| This page offers suggested standards
for foresight professionals seeking to bring foresight
curricula, foresight certificate programs/minors,
and foresight degree programs to the modern
University. See our page on Organizational
Foresight for additional ideas on bringing foresight
practice to the University as an organization.
Foresight
Education and Admissions Standards
ASF suggest best-in-class MS or PhD foresight programs should
provide basic proficiency in all the primary foresight
specialties (the core curriculum of futures studies),
and a survey-level introduction to the secondary
specialties (areas important to foresight,
but where independent academic degrees may also be obtained).
In a comprehensive foresight program, electives and thesis
topics should be possible in primary, secondary
and other specialties, per student interest.
The best foresight programs should satisfy the following
prerequisites and requirements:
Ideal Admission Prerequisites
1. An undergraduate degree (foresight
work needs context and maturity, it is best as an MS-and-above
degree)
2. Applied, specialized, real-world experience
(3+ years incoming experience after undergrad
degree)
3. Undergrad science, tech, econ, political,
and humanities literacy, with mandatory deficit
remediation
Ideal Program Requirements
1. Broad-based, balanced, integral
curriculum (all quadrant, all level, all discipline, globally-
and accel-aware)
2. Considers both evolutionary (possible
and reversible) and developmental (probable and irreversible)
change
3. Measurably improves subject knowledge
(pre- and in-program testing)
4. Measurably improves skills, incl. prediction
and change management (validated via prediction markets, etc.)
5. Transdisciplinary. Foresight students
can become subject matter experts (SME's) in more than one
discipline
Interdepartmental
Foresight Center - The Ideal
In ASF's opinion, the ideal administrative structure to support
foresight curriculum and programs is an Interdepartmental
Foresight Center (IFC) at the University. Like Science
and Technology Studies (STS), a similarly cross-disciplinary
activity, foresight and futures MS and PhD programs can live
in a wide range of schools and departments at the university.
But an independently-funded IFC at the university can easily
collaborate on foresight projects with departments and centers
across the campus, and seek revenues from external university,
government, and corporate clients.
IFC staff can source and create foresight resources for instructor
use in all the University's undergraduate and graduate departments
at the University. There should be top-level mandates by university
regents for at least a moderate level of forsight curriculum
as part of all relevant undergrad and grad courses. University
professors are an individualistic lot and have quite variable
interest and experience in exploring the future of even their
own fields, much less larger trends that might make their
fields change, and course textbooks are of quite varying quality
in exploring trends and futures of their subjects. Both foresight
and innovation studies (who is innovating what and where)
is of great interest and value to the student, who is at the
beginning of their career. Adding foresight as a required
course objective, and leaving it to the instructor to determine
which IFC resources (curricula, websites, reports, media,
guest lectures, etc.) to use in satisfaction of the objective,
and following up with student and practitioner surveys of
efficacy, is one reasonable way to handle this integration
requirement.
IFC staff can also develop and administer Foresight Certificate
Programs/Minors for several of the University's undergraduate
and graduate majors. This is a set of three or four courses
that give the students of that major skills in exploring historical
and breaking trends, innovations, competitive intelligence,
horizon scanning, and scenarios in the future of that industry.
The IFC can also support dedicated Foresight MS Programs in
as many departments as are interested (see the four primary
departments that benefit from foresight programs below).
IFC curriculum should require undergraduates to use Career
Services resources at the university, to consider possible
Summer internships or cooperatives, and to engage in personal
foresight and task management development (personality tests,
productivity software, etc.). Once fully funded, the IFC can
administer a PhD that will graduate academics who can improve
and validate foresight methods, and establish foresight programs
at other universities on graduation.
The IFC would ideally get its budget from an endowment plus
general university overhead, as it services the entire University
with foresight resources and services. We've never seen any
University do all of this yet, though some, like Tamkang University
in Taiwan, are well on the way toward this model.
Departmental
Foresight - The Reality
As a practical matter, unless foresight has a major champion
at the CEO, owner, or founder level, as well as a multi-million
dollar philanthropist to fund the IFC, the first MS-level
foresight degree program is likely to be hosted in a particular
University department. In
our experience, the five main departmental options are:
1. Engineering (Science and Technology
foresight)
2. Business/Economics (Entrepreneurial
and Management foresight)
3. Political Science/Urban Studies (Political
and Policy foresight)
4. Psychology/Sociology (Behavioral, Social and Demographic
foresight)
Though we don't have hard numbers here (please let us know
if you do), we would guess that salaries and number of jobs
with a significant foresight component also rank in this order.
There are many tech companies and tech consultancies who would
love to have engineers who are also trained
in foresight, to work in their R&D, operations, or strategy
units. There are also many business sectors (marketing, strategy,
planning, entrepreneurship) that would be glad to employ engineers
and, business graduates (and to
a lesser extent, political science and liberal arts grads)
with foresight skills. There are several
political organizations (nonprofit, policy, military, security,
government) that would love to employ political science/urban
studies, engineering, business , or liberal arts
grads with foresight backgrounds. Liberal arts/sociology
also provides a number of employment options, including journalism/media,
and some consultancies, for foresight grads of all stripes.
Gaining well-paying foresight employment in a world as short-term
oriented and foresight-challenged as ours is a challenging
endeavor. University administrators would do well to host
their Foresight MS program in a department that will maximize
program selectivity, rigor, and employable skills and employment
options for the graduate.
Of the departments listed above, a great choice, if there
are only funds for one university MS program, is Engineering,
as there is so much that is predictable in science and technology
(S&T) innovation, for example, the century of very predictable
data we have on accelerating technology
performance/experience/learning curves (Moore's
law, etc.). Modern foresight students should learn and understand
that history, have a good basic technical understanding of
S&T, be able to do Delphi and market research around business
applications, be able to consider political oversight likelihoods,
options, and strategies, and be able to put that all in urban
and social contexts, generate scenarios, forecasts, and roadmaps,
and consider robust strategy. Of these four departmental foresight
domains, Science & Technology is arguably the most difficult
competency to build in a foresight student, so basing a foresight
program in Engineering will automatically ensure good quality
graduates who have the ability to work in all four foresight
sectors upon graduation.
Another excellent choice, for universities with strong business
departments, is Business/Economics, as businesse
are the environments supporting most (2/3) of national R&D
research, and as the planning and forecasting departments
of all businesses benefit greatly from strategic foresight.
Graduates with a Business MSF (Masters in Strategic Foresight)
will be able to work in Business, Poli Sci/Urban Studies,
and Liberal Arts/Sociology , and interface with engineers
and product developers. As with engineering, graduates from
business foresight programs have broad career options.
Basing the Foresight MS program in Political Science/Urban
Studies or Liberal Arts/Sociology will certainly prepare graduates
in superior ways for these two domains, but such graduates
will be much less able to do Engineering/Technology and Business
foresight, which reduces their marketability in perhaps
half or more of the available foresight careers. As graduates
with foresight competencies from these departments will be
more specialized, it makes sense, at the typical university
for them to emerge after Engineering and Business/Econ foresight
programs have been developed.
To conclude, in an ideal world, all four departments at the
University would have their own foresight MS programs, servicing
each of these sectors, and an Interdepartmental Foresight
Center administrating all four of them. But if resources are
only available for one program, as is the typical case, we
recommend starting the first MS program in Engineering, or
in Business at Universities which either have no Engineering,
or an Engineering department that doesn't buy in to the need
for graduate foresight programs.
At the undergraduate level, as we've said on our Foresight
Graduate Programs page, we do not recommend independent
Foresight BS Programs (and no university has yet started one
that we know of) , but rather integrating foresight resources
and exercises throughout the undergrad curriculum, and offering
Certificate Programs/Minors for students wishing to delve
more into foresight methods and literature. Future-oriented
students should have both an undergraduate degree and at least
a few years of industry experience before they do a Foresight
MS, to maximize their effectiveness in strategic, planning,
forecasting, policy, media, marketing, and other organizational
environments.
Resources
Foresight and Futures-Related
People, Orgs, and Resources
See ASF's Global
Foresight Directory for a community-edited list
of foresight research centers, consultancies, NGOs, associations,
and other foresight resources and groups that might be of
value as strategic partners, or employers of graduates of
a foresight/futures academic program.
Edits, feedback, or corrections to this page? Please
let us know.
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