Higher education relevance in the 21st century

The model presented in this paper presents a view of the relevance of the higher education in the 21st century that begins from the changes that are taking place in the production of knowledge. The major change is the emergence of a distributed knowledge production system. Knowledge production and dissemination -- research and teaching -- are no longer self contained activities, carried out in relative institutional isolation. They now involve interaction with a variety of other knowledge producers. Connections will increasingly involve the use of the potentialities of the new information and communication technologies. The challenge is how to get knowledge that may have been produced anywhere in the world to the place where it can be brought to bear effectively in a particular problem-solving context. This requires the creation of a cadre of knowledge workers - people who are experts at configuring knowledge to a wide range of applications. Universities of the 21st century will have to develop many more and different kinds of links with surrounding society.