Guessing the future, even if the guess is well off the mark, kicks the brain into gear. Guessing at the future of post-secondary education, however, is more like getting the brain kicked into a very low gear. Current news is stark no matter where you look. Post-secondary enrollments continue to grow, costs continue to escalate, and demographics continue to change. Examining some of these criteria, and making projections from them, though inaccurate, just might prove useful in picturing the future of higher education and our place in it.
In 1999 there were 15,000,000 students enrolled in post-secondary schools; today, this number is just under 20,000,000. Expect this number to grow steadily and indefinitely at a 4% annual rate. Consequently, all areas of higher education are under stress as classes become lectures and, gaining access to required or popular courses becomes ever more challenging (meaning taking 5, 6, or even 7 years to earn a bachelors will become more the rule). Furthermore, being taught by professors on the tenure tract will become rarer: adjunct professors and teacher assistants (graduate students) will gain an ever greater portion of class time.
College costs continue to rise: between 1982 and 2007, while median household incomes rose 147%, college tuition and fees increased 439%. The cost of higher education is already unaffordable to many families. Yale University, which sports an annual $51,000 price tag, gives financial aid to 70% of its undergraduates; its average institutional grant is over $26,000. This cannot continue many more years into this century, even in institutions with large endowments.
Demographically, female is outstripping male enrollment at many of the most selective schools (females are 51% of enrollment at Harvard, and 59% at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). This trend will continue as we head into the 21st century. Additionally, 40% of post-secondary students are over 25. Trends also indicate that an ever growing portion of the post-secondary student mix will contain first-generation students, foreign students, and returning students. This is to be expected, as post-secondary enrollment mirrors the national population.
Where are these trends taking us? Undoubtedly, the Ivies, Stanford, and Dukes of the world will continue to be sought after. Reputation and need-blind financial aid assure this. For the vast bulk of students, however, most will continue to turn, in ever greater numbers, to the community colleges to begin their postsecondary schooling. More than 40% of US college students are now enrolled in community college. Ironically, because many classes within the 4-year schools are impacted, just visit any of the Cal State or University of California campuses (or just about any public post-secondary school for that matter) to confirm this, a number of four-year-college students are turning to community college to gain access to professors who teach, and to less expensive college credits.
The big opportunity to address our post-secondary demands is and will continue to be distance learning-the virtual and scalable classroom. As of 2007, over 4,100 of our 2-year and 4-year degree granting institutions offered college level educational courses. These distance learning courses garnered over 12 million enrollments. Outside of standard bearers of distance education: Devry University, Kaplan University, and the University of Phoenix, the number of ‘open courseware’ sites is exploding. Just go to You Tube.edu to get a sense of what’s out there, http://www.youtube.com. Or go to ‘open courseware,’ at http://www.ocwconsortium.org and get complete classes (videos, notes, and tests) from Johns Hopkins, MIT and Tufts (to name just a fraction of the contributing members).
Certainly these are tough times for post-secondary education, but it’s usually within the cauldron of difficulties that alternatives arise that might revolutionize our efforts and free our minds to attain new thresholds of learning and productivity. Now is such a time. The traditional classroom within the century-old university structure is being questioned on all levels, and alternatives, such as community college and the virtual classroom, are forging forward. Change in post-secondary education is assured thank goodness.
The Future of a Post-Secondary School System Currently Under Siege