Citation

Eldredge HW. Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change 1975; 7(3): 301-316.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1975, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0040-1625(75)90026-8

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In 1970 an initial survey was made of futures courses at university level based on forty courses that could be located in the United States and Canada (Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change, 2: 133-148 [1970]. This was replicated during 1970-1972 on approximately 200 North American courses and reported changes in the field at the Third World Future Research Conference in Bucharest, September 1972 (Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change, 4:387-407 [1973]). A third iteration was funded by the World Institute Council and published in abstracted form with their permission here. The conclusions to be drawn from some six years of analysis of such courses, and drawn especially from the specifics of the 300 courses in the third iteration, can be lumped under five main headings: (1) All disciplines are to some degree finally alerted to the future implications of both their research and their teaching. (2) There remains still much "froth and nonsense" in futures courses. How to control this and encourage lively creativity is a complex problem-especially since the intellectual image of futurism today is not that high! (3) There appears to be no reliable sociocultural change theory backing future studies and there is precious little solid theory in the field itself-offset by some progress in methodology. (4) Despite these strictures, if all future-oriented courses in American/Canadian universities were lumped together (future studies per se; technology forecasting/assessment; policy sciences; peace studies; demography; environmental/ecology courses; general systems theory/system analysis/ system dynamics; mathematical modelling and game theory; eschatology; utopian literature and science fiction; even black studies and women's courses) the total might approach 5000 and it is still growing, as is popular and academic understanding of the necessity "to plan ahead" in this period of human malaise. (5) Informal education of varied worth, from free swinging communes to middle management cram courses conducted by think-tanks, may turn out to be more useful in future- oriented advanced education than that which takes place in formal "walled" traditional institutions.