From LinkedIn by Robert Gibson
On 01/07/2026,
in business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, learning ecosystem, United States, universities,
by Daniel Christian
What 3 credit ratings agencies forecast for higher ed in 2026 — from highereddive.com by Ben Unglesbee
Fitch Ratings, S&P Global and Moody’s Ratings all predicted a tough year ahead, pointing to deteriorating financial conditions and heightened uncertainty.
Fitch Ratings labeled its higher ed financial outlook for 2026 as “deteriorating” while Moody’s Ratings described an “increasingly difficult and shifting operating environment for colleges and universities.” Similarly, S&P Global Ratings said it expects“mounting operating pressures and uncertainty” ahead for the sector’s nonprofit institutions.
Analysts cited additional disruption and belt-tightening ahead in the new year, from predicted demographic declines to pressures on international enrollment to uncertainties about how Republicans’ big spending bill passed this summer will impact demand for college.
Below are the various takes on higher ed in 2026 by Moody’s, Fitch and S&P Global Ratings:
On 11/05/2025,
in active learning, apprenticeships, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business side of he, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, dangers of the status quo, education technology, emerging technologies, face-to-face, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, pedagogy, reinvent, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, teaching & learning, trends, UK, United States, universities, vision/possibilities,
by Daniel Christian
…the above posting links to:
Higher Ed Is Sleepwalking Toward Obsolescence— And AI Won’t Be the Cause, Just the Accelerant — from substack.com by Steven Mintz
AI Has Exposed Higher Ed’s Hollow Core — The University Must Reinvent Itself or Fade
It begins with a basic reversal of mindset: Stop treating AI as a threat to be policed. Start treating it as the accelerant that finally forces us to build the education we should have created decades ago.
A serious institutional response would demand — at minimum — six structural commitments:
- Make high-intensity human learning the norm. …
- Put active learning at the center, not the margins. …
- Replace content transmission with a focus on process. …
- Mainstream high-impact practices — stop hoarding them for honors students. …
- Redesign assessment to make learning undeniable. …
And above all: Instructional design can no longer be a private hobby.
Teaching with AI: From Prohibition to Partnership for Critical Thinking — from facultyfocus.com by Michael Kiener, PhD, CRC
How to Integrate AI Developmentally into Your Courses
- Lower-Level Courses: Focus on building foundational skills, which includes guided instruction on how to use AI responsibly. This moves the strategy beyond mere prohibition.
- Mid-Level Courses: Use AI as a scaffold where faculty provide specific guidelines on when and how to use the tool, preparing students for greater independence.
- Upper-Level/Graduate Courses: Empower students to evaluate AI’s role in their learning. This enables them to become self-regulated learners who make informed decisions about their tools.
- Balanced Approach: Make decisions about AI use based on the content being learned and students’ developmental needs.
Now that you have a framework for how to conceptualize including AI into your courses here are a few ideas on scaffolding AI to allow students to practice using technology and develop cognitive skills.
80 per cent of young people in the UK are using AI for their schoolwork — from aipioneers.org by Graham Attwell
What was encouraging, though, is that students aren’t just passively accepting this new reality. They are actively asking for help. Almost half want their teachers to help them figure out what AI-generated content is trustworthy, and over half want clearer guidelines on when it’s appropriate to use AI in their work. This isn’t a story about students trying to cheat the system; it’s a story about a generation grappling with a powerful new technology and looking to their educators for guidance. It echoes a sentiment I heard at the recent AI Pioneers’ Conference – the issue of AI in education is fundamentally pedagogical and ethical, not just technological.
On 10/27/2025,
in 21st century, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, credentialing, digital learning, face-to-face, faculty/staff, funding / grants, game-changing environment, higher education, ideas, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning spaces, online learning, strategy, teaching & learning, United States, universities, vocational / trades,
by Daniel Christian
Ground-level Impacts of the Changing Landscape of Higher Education — from onedtech.philhillaa.com by Glenda Morgan; emphasis DSC
Evidence from the Virginia Community College System
In that spirit, in this post I examine a report from Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) on Virginia’s Community Colleges and the changing higher-education landscape. The report offers a rich view of how several major issues are evolving at the institutional level over time, an instructive case study in big changes and their implications.
Its empirical depth also prompts broader questions we should ask across higher education.
- What does the shift toward career education and short-term training mean for institutional costs and funding?
- How do we deliver effective student supports as enrollment moves online?
- As demand shifts away from on-campus learning, do physical campuses need to get smaller?
- Are we seeing a generalizable movement from academic programs to CTE to short-term options? If so, what does that imply for how community colleges are staffed and funded?
- As online learning becomes a larger, permanent share of enrollment, do student services need a true bimodal redesign, built to serve both online and on-campus students effectively? Evidence suggests this urgent question is not being addressed, especially in cash-strapped community colleges.
- As online learning grows, what happens to physical campuses? Improving space utilization likely means downsizing, which carries other implications. Campuses are community anchors, even for online students—so finding the right balance deserves serious debate.
On 10/23/2025,
in business side of he, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, funding / grants, higher education, parents/guardians, student-related, surviving, trends, United States, universities, youth,
by Daniel Christian
New Analysis: Affordability Gaps Remain in Great Lakes States — from ncan.org by Louisa Woodhouse
Key Takeaways
- In every Great Lakes state except Illinois and Minnesota, students face affordability gaps greater than the national average of $1,555.
- Five out of six Great Lakes states have a smaller percentage of affordable public bachelor’s-granting institutions than the national average of 35% of postsecondary institutions.
- In two states (Ohio and Wisconsin), the affordability gap for students at public bachelor’s-granting institutions is more than twice the national average.
- Still, a subset of states have committed to making community college more affordable. In Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan there is no affordability gap, on average, for students to attend community college.
On 09/19/2025,
in adjunct faculty, apprenticeships, business, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, faculty/staff, funding / grants, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, pace of change, parents/guardians, participation, pedagogy, real-world assignments, reinvent, skills, student-related, teaching & learning, traditional / tradition, trends, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, workplace,
by Daniel Christian
Provosts Are a ‘Release Valve’ for Campus Controversy — from insidehighered.com by Emma Whitford
According to former Western Michigan provost Julian Vasquez Heilig, provosts are stuck driving change with few, if any, allies, while simultaneously playing crisis manager for the university.
After two years, he stepped down, and he now serves as a professor of educational leadership, research and technology at Western Michigan. His frustrations with the provost role had less to do with Western Michigan and more to do with how the job is designed, he explained. “Each person sees the provost a little differently. The faculty see the provost as administration, although, honestly, around the table at the cabinet, the provost is probably the only faculty member,” Heilig said. “The trustees—they see the provost as a middle manager below the president, and the president sees [the provost] as a buffer from issues that are arising.”
Inside Higher Ed sat down with Heilig to talk about the provost job and all he’s learned about the role through years of education leadership research, conversations with colleagues and his own experience.
Brandeis University launches a new vision for American higher education, reinventing liberal arts and emphasizing career development — from brandeis.edu
Levine unveiled “The Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts,” a sweeping redesign of academic structures, curricula, degree programs, teaching methods, career education, and student support systems. Developed in close partnership with Brandeis faculty, the plan responds to a rapidly shifting landscape in which the demands on higher education are evolving at unprecedented speed in a global, digital economy.
“We are living through a time of extraordinary change across technology, the economy, and society,” Levine said. “Today’s students need more than knowledge. They need the skills, experiences, and confidence to lead in a world we cannot yet predict. We are advancing a new model. We need reinvention. And that’s exactly what Brandeis is establishing.”
The Brandeis Plan transforms the student experience by integrating career preparation into every stage of a student’s education, requiring internships or apprenticeships, sustaining career counseling, and implementing a core curriculum built around the skills that employers value most. The plan also reimagines teaching. It will be more experiential and practical, and introduce new ways to measure and showcase student learning and growth over time.
Tuition Tracker from the Hechinger Report
On 09/05/2025,
in adjunct faculty, business side of he, career development, change, colleges, community colleges, faculty/staff, funding / grants, higher education, teaching & learning, trends, United States, universities,
by Daniel Christian
Higher ed’s ‘hunker-down mindset’ — from open-campus-dispatch.beehiiv.com by Colleen Murphy
A tight housing market and a fragile job market mean those working in higher ed have fewer options than ever.
Faculty and administrators could be just as constrained by the golden handcuffs of a 2% interest rate as everybody else. That makes them less likely to move for a new job, Kelchen said, especially since they’re unlikely to get the type of salary increase they’d need to offset more pricey mortgage payments. Plus, even finding an affordable house in the first place could be a challenge right now.
All of this contributes to what Kelchen called a “hunker-down mindset” in higher ed.
“Even if the institutions are giving out pay raises, the pay raises aren’t matching housing costs,” Kelchen said. “And then that creates a pressure to stay.”
While that might seem like a “first-world problem,” it also affects college and university staff members, Kelchen told me. Often the only way for staff members to make more money is to move universities — there aren’t the same in-house growth opportunities as there are for faculty. But that’s easier said than done.
On 08/28/2025,
in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business side of he, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, credentialing, culture, digital learning, education technology, face-to-face, faculty/staff, higher education, instructional design, IT in HE, law schools, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, new business models, online learning, online media, online tutoring, organizational change, policy, strategy, student-related, teaching & learning, teaching online, traditional / tradition, trends, United States, universities, vision/possibilities,
by Daniel Christian
The 2025 Changing Landscape of Online Education (CHLOE) 10 Report — from qualitymatters.org; emphasis below from DSC
Notable findings from the 73-page report include:
- Online Interest Surges Across Student Populations: …
- Institutional Preparedness Falters Amid Rising Demand: Despite accelerating demand, institutional readiness has stagnated—or regressed—in key areas. …
- The Online Education Marketplace Is Increasingly Competitive: …
- Alternative Credentials Take Center Stage: …
- AI Integration Lacks Strategic Coordination: …
Just 28% of faculty are considered fully prepared for online course design, and 45% for teaching. Alarmingly, only 28% of institutions report having fully developed academic continuity plans for future emergency pivots to online.
Also relevant, see:
Great Expectations, Fragile Foundations — from onedtech.philhillaa.com by Glenda Morgan
Lessons about growth from the CHLOE & BOnES reports
Cultural resistance remains strong. Many [Chief Online Learning Officers] COLOs say faculty and deans still believe in-person learning is “just better,” creating headwinds even for modest online growth. As one respondent at a four-year institution with a large online presence put it:
Supportive departments [that] see the value in online may have very different levels of responsiveness compared to academic departments [that] are begrudgingly online. There is definitely a growing belief that students “should” be on-ground and are only choosing online because it’s easy/ convenient. Never mind the very real and growing population of nontraditional learners who can only take online classes, and the very real and growing population of traditional-aged learners who prefer online classes; many faculty/deans take a paternalistic, “we know what’s best” approach.
…
Ultimately, what we need is not just more ambition but better ambition. Ambition rooted in a realistic understanding of institutional capacity, a shared strategic vision, investments in policy and infrastructure, and a culture that supports online learning as a core part of the academic mission, not an auxiliary one. It’s time we talked about what it really takes to grow online learning , and where ambition needs to be matched by structure.
From DSC:
Yup. Culture is at the breakfast table again…boy, those strategies taste good.
I’d like to take some of this report — like the graphic below — and share it with former faculty members and members of a couple of my past job families’ leadership. They strongly didn’t agree with us when we tried to advocate for the development of online-based learning/programs at our organizations…but we were right. We were right all along. And we were LEADING all along. No doubt about it — even if the leadership at the time said that we weren’t leading.
The cultures of those organizations hurt us at the time. But our cultivating work eventually led to the development of online programs — unfortunately, after our groups were disbanded, they had to outsource those programs to OPMs.
Arizona State University — with its dramatic growth in online-based enrollments.