????奇點大學（Singularity University）或許代表了高等教育的未來。它獲得了許多高科技公司合伙人的支持，而且，它與人們想象中的學校截然不同。實際上，這家剛誕生于硅谷羽翼尚未豐滿的機構已經擁有強大的學習課程，足以吸引所有希望在變幻莫測的世界中保持領先的公司前來取經。

????奇點大學并沒有龐大的規模或者悠久的歷史。它成立于2009年，創始人是兩位成功的企業家——彼得?迪亞芒蒂思和雷?庫茲韋爾，他們成立這個機構的目的在于，利用破壞性技術在十年內對十億人產生積極影響。這個小型機構既是一所大學，也是一個智庫，更是創業孵化器。它并沒有聘請常駐教師，而是充分利用由科學家、思想家、工程師、投資人、商業領袖和公共政策制定者等組成的龐大的、繼續發展的社區。這些人有動力去研究快速發展的科技所擁有的潛力，來應對人類面臨的嚴峻挑戰，例如水資源短缺和能源消耗等。

????計算能力、存儲與網絡等技術的發展日新月異，更新速度史無前例，沒有人敢停下學習的腳步。持續的終生學習勢在必行，因而促成了奇點大學擴展型的教師模式。

????奇點大學并不是由傳統大學的院系（例如物理、經濟和電子工程等）組成，因為這種組織方式容易受困于各種歷史性的調查，以及長達數十年的學科混戰。奇點大學設置了12個專注未來的“學科軌道”。學院設有納米科技、生物科技與生物信息學、人工智能與機器人等學科，因為這些學科在未來5至10年會對我們的經濟和人類社會帶來最大的影響。學校80%的課程內容均屬于所謂“放眼未來”的學科，因此，學校必須經常審時度勢，將臨時的趨勢與具有重大意義的發展區分開來，同時根據這些信號重新安排教師與課程。

????聽上去是不是有點耳熟？本來就應該這樣。只可惜，如今的公司只熱衷于從媒體鋪天蓋地的的表面現象中篩選所謂的真知灼見。

????正是由于對未來的偏重，在與奇點大學最相關的領域，專家們往往并未從事學術工作。學校主要依靠臨時教員。大學的核心教師團隊均為兼職，每個“學科軌道”的核心團隊由一名主席和多位顧問組成。這些教師不僅是管理者，也是思想領袖。他們會利用自己的人脈，及時了解最新的科技進展，發現新的專家。核心團隊會頻繁更新課程表，每幾個月就會對所有授課進行一次評估。有些“學科軌道”的課程每年會修改85%以上。

????奇點大學沒有終身教職：學校每年聘請160名客座講師，其中有40%會被新教師替代。文特?瑟夫（互聯網創始人之一、谷歌高管——譯注）、拉里?佩奇（谷歌聯合創始人兼CEO——譯注）、狄恩?卡門（發明家——譯注）和克雷格?文特爾（塞雷拉基因組公司創始人、前總裁——譯注）都曾在奇點大學授課。

????Singularity University may well be the future of higher education. With backing from an array of high tech corporate partners, it isn't what you typically think of when you imagine a school. In fact, this fledgling Silicon Valley institution holds powerful lessons for any business that wants to stay ahead in a rapidly changing world.

????Singularity University doesn't have a big staff or a long history. It was founded in 2009 by two successful entrepreneurs, Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil, with the vision of using disruptive technologies to positively impact a billion people within a decade. Rather than hiring resident faculty members, this small institution -- part university, part think tank, part business-incubator -- taps into a large and growing community of scientists, thinkers, engineers, investors, business leaders, and public policy makers. They are motivated to explore the potential of rapidly advancing technologies to take on humanity's big challenges, such as water scarcity and energy consumption.

????With technologies such as computing power, storage, and networking improving at an unprecedented pace, no one can afford to stop learning. This imperative for continuous, lifelong learning drives Singularity University's extended faculty model.

????Singularity University is not organized into traditional departments (physics, economics, and electrical engineering) that tend to lock into historical lines of inquiry and decades-long turf battles. Instead, it has 12 evolving "tracks" focused on the future. The university identifies topics such as nanotechnology, biotechnology and bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence and robotics that will likely have the greatest impact on our economy and society in the next 5-10 years. With 80% of the course content on so-called "future-looking" disciplines, the school must constantly scan the environment, sorting temporary fads from significant developments and reconfiguring faculty and curriculum based on those signals.

????Sound familiar? If companies today aren't trying to filter insights from the surface events that consume our daily headlines, they should be.

????Because of this bias toward the future, experts on topics most relevant to the university tend to work outside of academia. The school leans heavily on temporary faculty. The core faculty, comprised of a chair and advisors for each track, are all part-time. Chosen to be curators as well as thought leaders, these faculty members use their personal networks to keep abreast of new developments and identify emerging experts. The core faculty updates the curriculum on a near-constant basis and reviews each lecture every few months. The curriculum for some tracks changes up to 85% each year.

????No tenure models here: the school brings in 160 different guest lecturers each year with 40% of that list changing year-to-year. Vint Cerf, Larry Page, Dean Kamen, and Craig Venter have all lectured at Singularity.