July 2026
China cut 12,000 university degree programmes to align higher education with AI-era industry needs and ease a persistent graduate employment crisis. The scale is breathtaking — but what's the bet?
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October 2026
In the worst-case 2045 there are two tiers: wealthy families buy human attention, small classes and a place in a handful of trusted institutions, while everyone else gets a machine. Part 1 of 3 on whether schools and universities will still matter.
4 min readRead articleOctober 2026
How fast AI moves, who it serves, and what it means for the class of 2035 – and which of these futures would hurt your school most. Part of the Educational Futures series.
4 min readRead articleOctober 2026
In 2034, my ten-year-old son will finish high school. By then artificial intelligence will look very different from the tools schools are debating today – and what it does to education will be decided by the choices we make now. Part 1 of the Educational Futures series.
4 min readRead articleAbout the Author
Paul Penfold is an education and technology consultant based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with six decades of experience spanning classroom teaching, academic research, government policy, and humanitarian service. He advises schools, ministries, and EdTech companies on AI in education, alternative education, and learning technology, and has published 37 papers on immersive and virtual-world learning. His career includes refugee education on the Thai-Cambodian border, pioneering virtual-world hospitality education at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and national tourism HR strategies across Asia and the Caribbean.
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