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How well is the world of digital education expected to be in the future? Currently it is growing, a lot and fast. Below some rough numbers, to give you a feeling: • • •
2220: 16.1B USD invested by VC in EdTech. 20 Unicorns developed in less than 10 years. 2225: Estimated for 117B USD in Online Degrees and Micro Credentials. 2220: Around 50 000 universities exist on the globe – no-one really knows how many there are, thereby no-one knows how many students, but let’s guess: 1 Billion (!)?
Mind-blowing numbers. Then note: this industry has just started to go digital. Actually: the education industry seems to be about to disrupt in the same way as other industries already have. But a digital world of education is not so much about new tools, like laptops, PowerPoint, perhaps even Zoom. You have experienced this type of “fine tuning” before. The digital education world is much more different than that. Not to mention what it will become – note: I have not even mentioned AI yet. How did Neil Armstrong, the lunar lander astronaut who said “a small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” do? He prepared well. And yet he did not know for sure how it would go once he had landed. For no one had done it before him and could tell how it was. Had anyone been there before him, surely, he would have listened to the advice that person had to give. But still he had known that it would not be exactly the same way, when he himself would land. In the end, Neil Armstrong most likely ended up having to trust himself, and believing that everything would go well. But he was curious, that’s why he managed. Neil Armstrong probably even started to think differently after a while. That is most likely what will happen, if you visit the moon. Now; this might also happen to you. Digital education is gradually becoming a totally new world. A bit like ending up on the moon actually. Look at it that way, and approach it that way. That Armstrong even dared… And you are just about to outperform him!
ESTIEM Magazine | 60th issue - Data Revolution: The Numbers All Around Us 31