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The Case: Futures of Universities
Although the model is intended for overall, large-scale developments, we applied the
Fan to the specific case of the future of higher education (university education).
This resulted in an interesting array of contrasting states of the university, which
will be presented in the next part of this presentation.
The exercise was done in 45 minutes with a group of 10 people within a classroom
setting. Due to time constraints, the group did not bring the fan down to possible
scenarios, but the reader is free to add and change comments, and to design
scenarios in the fan that s/he may consider plausible or interesting/though-
provoking. An example of a possible scenario has been added afterwards by the
transcriber of the workshop outcomes to add some flavor to the abstract ideas.
In the next slide you will find a representation of the Harman Fan. Behind each of
the elements of the fan, you will find a more detailed description. Some
elements that could not be placed have been summarized in a separate
worksheet.
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Introduction
The Harman Fan was originally developed by Willis W. Harman and is described in
‘An Incomplete Guide to the Future’ (Norton Publishers, 1979). It is a tool that
helps in designing divergent scenarios that describe how the future of society as
a whole (and in our particular case the future of higher education in the USA) may
unfold. The method comprises three sequential steps:
1. The identification of the 22 different future states of the system.
2. The organization of these future states in a fan model based on assumptions
whether a state may occur sooner or later in the chronology (one may want to
add specific time intervals, but this is not necessarily required).
3. The identification of possible sequences through time of different states. The
description of how this sequence of states may occur (the evolution from one
state into the other) becomes a scenario.
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