Digitalization of Higher Education: Opportunities and Risks

Abstract

The digitalization of higher education is an objectively necessary process caused by the market needs for specialists with digital competencies and state support. Digitalization of higher education opens both new opportunities and creates new risks. Opportunities are associated with greater accessibility and flexibility of education, as well as its integration into the global educational space. The risks are associated with a market orientation to momentary market demands, a decrease in the content and fundamental nature of education, the fragmentation of knowledge and the replacement of full-fledged socialization with simple training of the workforce. Digitalization makes education more accessible, flexible and global. At the same time, education becomes more fragmented, opportunistic, reducing socialization to the formation of a labor force. The digital university, with its focus on individual educational trajectories and distance learning, implies project-thinking and individual work of the student, who builds his own curriculum to a large extent. An urgent task is to find and test a balanced educational model that combines a holistic approach to knowledge acquisition with a modular structure that allows a high degree of student autonomy in choosing courses, directions and specializations. In more concrete terms, this means connecting the hierarchical structure of knowledge acquisition with horizontal specialization - in other words, expanding the opportunities available to students should be accompanied by their integration into a unified concept of higher education. The article proposes the contours of such a model for building a university: expanding the list of courses available to students through distance learning, and not all courses offered may be limited to the current year of study; reconceptualization of the mission of the university; synergetic interaction of various universities for the implementation of joint educational programs. For Russia, where digitalization is proceeding at a fairly high pace, the search for an optimal strategy for the development of digital universities in different regions is a difficult task that requires not only financial injections, but, above all, managerial flexibility at different levels.