University Education 2050 

For my book, ‘The regenerative structural engineer‘, I included an epilogue, where I paint a picture of Bath (where I live) in 2050. To make the text more interesting I decided to show readers round this future version of my city. It made it easier to write as a narrative. I then went through a similar process but imaging engineering education at the University of Bristol as a speculative thought experiment. This uses the time machine that Rob Hopkins uses at the start of his book “From What Is to What If”. I look forward to debating the ideas. But for now I would love to welcome you to 2050…

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Welcome.

Thank you for taking the time to visit one of our learning hubs.

I would be delighted to show you around and discuss what a civil engineering degree looks like. 

Much has changed, and much has stayed the same.

We used to classify degrees with a single grade. Now we use radar charts to highlights students’ strengths across our skills framework. It helps students understand if they are specialist or generalists. It helps them find the right employer that is looking for their skill set. There is, of course, a base requirement. And yes, we still do exams, but these are now just to confirm ability in what we call ‘core competencies’ such as foundational maths, mechanics, systems thinking, emotional literacy. To be honest, once students receive a University of Bristol degree (which is a great achievement) employers have either offered them a job following one of the many opportunities for collaboration or are much more interested in their portfolio than their radar. 

A degree is about transformation. Students can enter as children who have learnt a huge number of practical skills and gained a large amount of knowledge who we then help transition into professionals with the prerequisite skills to thrive in the workplace. We conceptualise the degree as four years, but you no longer need to take four years, people can work at their own pace and often juggle caring for children and other members of their community, work, and their own creative endeavours. Of course, not everyone starts the course as a child, as we have become more flexible mature students have become more common, looking to upskill and develop a new career. 

In fact, the last 20 years has seen a huge shift in student population. This is down to a paradigm shift in understanding wellbeing and education. In the 2020s we were focused on limiting negative wellbeing impacts, without considering the positive impacts education (and community action) can have. Since then, we have reimagined degrees as a way of improving wellbeing. The act of deep learning, creativity and community engagement enable students to be more mindful and bring hope. As a result, many people are opting to study engineering now, later in life, as a form of self-healing and self-actualisation. This mindset change has had a deep impact on the way everyone now approaches learning, with collaboration and support at the centre of our programmes success. 

The course starts with the first year. This year is much more structured than the other years. Students cover foundational topics. They receive lectures to inspire, work through online content, have structured and unstructured social learning sessions where they build relationships with their cohort. They have field work where they learn the basics of engineering measurement and community engagement. Through the controlled use of VR, students visit real projects around the world and start to understand the global potential and impact of the work they will be doing. Staff are very hands-on.

The second year is what we call ‘scaffolded learning’. Students start to work on large, complex, interdisciplinary projects which I will explain in a moment. Their tutors help them select the right learning packages to develop the technical and social skills they need for the project. At this stage, students don’t have complete freedom over their learning – that comes next – but we are teaching them how to recognise where their gaps in knowledge are and how to fill them. Their tutors help them navigate this. Their learning includes a mixture of lectures, online learning resources, field trips – both physical and virtual – and reading books. We emphasise the importance of social learning and at this stage ensure no student studies a subject on their own. We have seminars, discussions, workshops and labs and students make full use of our social learning spaces.

In year two we also start to see them work on real projects. At this stage, most of their work is quality assurance: checking other peoples work; repeating designs and comparing the outcome; questioning practitioners on what they did and why. Partner organisations benefit from having their work rigorously tested. Students benefit by building connections with different partner organisations. And it helps us subsidise our income, which is growing again, after student fees were scrapped and new funding mechanisms were found. It must be stressed though that we remain independent of the businesses we collaborate with. Whilst the income is enough to be beneficial, as the arrangement is mutually beneficial, more business would like to be involved than we can help, and as a result, we do, from time to time, change if the relationship stops benefitting our students, society, and the natural world.

In year three, students truly embrace independent learning. They can access courses from the last 30 years (although few choose to utilise the old hour-long recorded lectures from the late 2010’s). Having scaffolded their transition, they now work on multidisciplinary projects, identify learning needs, fill those learning needs, and use their newfound skills and knowledge on real projects. With the advent of AI assessment, we can quickly create exams from the knowledge base, but again I would like to stress, whilst the exams check core knowledge, the programme-level assessment and learning records of the students are what we use to update their learning radar. Staff move from tutors to mentors. Often the student is studying a topic the staff member may not have covered recently, if at all. Their job is not to teach the student but support them in their own learning journey. 

Following the first three years, students can leave with a Bachelor’s degree, but most stay on for the fourth year. Where the first three years are focussed on learning and applying knowledge and skills, the fourth year is focussed on creating knowledge and critiquing skills. Students are required to take on challenging projects, identify and explore the extent of current knowledge, and extend it. This has become hugely important in the last 20 years as civil engineering has moved from a steady state to a rapidly evolving subject as we adapt and respond to multiple global crises, and now look to work proactively to restore nature and society whilst avoiding future challenges. At the end of their year, they are required to share their work and demonstrate how their work is helping society and nature.

Of course, after this some students get a taste for research and decide to stay on and do PhDs. But even if they don’t, the nature of engineering practice now includes much more research. They take the skills that the students have developed with them. They may also pay to be members of the Alumni Trust. This gives them access to all the learning modules at the university and access to our labs at alumni rates. It provides them with a network of people they can learn with. And we offer refresher courses where alumni come back and re-submerge themselves in learning to continue to advance their skill set. For professional accreditation purposes engineers must carry out a refresher every five years, but many alumni come every year! To share ideas, see old friends, and spend time with world leading researchers. Employers see the value of having their staff connected into such a rich learning environments and most pay the fee as part of their staff support package. 

As I mentioned earlier, students work on some large, interdisciplinary projects as they pass through their four year degree. We used to say that this was authentic learning, but we now just call it learning! Projects are community based and have the potential for positive community and nature outcomes. Examples include:

In year 1 students work with business, innovation and communication students to look at possible community projects. Modelled on the old Engineers Without Borders “Engineering for People and Planet Design Challenge” students work in multi-disciplinary teams to unlock the future potential of a chosen community. At this stage the outcome is less important than the process, and only a tiny number of the projects get taken forward. But as a learning base for future projects, it is invaluable.

In year 2 students work with architects (we re-established an architecture programme in 2030) and historians on a reuse project in the city of Bristol. They do a deep dive into the history of the building, they explore the architectural reasons for the design and where the building has untapped potential, and from our engineer’s side they instrument and model the building, predict its behaviour, produce a report on the historic design and the methods used to design it. Collectively the teams propose ideas for communities to take forward, which they often do. The students are not responsible for the final design, but the work they do is so detailed and well-reasoned engineering practices often only carry out simple checks before giving the projects the go-ahead.

In year 3 students undertake our supply chain challenge. They can pick an existing or future potential supply chain and look at how they can improve it for people and planet. They work with anthropologists, architects, and environmental scientists to first carry out an LCA before exploring how changes can be made that improve the supply chain. Improvements include, financial, community and environmental. We recently saw a project where an untapped agricultural waste was converted into construction blocks. The engineers carried out lab-based testing, whilst working with the other team members to explore both the current situation and how the material could reduce local environmental harm, increase biodiversity, and be utilised in community construction projects. The project has led to a controlled development of the product for local community use and the first dwellings utilising the product were commissioned last year.  

In the final year students get to select both their project and the team they work in. They often revisit a project from earlier years and ask how they can release the potential of the solution they are working on. A recent example project included a team with engineers, public policy advisers and lawyers, who were looking at a recent challenge in implementing a specific design due to laws and legislation which were developed a decade before. We often find that policy lags innovation. The project not only saw a recent planning decision be overturned in the local courts, but a white paper will now be presented at city hall and we hope to see it accepted following community engagement and lobbying. The engineering students were critical in both outcomes, acting as expert witnesses for the legal challenge and a consultant for the white paper.

I would love to show you some different teaching spaces. As I noted at the start, we have a number of learning hubs across the city; this is one of our refurbished campuses. We still have lecture theatres, these now focus not on screens (students and staff have enough of these!) but the lecturer. We have reinstated blackboards – although now notes are digitally captured and cleaned up by AI. We have the option for holographic presentations, although generally these feel a little sterile so at least some of the presenters are in the room. The point of a lecture is no longer the dissemination of information, but to provide excitement for the subject, with the core information offered through multiple formats. We now have lecture theatres for 100-600 students and also regularly share community spaces when we want to go bigger. Whilst the lecture theatre is important for bringing the student body together, students only have a handful of short lectures a week. Instead, most of the in-person delivery is in flexible, flatbed spaces, with AR headsets for multimedia, social learning. Many of the old smaller lecture theatres have been converted to these flatbed spaces, or where this hasn’t been possible due to challenging physical constraints, other quirky social learning spaces. 

As we step out of the flatbed spaces, I would like to show you our libraries. Students are much more conscious now of having too much time with digital technology, and they are wary of the “attention economy”. As a result, much learning has gone back to being book -based, although, of course, AI guides and digitisation of old works make it much quicker and easier to navigate physical books. Still, deep-focussed reading has steadily been on the rise for the last two decades.

As we step out of the library, we cross the road to a community learning space. This is a social learning space which is also open to the community. Many of our community integrated projects will include the use of meeting rooms in these spaces. Of course, we see the whole city as our learning canvas, collaborating with people in their own community, carrying out deep observation and data collection, and running small scale exemplar projects.

We have also upgraded and expanded our labs. As we work towards local solutions, we do a lot more testing now than ever before. Our alumni, along with maintaining access to their learning community, can also utilise the labs when they need to do some more substantial research beyond the capacity of their own facilities.

You will also notice pods everywhere. During exam season, students book a pod and sit their exams in them, at a time that suits. As exams are AI generated there is no risk of students sharing papers, which they only access digitally in the pod and the pod is able to detect all forms of cheating! When a pod isn’t being used for exams, it can be booked for individual study. They also include VR headsets for immersive site trips. Use of VR is limited, as the sensory deprivation can be disorientating in large quantities, but a quick 30 minute site visit in a place you can’t easily physically access, or a collaborative meeting with a global team a couple of times a week is shown to have no long term effects and greatly increases students awareness of global citizenship.

Which brings us to the end of our visit. I haven’t discussed in too much detail our digital infrastructure, but as you can see AR, VR and a library of over 30 years of digital learning resources obviously requires a substantial digital resource. AI appeared to be a big issue 20 years back, but the reality is that it has been both more and less than we imagined. The spell checker on my device is certainly much more powerful than I imagined, and many boring and tedious admin jobs have been simply automated. But the job of learning, exploring, creating and critiquing remains centred around people, at least for now. 

In many ways university looks and feels different. The student body is more diverse, both in terms of home students and globally. With restrictions in air travel to limit emissions students take international travel very seriously, going for 6-12 months at a time. We now have an international exchange scheme and our students will travel to a different university to learn anywhere across the globe. AR has removed many of the language barriers. And whilst knowledge is shared freely, different universities offer unique experiences of skills, wisdom and culture. We still have a huge international body of students, Bristol being one of the top ten Universities in the world, but they tend to come now for a year, either as an exchange or for an MSc. 

What do you see in a future imagined University? What changes would you make to improve the experience for the student and the local community? Leave a comment below letting us know.

_{Image credit: James Mackay, ‘Dreams of a Low-Carbon Future’: https://lowcarbon.leeds.ac.uk/dreams-of-a-low-carbon-future/}