must start to be based on:
• Moving away from superficial learning to more in-depth training
that is workplace oriented informed by industry experts
• Teaching and research programmes based
on the “pursuit of practical knowledge”
• Taking account of the fact that … “Shift Happens” - Karl Fisch
The impact of IT on Education, e.g. www.edx.org
“for students starting a 3-year degree, half of what they leaned in the first
year may be out dated by the time they have completed their studies”
Some Final Thoughts
… If your time to you is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'
Changes based
on continuation
in the revival of
the Greek View
of Life as it was
for Francis Bacon The Bet, 1889
Anton
Chekov
Last but not Least:
HE and social engineering
following the end of the Cold War
The Bet, 1889
Anton
Chekov
