Trends in Higher Education

This article from the Brandeis Magazine, Digital Natives, Analog Universities, does an outstanding  job laying out the trends in higher education.  Some key points include:

• The three C’s of liberal arts: creativity, critical thinking and continuous learning
• Increased expectation by students and families for colleges to provide a stepping stone to gaining a good career: career services are taking much more prominent role on campuses and starting to work with students as early as freshman year
• Need for colleges to adapt to the way current students learn: interactive, project and group based learning will become more prevalent
• Regional demographic shifts: oversupply of colleges in Northeast, Midwest and MidAtlantic and undersupply in the West
• Three models of universities: “click,”  (think MOOCs and online courses) “brick-and-click” (think MIT and Carnegie Mellon) or “brick” (think Carelton and Amherst) institutions
• Affordability increasingly important because colleges work on cost plus model of pricing. We will start to see models of learning at two ends of the spectrum: colleges with all the bells and whistles at the high end and students just coming to college to take classes or online degrees on other end.

Click here for the full article