Looking Back to See Forward

One of the most difficult challenges in higher education today is making sense of the moment we’re in to guide our actions. Artificial intelligence is reshaping knowledge work. Demographic shifts are changing who attends college. Questions about affordability, value, and the future of work are challenging assumptions that have guided higher education for decades. The pace of change can feel overwhelming, making it difficult to distinguish temporary disruption from genuine transformation. But I think most would agree: this feels different.

Years ago, futurist Marina Gorbis of the Institute for the Future introduced me to the concept of “looking back to see forward” in her Thinking Like a Futurist article in Educause Review. The premise is simple: understanding historical patterns can help us better anticipate what comes next. That idea recently led me back to Neil Howe’s work on generational cycles and The Fourth Turning. Whether one embraces the framework fully or not, it provides an interesting lens for examining major periods of disruption and renewal in American society.

As I reflected on the history of higher education through that lens, two moments stood out. The first was the Morrill Act of 1862, which created the land-grant university system and dramatically expanded educational opportunity beyond the nation’s elite institutions. The second was the GI Bill following World War II. Combined with the rapid growth of community colleges, it democratized access to postsecondary education for millions of Americans and helped build the modern middle class.These transformational moments occurred 84 years apart: 1862 and 1946. Add another 84 years and you arrive at 2030. Coincidence? Perhaps. But it raises an intriguing question: If previous crises produced bold new models of educational access to align with a societal reset, what might emerge from the current one?

The conversation around artificial intelligence often focuses on how students learn, how faculty teach, or how institutions operate. Those are important questions, but they may not be the most important ones. What if AI becomes the catalyst that fundamentally reshapes access to education itself?

Zooming out to consider where we are on the timeline of history made me wonder about larger cycles beyond the four turnings, perhaps even 500-year patterns. It turns out there may be something there. Throughout history, transformative periods have often involved shifts in who holds the keys to knowledge. With each transformation, the circle widened, and new possibilities emerged.

Today, AI places unprecedented amounts of information, expertise, and personalized guidance into the hands of anyone with an internet connection. The implications are profound. If the last century was about democratizing access to knowledge through college, could the next era be about democratizing access to learning itself?

I don’t pretend to know the answer. But as we move toward 2030, this feels like more than another cycle of technological change. It feels like a moment. While the stock market may see AI as the equivalent of the internet of the late 1990s, on the ground it feels more like the printing press, if not electricity — or, who knows, perhaps even fire itself, as Todd McLees of humanskills.ai has suggested.

I recently shared my thoughts with Todd because I knew he was pondering the same connection between 1862 and 1946 and the democratization of knowledge through public universities and community colleges. He took the information I shared on who has held the keys to knowledge over time, deepened the content, and extended its implications by creating a fascinating video — literally the day after I messaged him. The video offers one perspective on this long arc of history and how the keys to knowledge have shifted during periods of profound societal transformation.

As you watch, consider a simple question: What is the role of community colleges in this moment?

If you have any questions or comments on this post, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu

The Fourth Turning is Here

I apologize. I think this post might seem like a book report, but I can’t help it. I’ve been sitting on this since August, as my big summer read last year, “The Fourth Turning is Here” by Neil Howe, has stayed with me throughout these subsequent months. All 560 pages captivated me for weeks on rainy summer days and most every night before I closed my eyes. I’m sure my wife is exhausted listening to me weave it into any social conversation that lasts more than three minutes, but she's too kind to say so.

I first heard about the four turnings last June at our Strategic Horizon Network convening in Omaha that focused on the multi-generational workforce, and I made a pre-order for the July release. I opened the book expecting to gain additional understanding into the multiple generations in the workplace today — Silent (1928-45); Baby Boomer (1946-64); Gen X (1965-1980); Millennial (1981-1996); and Gen Z (1997-TBA) — but what I found was a completely new lens on how to examine U.S. history through generational archetypes.

The author opens with a clinical description of the highly divided and politicized current state of our nation and rationalizes it in a way that provides an odd feeling of comfort by normalizing current events as part of the “ancient Roman saeculum,” which says generally stable societies experience a repeating sequence of four turnings, each of which occurs on average every 20 to 25 years — or the general length of a long life. The four turnings repeat a continuous cycle of a High (generally good times defined by strong public institutions and high levels of conformity), followed by an Awakening (generally exciting, yet disruptive times defined by a weakening of public institutions and a shift from conformity to the individual), followed by an Unraveling (increasingly concerning times defined by an acceleration in the weakening of public institutions and an amplification of individualism), followed by a Crisis (stressful times of division where the public institutions are overwhelmed by the tribal fissures of individualism). The Crisis reaches a climax and is resolved by a restoration of strong public institutions and a shift to conformity that was required to successfully resolve the Crisis.

The four turnings are driven by four generational archetypes (4-minute video summary) that come of age in each turning. The “Artist” generation comes of age during the High (think of the Silent generation during the post-World War II 1950s). The “Prophet” generation comes of age during the Awakening (think of the Boomers in the 1960s). The “Nomad” generation comes of age during the Unraveling (think of the Gen Xers in the 1980s and ’90s). The “Hero” generation comes of age during the Crisis (think of the Greatest Generation during World War II and Millennials today). If you go back 80 years from today, you have World War II; 80s years prior, the Civil War; “Four score and seven years” prior, the American Revolution (or as the author describes it, our first Civil War when thinking about the Rebels and the Loyalists). Howe takes the pattern in the Anglo-American timeline back to the War of the Roses in England, circa 1455! He shows how the Gen Xers are the same Nomad archetype as Hemingway’s “Lost” generation at the turn of the last century and how the Boomers share the same “Prophet” characteristics of turning away from public institutions as the Pilgrims of 1620. He even spotlights how pop culture is reflected in these themes through movies, books, and music.

I consider myself a bit of a history buff, and if I liked reading in college as much as I do now, I probably would have declared it as my major. As much as I like to think I know about U.S. history, the four turnings opened an entirely new way to understand the dynamics and connectivity throughout history. The author draws some connection to the saeculum and the extent it does or doesn’t apply to European, African, and Latin American countries, as well as India, Russia, and China, but most of the book is centered on the United States. In 1991, Howe and William Strauss co-authored the book “Generations,” where they were the first define the term “Millennials.” In 1997, they collaborated again on “The Fourth Turning,” writing that based on historical patterns, the U.S. was likely going to transition from the Unraveling turning that began in 1984 to a new Crisis turning around 2008. At the time, they didn’t know what it would be, but forecasted (based on patterns) that it would be something big … and the Great Recession was pretty big.

Spoiler alert — based on historical patterns, Howe states that we are likely to see the current Crisis turning climax sometime around 2030. He mentions that unlike previous Crisis turnings, this is the first time we are moving toward a climax of the Crisis with the existential threat of global destruction. Indeed, that is true; however, I find it curious that in the last two cycles, the Crisis turning has strengthened public higher education. As the society transitioned from a Crisis turning of weak public institutions to a High turning of strong public institutions, the U.S. government passed the Morrill Act that created our land-grant colleges and universities in 1862 (in the midst of the Civil War) and the GI Bill in 1946 (immediately following WWII) that served as a tremendous catalyst for community colleges. Both historic legislative acts greatly increased access and changed the public higher education landscape over the following decade. While I’m certainly curious to see how this current Crisis turning reaches its climax and resolves itself into a new High turning, I’m even more curious and hopeful to see if a generational idea like the Morrill Act or GI Bill is realized to make the 2030s a transformational decade for public higher education.

If you have any thoughts or questions on this post, please email me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.