higher education

From DSC:
I’d like to thank Sarah Huibregtse for her post out on LinkedIn where she commented on and referenced the following item from Nicholas Thompson (CEO at The Atlantic):

Also relevant/see:

Also related/see the following item which I thank Sam DeBrule’s Machine Learnings newsletter for:

There’s a certain feeling that happens when a new technology adjusts your thinking about computing. Google did it. Firefox did it. AWS did it. iPhone did it. OpenAI is doing it with ChatGPT.

— Aaron Levie (@levie) December 4, 2022

Also, somewhat related, see the following item that Julie Johnston mentioned out on LinkedIn:

Top 10 conversational AI trends for 2023 — from linkedin.com by Kane Simms and Tim Holve, Tarren Corbett-Drummond, Arte Merritt, and Kevin Fredrick.

Excerpt:

In 2023, businesses will realise that, in order to get out of FAQ Land, they need to synchronise business systems together to deliver personalised transactional experiences for customers.

“We finally have the technologies to do all the things we imagined 10 years ago.”

“As enrollment falls and public skepticism grows, some colleges are cutting their prices” [Marcus] + several other items related to higher-education

On 12/03/2022, in adult learning, business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, experimentation, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, lifelong learning, new business models, skills, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Udacity’s Train-to-Hire Program Now Available in AWS Marketplace — from prnewswire.com by Udacity; with thanks to GSV for this resource

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 29, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Udacity, the digital talent transformation platform, today announced the availability of its Train-to-Hire Program in AWS Marketplace, a digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent software vendors that make it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). With the addition of this program, AWS customers can now address technical talent gaps in their organizations by working with Udacity to create customizable, hands-on learning programs that attract and upskill net-new sources of talent. Through these Train-to-Hire Programs, AWS customers can transform the breadth and depth of their talent pipelines, lowering recruiting costs for in-demand roles and improving the diversity of their workforce by offering new opportunities to candidates from underrepresented communities.

As enrollment falls and public skepticism grows, some colleges are cutting their prices — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
The cost of college has stopped rising faster than inflation for the first time since the 1980s

Excerpt:

Colby-Sawyer College, a nearly 200-year-old institution that inhabits a campus in the heart of this bucolic scene, has announced that it will lower its tuition next year for undergraduates by 62 percent, from $46,364 to $17,500.

The move is among the first of what experts are predicting could be many colleges’ so-called tuition resets. Other schools are adjusting what they charge in different ways.

Fewer than one in five families understand that the “sticker price” colleges put on their websites and in their catalogs is almost certainly more than they will have to pay, and six in 10 say it’s made them walk away without even bothering to apply.

From DSC:
That’s very understandable on that last item/quote.

Next Chapter Matters – Two More Universities Launch Midlife Programs For Every Budget — from forbes.com by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox; with thanks to Ray Schroeder out on LinkedIn for this resource

Excerpt:

Whether you are retiring with millions in the bank or stuck at midlife desperately dreaming of a career pivot, there may soon be a university program for you. The latest offerings coming to the market are a testament to the diversity that is likely to develop as educational institutions start to respond to ageing societies and the future of work.

The idea that you get all the education you need up front in a four-year bundle at 18, should fast fade as careers lengthen towards the six-decade mark and retirement ages drift ever upward. There are now 12 programs on offer, and the two latest launching this year in the US are the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado Denver. (I’ll be looking at programs launching in Europe next).

Report: Progress on College Completion Rates Stalls — from insidehighered.com by Safia Abdulahi; with thanks to GSV for this resource

Excerpt:

A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows that college completion rates have stagnated, with 62.3 percent of students who enrolled in 2016 completing a degree by June 2022—virtually unchanged from last year’s six-year completion rate of 62.2 percent.

Is This the Beginning of the End of the ‘U.S. News’ Rankings’ Dominance? — from chronicle.com by Francie Diep

Excerpt:

If the law deans’ criticism sounds familiar, it’s because it echoes the complaints that have been leveled for decades against an even bigger project: the magazine’s ranking of undergraduate colleges and universities. There, too, critics have said the magazine’s metrics are flawed, opaque, and harm equity efforts.

But seldom have institutions acted on their concerns, as Yale and its peers have recently. And if elite colleges are willing to withdraw their support from one U.S. News ranking in the name of equity, why not another? In other words, is the undergraduate ranking the next venue for this kind of protest?

Not yet.

LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky: Skills, Not Degrees, Matter Most in Hiring — from hbr.org

Summary:

Ryan Roslansky, the CEO of LinkedIn, thinks the site should be a place where its members’ billions of years of collective work experience should be freed to upskill anyone, anywhere, any time. Skills, more than degrees or pedigrees, are the true measure of what makes a great new hire, he argues, especially as the workforce evolves in fast and dramatic ways.

Understanding the Overlap Between UDL and Digital Accessibility — from boia.org

Excerpt:

Implementing UDL with a Focus on Accessibility
UDL is a proven methodology that benefits all students, but when instructors embrace universal design, they need to consider how their decisions will affect students with disabilities.

Some key considerations to keep in mind:

Instructional materials should not require a certain type of sensory perception.
A presentation that includes images should have accurate alternative text (also called alt text) for those images.
Transcripts and captions should be provided for all audio content.
Color alone should not be used to convey information, since some students may not perceive color (or have different cultural understandings of colors).
Student presentations should also follow accessibility guidelines. This increases the student’s workload, but it’s an excellent opportunity to teach the importance of accessibility.

MADE Podcast on Branching Scenarios [Tucker]

On 12/01/2022, in assessment, Canada, colleges, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, education technology, experimentation, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), instructional design, Learning Experience Design, multimedia, podcasting, tools, training / L&D, by Daniel Christian

MADE Podcast on Branching Scenarios — from christytuckerlearning.com by Christy Tucker
My interview for the MADE podcast on branching scenarios: when to use them, challenges, tools, planning, and getting started.

Excerpt:

MADE is the Media and Design in Education team for the University of Toronto. Inga Breede from this educational technology group recently interviewed me for their podcast. We talked about scenario-based learning and specifically about branching scenarios.

What we discussed
We covered several topics in our 20-minute conversation.

When should branching scenarios be used in learning experiences?
What are some of the challenges and limitations that designers typically come across when they’re building a branching scenario?
What are the key components to consider in the planning stage?
What are my favorite tools to use to build branching scenarios?
For learning designers who are interested in scenario building, where can they begin their journey of discovery?

TL;DR: Women prefer text contributions over talk in remote classes — from highereddive.com by Laura Spitalniak (BTW, TL;DR: is short for “too long; didn’t read”)

Dive Brief (emphasis DSC):

Female students show a stronger preference for contributing to remote classes via text chat than their male counterparts, according to peer-reviewed research published in PLOS One, an open-access journal.
Researchers also found all students were more likely to use the chat function to support or amplify their peers’ comments than to diminish them.
Given these findings, the researchers suggested incorporating text chats into class discussions could boost female participation in large introductory science classrooms, where women are less likely to participate than men.

“10 Must Read Books for Learning Designers” [Garg] + “10 must-read tech books for 2023” [Sanders]

On 11/29/2022, in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, computer science, corporate universities / corporate training, data related items, education, emerging technologies, ethics, faculty/staff, future, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), instructional design, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning theories, memory, Microsoft, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, productivity / tips and tricks, research, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technology (general), training / L&D, universities, by Daniel Christian

10 Must Read Books for Learning Designers — from linkedin.com by Amit Garg

Excerpt:

From the 45+ #books that I’ve read in last 2 years here are my top 10 recommendations for #learningdesigners or anyone in #learninganddevelopment

Speaking of recommended books (but from a more technical perspective this time), also see:

10 must-read tech books for 2023 — from enterprisersproject.com by Katie Sanders (Editorial Team)
Get new thinking on the technologies of tomorrow – from AI to cloud and edge – and the related challenges for leaders

How the University of California Strike Could Reshape Higher Education [Reilly]

On 11/29/2022, in adjunct faculty, career development, change, changing business models, culture, dangers of the status quo, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

How the University of California Strike Could Reshape Higher Education — from news.yahoo.com by Katie Reilly

Excerpts:

“To have this many workers on strike is really something new in higher education,” says Rebecca Givan, an associate professor of labor studies at Rutgers, who is also president of the union for graduate workers and faculty at her university. “The willingness of these workers to bring their campuses to a standstill is demonstrating that the current model of higher education can’t continue, and that the current system really rests on extremely underpaid labor.”
…
The striking workers argue that their current pay makes it challenging to afford housing near their universities, in a state with one of the highest costs of living in the country. Jaime, the Ph.D. candidate, says he makes $27,000 per year as a teaching fellow and pays $1,200 in monthly rent for an apartment he shares with two roommates. (Median rent in the Los Angeles metropolitan area is about $3,000, according to Realtor.com.) “We are the ones who do the majority of teaching and research,” he says. “But nevertheless, the university doesn’t pay us enough to live where we work.”

Also relevant/see:

Hundreds of UC Faculty Members Stop Teaching as Strike Continues — from chronicle.com by Grace Mayer

Excerpt:

The strike is shining a spotlight on a longstanding problem within higher education: Today, tenured, full-time faculty members make up a smaller percentage of university employees than they did 50 years ago, in part due to the financial pressures facing universities amid funding cuts. The proportion of other university employees, who receive less job security and lower pay, “has grown tremendously,” says Tim Cain, an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s Institute of Higher Education, who studies campus activism and unionization.

“There’s such stratification between the tenured full professor and a graduate student employee or a postdoc or a tutor,” says Cain. “They’re doing a great deal of the work, and the work that they’re doing in the classroom is often very similar to the work of others who are getting paid substantially more.”

Speaking of schools in California, also see:

UC Berkeley agrees to make online content accessible to settle Justice Department lawsuit — from highereddive.com by Natalie Schwartz

Table of Experts: Trends in Higher Education — from bizjournals.com by Holly Dolezalek. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal held a panel discussion recently about trends in higher education.

Excerpts (which focus on law schools/the legal profession):

Anthony Niedwiecki: The legal profession and legal education are very conservative. Covid showed they can, and we as institutions can, change. At Mitchell Hamline, we were the first law school in the country to offer a partially online JD degree. We’ve had that experience since 2015, which has really helped us through Covid. But I think the biggest thing I’ve learned from our students through this process is the need for flexibility. We thought students would want to go back into the classroom at some point and be around people. No! They voted by the classes they signed up for: They signed up for the classes that were online. Some students want to be on campus, some online. So we’ve had to develop our program around different types of modalities we may not have given any thought to before. The students in the online program range in age all the way up to 73 years old. They’ve been in careers, they’re accountants, they’re doctors, they’re health care professionals, elected officials. The other thing is office hours — students like online office hours because it’s convenient, and they can be in an office where other people are talking and learn from it.

The lesson I take from that, in some ways, even applying it to the law school, is having that partnership with people who want to hire students to make sure that they’re actually involved with the students. We’re finding they help mentor those students, help us make sure we have the right courses in place, and give them opportunities to do internships and externships. So we’ve been starting to partner with some national professional organizations that are attached to the law.

Buyer Beware: First-Year Earnings and Debt for 37,000 College Majors at 4,400 Institutions — from cew.georgetown.edu

Summary:

Did you know that in the first year after graduation you can make more money with an associate’s degree in nursing from Santa Rosa Junior College in California than with a graduate degree from some programs at Harvard University? Data from the College Scorecard reveal many more surprising details of post-college outcomes for students and families about that all-important first year after graduation. Buyer Beware: First-Year Earnings and Debt for 37,000 College Majors at 4,400 Institutions finds that first-year earnings for the same degree in the same major can vary by $80,000 at different colleges and universities. It also reveals that workers with less education can often make more than workers with more education, and that higher levels of education do not always result in higher student loan payments.

Speaking of Georgetown, also see:

Georgetown University partners with Coursera to launch an online bachelor’s completion program for adult learners — from blog.coursera.org

In the U.S. alone, more than 39 million students leave college without a degree. Black, Latino, and Native American students are overrepresented in this population.

SCS’s program is designed to help students of all backgrounds complete their degrees and unlock their earning potential. The degree’s most recent on-campus cohort is composed of 62% students of color and 40% military-connected learners. SCS is introducing this fully online degree to scale this program to learners worldwide.

edX Announces 2022 edX Prize Finalists for Innovation in Online Teaching — from prnewswire.com by 2U, Inc.

Excerpt:

The 2022 finalists include (sorted alphabetically by institution):

Professor Dr. Thomas Scheibel, Biomaterials and Biofabrication: Design, Engineering and Innovation, University of Bayreuth
Professor Dirk van Gameren, Global Housing Design, Delft University of Technology
Professor William Jack, Impact Evaluation Methods with Applications in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, Georgetown University
Associate Professor Constantinos Coursaris, Associate Professor Camille Grange, Pierre-Majorique Léger, Dr. Annemarie Lesage, and Professor Sylvain Sénécal, UX Design and Evaluation, HEC Montréal
Professor Aren M. Maeir, Biblical Archaeology: The Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Judah, IsraelX – Bar-llan University
Dr. Reiner Hutwelker, Professor Dr. Holly Ott, and Professor Dr. Martin Grunow, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certification, Technical University of Munich
Associate Professor Dr. Peter Westley, Salmon, People, and Place, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Dr. Darren Gravley, Dr. Sam Hampton, and Dr. Kate Pedley, Foundational Field Skills for Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Canterbury
Dr. Ian Yu-Hong Wong, Professor Stephen Wing-Keung Cheng, and Professor Kent-Man Chu, So You Want To Be A Surgeon?, University of Hong Kong
Dr. Peter Crosthwaite, Academic English, The University of Queensland

Other recent items from GSV:

Black Families Look to Continue Pod Schooling Movement Beyond Pandemic — from the74million.org by Linda Jacobson
But rather than go private, some pod leaders say they will stay connected to traditional schools — ‘for better or for worse’
Strada announces $4 million commitment for 11 community college and employer partnerships working to connect learners with opportunity — from prnewswire.com by Strada Education Network
Is GoodCourse the future of corporate learning? — from businesscloud.co.uk by Jonathan Symcox
Micro-learning platform’s short-form content and TikTok-style explainer videos have the potential to transform development in the workplace

“The reason TikTok is so popular is because it’s short-form and engaging; the opposite to the usual two-hour training course.

“Spacing out micro-learning chunks across the course of a year gives you a much better chance of retaining it and actually acting on it. That’s why GoodCourse is built to engage a Gen Z workforce.”

Can a Group of MIT Professors Turn a White Paper Into a New Kind of College? — from edsurge.com by Jeffrey R. Young

Excerpt:

A group of professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology dropped a provocative white paper in September that proposed a new kind of college that would address some of the growing public skepticism of higher education. This week, they took the next step toward bringing their vision from idea to reality.

That next step was holding a virtual forum that brought together a who’s who of college innovation leaders, including presidents of experimental colleges, professors known for novel teaching practices and critical observers of the higher education space.

The MIT professors who authored the white paper tried to make clear that even though they’re from an elite university, they do not have all the answers. Their white paper takes pains to describe itself as a draft framework and to invite input from players across the education ecosystem so they can revise and improve the plan.

IDEAS FOR DESIGNING An Affordable New Educational Institution

The goal of this document is simply to propose some principles and ideas that we hope will lay the groundwork for the future, for an education that will be both more affordable and more effective.
…
Promotions and titles will be much more closely tied to educational performance—quality, commitment, outcomes, and innovation—than to research outcomes.

Best webcams as well as wireless keyboards/mice for teachers and students [Edwards

On 11/17/2022, in A/V -- audio/visual, adjunct faculty, Apple, colleges, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, distance education, education, education technology, faculty/staff, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), Hyflex learning, instructional design, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, liberal arts, Microsoft, multimedia, new media literacies, online learning, parents/guardians, platforms, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, remote teaching and learning, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, United States, universities, usability, vendors, videoconferencing, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Best Webcams for Teachers and Students — from techlearning.com by Luke Edwards
Get the best webcams for teachers and students to help with hybrid learning and more

The Logitech C922 Pro Stream was selected as the best overall webcam for educators by techlearning dot com

Best Wireless Keyboard and Mouse for Teachers 2022 — from techlearning.com by Luke Edwards
The best wireless keyboard and mouse for teachers keep you connected to devices while staying mobile

5 items re: higher education

On 11/15/2022, in business side of he, change, colleges, community colleges, higher education, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, student-related, surviving, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

When Colleges Close, Students Aren’t Likely to Re-Enroll — from insidehighered.com by Johanna Alonso
Data from the National Student Clearinghouse show that fewer than half of students attending an institution that closes transfer to another institution.

Excerpt:

The study, produced by the National Student Clearinghouse and the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, followed 143,215 students who were enrolled in 467 institutions that closed between July 1, 2004, and June 30, 2020. Those that closed generally enrolled larger populations of students of color than institutions that remained open—55 percent versus 46.4 percent—and more Pell Grant recipients as well.

Just under half the students whose institutions closed—47.1 percent—re-enrolled at another college or university. Of those who re-enrolled, only 36.8 percent went on to earn a credential; 52.9 percent dropped out, and 10.4 percent were still enrolled as of February 2022. Students of color, male students and non-traditional-aged students were the least likely to re-enroll and complete a credential.

“Once it becomes likely an institution will close, states need to ensure teach-out agreements are in place to provide all students with a pathway for completing their credentials,” the study reads. “Additionally, states need to thoroughly vet the teach-out institutions to ensure they are capable of completing the terms of the teach-out agreement and are financially viable.”

When Campuses Close, Most of Their Students Are Stuck Without the Credentials They Wanted — from chronicle.com by Katherine Mangan

Excerpt:

Nearly three-quarters of the students whose colleges closed between 2004 and 2020 were stranded without adequate warning or plans to help them finish their degrees, and fewer than half of those students ended up re-enrolling in any postsecondary programs, according to a report released Tuesday.

Hardest hit were Black and Hispanic students enrolled in for-profit institutions. “Their schools’ closing effectively closed the doors on the students’ educational dreams,” Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, said in a briefing with reporters.

The research center worked with the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, also known as SHEEO, on a series of three reports that will examine the impact of college closures on students and how states can better protect those whose education plans are disrupted.

‘Universities must engage in lifelong learning’ – UNESCO — from thepienews.com by Helen Packer
The future of universities depends on their ability to provide ‘lifelong learning’ that equips non-traditional students with in-demand skills, UNESCO warned last week.

Excerpt:

David Atchoarena, director of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, called on universities to engage with continuing and adult education at the first Global Lifelong Learning Summit held in Singapore in November.

“As we face salient changes in citizenship, climate change, health and wellbeing, among others, more countries are seeing the increasing importance of lifelong learning and are putting measures and strategies to make it a reality,” said Atchoarena, later adding that universities should “really define their mission so that they play their role”.

New Study Details Challenges Facing Native Students, and How to Address Them — from the74million.org by Angelique Albert
Albert: From funding for tuition to housing, food aid and financial literacy training, what schools can do to make education truly affordable

Excerpt:

A newly released National Study on College Affordability for Indigenous Students brings much-needed visibility to this disparity, which has long been ignored in the public dialogue about educational access. The report provides comprehensive data and a fresh set of powerful personal testimonies that illuminate how Native students experience the many facets of funding their college education. It offers recommendations for making higher education more financially accessible to Native students, such as providing aid for non-tuition expenses.

New Report on Re-Enrolling Adult Learners — from insidehighered.com by Sara Weissman

Excerpt:

A new report offers guidance to community college leaders seeking to re-enroll adult learners who earned academic credits but left college without a degree or credential.

The report, released today, was produced by InsideTrack, a nonprofit organization that helps institutions enroll students and improve academic outcomes through coaching. The report notes that community colleges lost almost 830,000 students nationally since spring 2020, according to National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data. Meanwhile, there are currently 39 million Americans who attended some college but never graduated.

Teaching: Flipping a Class Helps — but Not for the Reason You’d Think — from the Teaching newsletter out at The Chronicle of Higher Education by Beckie Supiano

Excerpt:

The authors propose a different model of flipping that gives their paper its title, “Fail, Flip, Fix, and Feed — Rethinking Flipped Learning: A Review of Meta-Analyses and a Subsequent Meta-Analysis.”

Their model:

Fail: Give students a chance to try solving problems. They won’t have all the information needed to arrive at the solution, but the attempt activates their prior learning and primes them for the coming content.
Flip: Deliver the content ahead of class, perhaps in a video lecture.
Fix: During class time, a traditional lecture can deepen understanding and correct misperceptions.
Feed: Formative assessment lets students check their level of understanding.

I find this paper interesting for a number of reasons. It ties into a challenge I’d like to dig into in the future: the gap that can exist between a teaching approach as described in research literature and as applied in the classroom.

From DSC:
Though I haven’t read this analysis (please accept my apology here), I would hope that it would also mention one of the key benefits of the flipped classroom approach — giving students more control over the pacing of the content. Students can stop, fast-forward, rewind, and pause the content as necessary. This is very helpful for all students, but especially for students who don’t have English as their primary language.

I like this approach because if students fail to solve the problem at first, they will likely be listening more/very carefully as to how to solve it:

Drawing on related research, we proposed a more specific model for flipping, “Fail, Flip, Fix, and Feed” whereby students are asked to first engage in generating solutions to novel problems even if they fail to generate the correct solutions, before receiving instructions.

Plus, students will begin to recall/activate their prior knowledge on a subject in order to try to solve the problem. That retrieval practice in and of itself can be helpful.

The Shrinking of Higher Ed — A Special Report from The Chronicle of Higher Education
A special report on the implications of the enrollment contraction.

Excerpt:

Nearly 1.3 million students have disappeared from American colleges since the Covid-19 pandemic began. That enrollment contraction comes at a precarious moment for the sector. Inflation is driving up costs and straining budgets, stock-market volatility is putting downward pressure on endowment returns, and federal stimulus funds are running out. Why is the enrollment crunch happening now? How are colleges responding? What might turn things around? Those are the questions fueling this special report.

A Public Regional on the Edge — from chronicle.com by Eric Kelderman
New Jersey City University’s plan to grow its way out of financial trouble backfired. What went wrong?

Excerpts:

NJCU’s story is a cautionary tale for similar institutions — small public regional colleges with ambitions to expand in a crowded higher-education market. While its real-estate dealings have drawn unfavorable scrutiny, the university was responding to challenges that face its peers, in northern New Jersey and around the country: increased competition for a declining number of high-school graduates.
…
Public regional universities, like NJCU, enroll about 40 percent of all college students nationally, and a far larger percentage of minority, low-income, and first-generation students than better-known flagships and top research universities do.
…
But a lack of state support, limited ability to attract students from outside the region, and sparse fund raising have made the university vulnerable to economic downturns and demographic shifts that have led to fewer high-school graduates, especially in the Northeast and upper Midwest.

Linked to in the above article was this article:

Declining enrollment has Western Michigan University on budgetary tightrope — from mlive.com by Julie Mack

Excerpts:

KALAMAZOO, MI — Western Michigan University has 17,835 students this fall, its lowest enrollment since the 1960s.

The number is down 6% from last fall. Down 27% from a decade ago, when the fall headcount was 24,598. Down 41% from 20 years ago, when WMU’s fall count peaked at 29,732.

And thanks to a declining birthrate and a shrinking percentage of new high school graduates enrolling in college, that downward enrollment trend is likely to continue indefinitely.

Rather, “what COVID did was force our hand after years of pressure created by declining enrollment and demographic trends that suggest declines will continue for the next decade,” she said. “So while COVID brought our financial situation into sharp relief, the budget cut was a measure taken to relieve pressure created over many, many years.”

A relevant addendum here:

Avoiding the Trap of Too Little Too Late — from tytonpartners.com by Trace Urdan; with thanks to Ryan Craig for this resource

Excerpt:

The challenges facing higher education are well understood: a demographic cliff of traditional-aged applicants, a declining proportion of full-pay families, and a growing skepticism of the value of (ever-more) expensive post-secondary degrees with resulting student consumerism. Add to this rapidly rising technological complexity, deferred maintenance on deteriorating physical assets, escalating administrative costs associated with student services and supports, and a burgeoning array of college substitutes, and the challenges are clear. The combination of lower tuition revenue and higher costs points toward an inevitable sector consolidation. And while many college administrators will readily acknowledge this point in the abstract, few will consider that it might apply to them.

Learning Ecosystems

“As enrollment falls and public skepticism grows, some colleges are cutting their prices” [Marcus] + several other items related to higher-education

MADE Podcast on Branching Scenarios [Tucker]

How the University of California Strike Could Reshape Higher Education [Reilly]

Table of Experts: Trends in Higher Education [Dolezalek]

edX Announces 2022 edX Prize Finalists for Innovation in Online Teaching + other recent postings from GSV

Can a Group of MIT Professors Turn a White Paper Into a New Kind of College? [Young]

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