In years gone by, we said that students went to college to gather knowledge. Now, college is appropriately expected to be much more about building wisdom. The advent of the internet toward the end of the last century went a long way to stimulate this shift to the emphasis on wisdom. More recently, artificial intelligence has further accelerated the move. Those of us in higher education who still have our focus on knowledge gathering in our classes are a quarter of a century behind the times. Rote memorization of facts is out of date, supplanted by highly refined search and retrieval skills coupled with an ability to apply sophisticated critical and creative thinking to those data. We are at the turning point in higher learning where we must now shift our focus from memorization and recitation of facts to the synthesis and analysis of a much broader virtual “library” of knowledge. From this perspective, we will build wisdom among our students. This new level of learning will provide the platform for graduates and certificate completers to exercise leadership and vision in our society.
