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THE UNIVERSITY FOR THE NEW MARKET OF KNOWLEDGE in "World Futures - The Journal of General Evolution",  Editore Ervin Laszlo, Volume 57, number 6 

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Abstract

New communication technologies greatly increase access to knowledge. Telecommunication networks, satellite television, Internet and virtual reality modify processes of communicating knowledge as well as their acquisition. Widespread channels have been created which offer new possibilities for a fully democratic access to training and education. This new potential marks the passage from an information society to a cognitive society. We are going through a social and cultural revolution which challenges traditional, institutional models of schools and universities. Training courses now available due to new technologies allow for the acquisition of knowledge and skills outside traditional educational facilities. Anyone can learn through telecommunication networks. Faced with these processes for change which increasingly characterize this phase of transformation, educational institutions must constantly innovate subject content, reorganize curricula, decide on new development policies tied to the requirements of a flexible, international job market. At the university level, it is clear that there is a need for university education to carry out a new function, that of continuing education and of developing the instruments and mechanisms necessary to do this. What attracts individuals today to higher level continuing education courses is not the same as in the period after World War II, when further training allowed one to be promoted to a higher level of the production chain. Nowadays the aim is to rapidly gain specialized skills which will allow one to find a new type of job in a changing system.