The following graduate programs offer education in foresight (also known as strategic foresight, futures studies, prospective studies, prognostics, futurology, futuring, and futuristics) and related disciplines. As a foresight professional (or in lay terms, a futurist), any of these credentials may help develop your career.

Note: This page is also now available at our Global Foresight Wiki.

	Overview Program Potentials Primary Programs Undergraduate Centers and Courses Select Secondary Programs Resources

Overview
Professional foresight is a transdisciplinary educational program that seeks to improve one's ability to anticipate, create, and manage change in a variety of domains (scientific, technological, environmental, economic, political, and societal), on a variety of scales (personal, organizational, societal, global, and universal), and using a variety of specialties (theories and methods of foresight, see below).

Building strategic foresight is a great calling for future-minded, multidisciplinary thinkers and leaders. Anticipating, creating, and managing change in our increasingly fast-paced and globalized technological world is our greatest challenge. Building teams and organizational cultures with foresight proficiency delivers great social value.

ASF's recommended framework for Primary, Secondary and Other foresight specialties is outlined lower on this page. We suggest that Masters and PhD foresight programs should strive to provide basic literacy and proficiency in all the primary specialties (the core curriculum of professional foresight), and basic familiarity with the secondary specialties (many of which can be taken as graduate degrees in other departments). Electives and thesis topics should be possible in primary, secondary, and other foresight specialties, per the student's career and research interests.

For some proposed standards on bringing foresight curricula, foresight certificate programs, and foresight MS and PhD programs to the modern university, see University Foresight - Program Options. For ideas on bringing foresight methods to the organization, and language to use in describing foresight in the corporate environment, see Organizational Foresight - Strategy and Terms.

Not all of the programs below presently meet our proposed standards. If you presently attend one, we urge you to join the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) as a student member. A handful of current foresight education programs are broadly acceleration-aware, most are less so. Other programs to recommend? Edits or corrections? Please let us know.

Primary (Part and Full-Time) MS and Full-Time PhD Programs English-Instruction
English-language MS and Full-Time PhD programs in any of the primary foresight specialties are listed below. Are you a working professional with an MS, looking to get a Foresight PhD? See our global list of places to do Online and Part-Time Doctorates in Foresight.

Primary Programs Other Language Instruction
Non-English MS and PhD programs in any of the primary futures studies subject areas (see above) are listed below.

Are you a student, alumni, faculty, advocate, or employer one of these programs? If so, we encourage you to join FERN, a community that networks the professional foresight education community, and helps graduates find great foresight careers.

A variety of foresight education frameworks are used by the above programs. Three decades after the first graduate foresight (futures studies) program emerged (Houston, 1975), there are far fewer primary foresight programs today than we might hope or expect. Foresight professionals must challenge this scarcity in global culture, and do everything we can to ensure our existing programs offer obvious value to students in a world of accelerating change.

We believe that improving, networking, and promoting our best foresight and futures programs should be top priorities for the global foresight community, both academic (FERN, WFSF, etc.), professional (APF, etc.) and general (WFS, etc.). As Peter Bishop, past Director of the Houston MS program notes, we must improve our foresight doctoral programs, which do basic research and produce faculty able to staff new MS and PhD programs. We must also do our best to ensure that the leaders of our primary programs and key faculty in our secondary programs are publishing and practicing foresight professionals.

Foresight Specialties - Primary, Secondary, and Other

Select Secondary Programs English Instruction (except where indicated)
Here is a list of MS and PhD programs in secondary futures studies subject areas which either 1) place a notable emphasis on any of the primary foresight subjects or 2) have on-campus futures research centers which may be used for potential affiliations during graduate study, are listed below. Most offer English-language instruction, except where indicated.

For additional secondary programs, see Graduate Programs for Understanding and Managing Accelerating Change. For Jose Ramos excellent 2002 FS survey, with additional program and contact detail, see International Survey of University Futures Courses (PDF, 43 pages). For a list of bioethics programs potentially conducive to scholarship on human-machine symbiosis (transhumanism), see the WTA's Programs for Graduate Studies in Bioethics. For a great but unselective database of graduate programs (US, International, and Distance), see GradSchools.com. Browse All Subjects.

Even with the paucity of primary programs, we believe the breadth and depth of secondary programs, by comparison to previous decades, indicates that foresight work is beginning to be taken seriously both in society and by academics from a wide range of disciplines. This research suggests that business, engineering, science and technology studies, philosophy, sociology, policy analysis, statistics, and urban planning departments are all particularly promising as founding participants in an interdisciplinary, campus-wide graduate foresight program. Yet there are also many more that might be involved. We need to raise awareness of the value of this field across the spectrum of scholarship.

Program Potentials
Programs with historical foresight/futures faculty champions, credential programs with extensive foresight curricula but not yet MS degrees, or foresight-related degree programs at institutions which do not yet have strong US or international accreditation. These institutions are excellent opportunities for further funding and curriculum development.

Our categorization of foresight programs into primary, secondary, and potential is subjective. Please let us know if you disagree. As many students make their choice of graduate study using web-based resources, our classification was heavily influenced by what we could find online about the relevant programs, foresight-related centers, and faculty, at official websites. But at many schools, particularly in developing nations, there is more foresight research and education occuring than can presently be found on the web.

Undergraduate Centers and Courses (U.S.)
Notable U.S. universities with foresight/futures faculty champions and undergraduate foresight centers and courses. There are a few undergraduate degrees in foresight/futures internationally, none yet in the US. ASF recommends that foresight work at the undergraduate level should 1) be integrated across the undergraduate curriculum and 2) offer standalone foresight courses, but not offer degrees.

Resources
Foresight and Futures-Related People, Orgs, and Resources
See ASF's Global Futures Network for a community-edited list of foresight research centers, consultancies, NGOs, associations, and other foresight resources and groups that you might associate with or do an internship at before, during and after your graduate foresight/futures academic program.