Is it too late to reinvent our universities? — from forbes.com by Mike Maddock
Excerpt (most emphasis from DSC):
A new survey by Moody’s Investor Service reports that more than 40% of U.S. colleges and universities face stagnant or falling tuition revenue and enrollment.
That’s four in 10!
It isn’t a misprint. For you data heads, let me quote from the news release that accompanied the research report.
“Moody’s key findings include net tuition revenue declines at a projected 28% of public and 19% of private universities, with net tuition revenue growth below inflation projected for 44% of public and 42% of private universities and total enrollment declines at nearly half of public and private universities. In our prior survey, 15% of public and 18% of private universities projected net tuition revenue declines.”
From DSC:
Back in February of 2009, I publicly asked whether there was a bubble in higher education (see 2/16/09 entry) — being pretty sure there was one developing even before 2009.
A year or two later, there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that there was a bubble in higher ed. Then for me, the question became…”Has it popped yet?”
Fast forward to 2013 and it seems I have my answer. It’s a definite one; there’s no mistaking it. The bubble has popped.
For those of us working within higher education, time is no longer on our side. We have been too slow to adapt and not innovative enough with our experiments. If we keep this up, I can’t help but think that the answer to Maddock’s question is a “Yes.”
But we can change. We need to be willing to experiment, innovate, fail, pivot, try things again. It would be good to model this for our students — as most likely, many of them are going to be doing this sort of thing throughout their lifetimes.
Along these lines…this addendum concerns me:
- Millennials view education as least satisfying segment for empowerment, workplace collaboration — from thejournal.com by Dian Schaffhauser