TEDxVillanovaU - Michele Pistone - The Future of Higher Education

This talk discusses the future of higher education, which has been based on the same educational model for more than 100 years. But the status quo is about to be disrupted, by the Internet and those educators -- including new competitors -- who would unleash its potential. Higher education institutions at a whole have not adequately recognized the threat to the status quo, or come close to responding adequately to it. In truth, responding adequately will be very difficult, because higher ed face a classic innovator's dilemma.

Michele Pistone guides law students as they evolve from student to lawyer at the Villanova School of Law. She founded its current clinical program and is the Director of the Clinic for Asylum, Refugee and Emigrant Services (CARES). Through CARES she and her students provide free legal representation to asylum seekers fleeing persecution, torture, unlawful imprisonment and other forms of mistreatment. Her clinic's clients are survivors of human rights abuses directed at them because of their religion, their political opinions, or other beliefs and characteristics that we as a nation have always sought to protect. Among the clients that she has represented are former child soldiers from Sierra Leone and Uganda; political dissidents from Belarus, Cameroon, and Afghanistan; women's rights activists from Nepal and Kenya; children's rights activists from Peru; and religious minorities from Iraq; among countless others.
She is a lifetime learner, always curious about other cultures and ideas, and loves to create anything, from tasty meals, to crafts, to engaging scholarship.

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