Universities lack futures studies at a time of huge change

There’s been a tidal shift in thinking around futures studies in the past decade. “Universities are the laggards here,” says futurist Professor Sohail Inayatullah. “But working with students everywhere; agility, diversity, sustainability, AI, global thinking, even spiritual thinking – those come up more and more.”

Universities may resist foresight exercises as professors protect their turf and academic tradition. “For some universities, foresight is nothing more than predicting student numbers,” he told University World News. This is a problem at a time of profound changes, including the technology and sustainability ‘revolutions’.

Born in Pakistan, Inayatullah has worked at universities around the world, and is a professor in the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies at Tamkang University in Taipei, Taiwan. He is also UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies at the Sejahtera Centre for Sustainability and Humanity at the International Islamic University Malaysia.

Tamkang has one of the largest foresight programmes in the world, Inayatullah said. All undergraduates must take a course in futures thinking. “Small countries are more likely to do foresight because they don’t have the resource advantages of large countries.”

He is co-editor of the Journal of Futures Studies, one of the top journals in the field, and on the editorial boards of Futures, Futures and Foresight Science, and World Futures Review. Previously he was an adjunct professor at Macquarie University and at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.



Protecting the canon

There are many sectors that are taking futures studies very seriously. Inayatullah has worked a lot with Interpol, for example, which understands that – especially given evolving technologies and crime – foresight is an essential capability. “That’s the shift I’ve seen in the last 10 years. Everyone’s saying, how do we embed foresight into everything we do?”

In 2004 Inayatullah wrote an article titled “Future avoiders, migrants and natives”, published in the Journal of Futures Studies, building on Marc Prensky’s concepts of digital natives and immigrants, applying them to how people and organisations engage with the future.

“The argument was that universities generally tend to be laggards because they have to teach the canon. Teaching official codified knowledge, foresight work is difficult because, in effect, it’s asking whether what I’m teaching and training students for is inadequate.

“Every university is different. So if I give generic advice, it wouldn’t fit their story. So I say, well, what about within your story,” said Inayatullah. For example, sandstone universities, with buildings going back thousands of years: “You can’t tell them to become a starship. That’s not going to happen because they have to be tied to their historical culture.

“I would say given your story, what are some steps that can be taken to adapt to this changing world, in terms of how you see it?” There are problems, of course. “The democratisation of knowledge is brilliant, but it also allows junk in,” is just one of them.

So there’s a role for the old rules, said Inayatullah. “There’s something about holding on to traditional rules that ensures reliability, validity, precision. But there’s also understanding that we’re in a paradigm shift in terms of the nature of knowledge, the structure of university, and the structure of global knowledge.”

That is the longer term. “Medium term is really taking the trends and disruption seriously. If in fact by 2050, 40% of the world’s youth will live in Africa, that’s not a minor amount.” If the data is correct, it suggests that traditional markets and structures aren’t really working.

“We have to change.” But finding solutions is not helped by tensions between governments and universities, while large international organisations try to create a global acumen. “How do we keep on pushing the boundaries? And of course, sustainability is critical.”

Inayatullah held a workshop at one university that was deeply concerned about ageing. “They were very clear: ‘We placed our bet on young people.’ But of course the students aren’t there. And I said, well, for 20 years we’ve been telling you that yours is an ageing society.”

In some top international student destinations, such as the United Kingdom and Australia, universities have long been warned not to become financially dependent on fluctuating international student trends. But they’ve ridden the cash cow with little thought to the future(s).

Pioneer of ‘causal layered analysis’

Futures studies, or futures research, or futurology, is in essence the study of current trends in order to forecast future developments. While techniques such as forecasting can be involved, contemporary futures studies stresses the importance of systematically exploring alternatives.

Inayatullah is most famous for introducing and pioneering the futures technique of causal layered analysis, which uses a four-layered approach to bring about transformative change. He introduced the idea in a widely cited 1988 paper for Futures.

He also edited and wrote the introductory chapter for the Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) Reader.

Causal layered analysis, writes Inayatullah for his educational think-tank Metafuture, as a theory “seeks to integrate empiricist, interpretive, critical and action learning modes of knowing at inner and outer levels”.

“As a method, its utility is not in predicting the future but in creating transformative spaces for the creation of alternative futures.”

The four layers are: surface understanding of an issue; the deeper causes that can create and sustain a situation; the dominant perspectives and ideologies that shape a situation; and the underlying stories – cultural narratives, myths and metaphors – that underpin it.

As the son of a United Nations researcher, Inayatullah grew up in different countries across Europe and Asia, as well as in the United States. He studied at the University of Hawaii, then spent 10 years as a planner and futurist with the Hawaii Judiciary before returning to the university for a PhD.

He moved to Australia in the 1990s, as a researcher. Later he co-founded Metafuture with his partner Dr Ivana Milojevic.

Metafutures also has a school, now with nearly 1,500 learners, with three courses that offer futures training and tools. They have been taken up by UNESCO, UNDP, Atlantic Fellows and the World Health Organization, among others. They are currently designing a course in futures thinking for the United Nations System Staff College.

Currently Milojevic is a senior lecturer in futures at University of Edinburgh, so Inayatullah is often there. But he is also everywhere: this year so far he has worked in Canada, Australia and various countries in Asia. After being approached by UNESCO Chairs, in 2006 he became the inaugural chair in futures studies.

He told University World News: “The idea was that there are seeds of change in terms of futures across the world. Can we grow them into nurturing young trees, linked to the Sustainable Development Goals? Can we create a forest of foresight? Can we grow futures thinking, green thinking, sustainable thinking, civilisational thinking, across many organisations and countries and cultures?”

Embedding futures studies?

Not much convincing is required to understand that a rapidly changing world should be thinking hard about the future. Education for Sustainable Development is being implemented by many universities around the world, embedded in curricula in the form of sustainability skills, awareness, approaches and other means. What about embedding fuures studies in courses too?

Option one is the office of the vice-chancellor, said Inayatullah. “Then its strategic. That’s an important function.”

Option two is indeed to embed futures thinking throughout the curriculum. For instance, towards the end of an IT course a lecturer could look at the future of IT, using foresight methods. Inayatullah invoked the virus analogy: bring in a virus as a person or people who spread the ideas. “Now, often that works, but unless you institutionalise it, it dissipates.”

Establishing a centre for futures or foresight studies can work well, but these kinds of centres are often person-based, and disappear when the professor retires. The same can happen when a vice-chancellor retires, and the new leader wants to throw out the work of the predecessor. So that’s not good; in such scenarios, the future doesn’t look bright for futures studies in higher education.

Constructing alternative futures

In terms of the structure of futures thinking, the start is the ‘Futures Triangle’. First, what are the drivers? For example, new technology, an increasingly female labour force, diversity, an ageing of society? “We look probably at demographic decline in China and Europe, and the young people rise in Africa,” Inayatullah said.

Second are weights. Could weights of history be preventing change, for instance? It could be the feudal structure of education, with its hierarchies and rigidities. “And the pull? When I talk to young people, it’s very much global green education, AI-driven. They all want global. They want access to everything. They want green, and they want technology to enable that.

“Then we ask, what’s disrupting the Futures Triangle? And we start to explore radical emerging issues.” Thailand, for example, has looked at personal education. “What would the future look like if every Thai person had a personal AI Buddha hologram? What would personalised education look like globally? It’s education seen as lifetime.”

A next step is scenarios. Inayatullah uses a simple approach, ‘no change’, ‘marginal’, ‘adaptive’, ‘radical’.

“If nothing is done, the university will continue to be hierarchy-based, disciplines-based, competing with others and global rankings, and with education being basically about reinforcing the current system.”

What’s marginal change? Inayatullah gives the example of a competitive university system in which some types of institutions fall behind and other types survive and thrive. Adaptive change can be illustrated by a university in an ageing society that decides to offer courses that are shorter than a semester and aimed at older adults.

“Radical change could be: what’s after the university?” Is this learning from anyone, anytime, anywhere? Is this the shift toward micro-accreditation, a true lifelong learning journey?

After mapping out the alternatives, where does an organisation want to go? Causal layered analysis asks: what’s the core metaphor of the university?

In China, one university wanted to be like Disneyland. “I was like, what? But for them, Disneyland meant freedom, autonomy, joy, possibility. They wanted to be free of traditional structures and there to be a more fluid open global system.”

“As you change the story, you change your strategy, and then you see new possibilities. So I work from a story.” Of course, said Inayatullah, there are complications. Every system has multiple stories. In a university, there are many stakeholders with different wants – university leaders, professors, students, parents, governments, companies and so on.

“Causal layered analysis says ‘let’s figure out the core metaphors and stories, and see if we can use them to ignite an alternative future. We move people towards where they want to go.”

Email Karen MacGregor: macgregor.karen@gmail.com.