Interesting Analysis of Future Higher Education

Professional Scott Galloway at New York University predicts that some universities and colleges will not survive in the future. The top colleges and community colleges will have good survival. I have seen top universities and collages start to offer online degrees, maybe this is the path to survive. What do you think?

 

Surprises me these two are heading to that way: Urbana University and Robert Morris University
URL: https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-many-colleges-and-universities-have-closed-since-2016/539379/

I am wondering if "FOR-PROFIT" colleges are going to head the same way.

 

Look at all those which have been closed already - for self-inflicted reasons- like Corinthian, ITT an' them.
Sometimes that means closing dozens of campuses. The closing is easy. The hard part is picking up the pieces - resettling the displaced students.

Yes - it will certainly happen again -- and again.

 

I think private colleges have some chance to survive as long as their admissions are not competitive. Meaning they can accept students who are rejected for admissions by other universities or students who don't want to compete, want easy entry requirements.
This may have an effect on graduate success % as long as the quality is not compromised.
Second, colleges need a cost adjustment, flexibility with suppressor customer/student services.
For the for-profits if they want to compete with colleges especially community colleges that increased online classes offerings for very low tuition they have to partner or restructure.
Degrees 100% online from fine universities via Edx, Coursera for example are hard to compete against.

 

Many private schools admit students who they know just don't have what it takes to succeed there and should not be enrolled. I'm sure a lot of us have read/heard the horror stories from teachers in some of these colleges, saddled with students hopelessly unprepared for any academic undertaking - and now awash in student debt. There are schools which knowingly enrol unsuited students out of greed, with predictable results - low graduation percentages, poor employment prospects and high student loan default.

Making this worse won't make things better.

 

"Many private schools" (above) refers (mostly) to private, degree-granting largely Vo -Tech and Business schools. For universities and RA colleges - I think there are standards that are mandated to be preserved, as far as admissions go. I don't believe such a school can just relax its standards to admit whatever number it finds convenient.

Squabbling over other schools' rejects? A race to the bottom.

 

I think we need a national human resource development strategy and to use our tertiary institutions in a national qualifications framework so we can do a better job matching students to in-demand career paths and to ensure employers get a steady supply of qualified candidates.

But it's not like I think about this a lot or anything.

 

Maybe if some applicants can't make it into one course, they could be offered another. E.G. people who didn't make the cut for Med. school could train as electricians and plumbers They'd have worthwhile jobs and - these days - probably no loss of income. In fact, with a few less years of sacrificed income to finish school - and smaller student loan totals - they might even come out financially ahead...

 

When Singapore became independent from the UK, they realized they risked being dominated by Malaysia, even to the point of possibly losing their new independence. They made a conscious decision to transform the economy from an agrarian one to one based on high tech.

One of the things they did was establish a "strong" (that's a particular type) national qualifications framework to channel qualified people into those fields. Second, they made those decisions while the students were in secondary school. Depending on the students' potential and performance, they were channeled into university or into trades. This sorting was done in high school and done by officials, not individual students or while already at university (changing majors every semester. You know....)

It worked.

 

Did it ever!

Years ago (when I was there) the sorting was done in UK at around age 11. Results on the "Eleven Plus" exams would dictate what type of high school you'd go to (strongly academic or more vo-tech). The type of school would dictate whether you could go to university or not.

Can't really say how successful it was/ wasn't. UK is not the same place I left nearly 70 years ago. Lot more universities and grads thereof, for one thing.

 

And you can get bananas any day you want. No rationing any more! I think meat rationing finally went out in 1953 - the year after I left. And there's central heating these days, I hear. I always thought that had left with the Romans, around 400 AD. And no more putting a shilling in the meter for a warm bath! And Brits drive millions of those little cars - mostly foreign these days... My class had 52 kids - only two sets of parents had cars IIRC. Back then, Maybe 10% of parents had phones... Refrigerators - you kiddin'? I never saw one in a house before I came to Canada. Only in (a very few) show windows and American movies.

My, how things have changed. Something must have worked. Not sure what. Maybe the massive proliferation of consumer credit...

 

And - I hope - freezing outside loo's have been banished. At least in homes in the city of London, where I lived.

 

The framework of qualification will not work because the United States is diverse; which might lead to discrimination issues in terms of social-economic problems in America. The bottom two groups are African-American and Hispanic might become a disadvantage in competing for qualification. Today we already social-economic problems like income-earning and education access. Singapore might work well for them because most of the Singaporeans are Chinese, and it was much easier for them to implement the qualification framework.

 

Yeah, it really exploded when they created all the new universities in the early 1990s.

At Leceister, you could not have as your advisor (or external examiner) someone with a doctorate from--or working at--a post-1992 uni. The older universities are STILL mad about awarding degree-granting authority to all those former polytechnics (like De Montfort down the block from UofL).

 

That is such a broad statement that it is worth acknowledging, like this. But it is not worth arguing, because it is based on a hugely faulty assumption.

 

The US left WWII relatively unscathed militarily, economically, and in terms of infrastructure. By 1944 it had already largely returned to a peacetime economy. The UK, on the other hand, took a huge beating and didn't have the built-in resources to recover like we did. Add those factors to the huge move to dissolve the empire through independence of former colonies--who were are huge part of the UK's economy--and you can see why it took so long for them to recover. (Some might even argue the UK never did.)

 

All true. Whether it made a complete recovery - yes that's subject to discussion. But Brits live under far less backward conditions now. Central heating, no more freezing outdoor toilets, even in large cities. That was awful. They had them in schools too. And no place to wash your hands. Food is plentiful and better - it could hardly have been worse or more scarce. Everybody has cars - and phones and Internet of course. It all costs the earth, compared to here. And nobody earns that much, it seems. I don't know how they do it. And the kids go to College and/or Uni. But - why the hell did it have to take 70 years to get this far . . .

 

Yes - named after Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester. Real evil guy. Banished all Jews from Leicester under pain of death - and cancelled all debts owed to them. And they named a SCHOOL after him? Wow! I wouldn't want to go there. What a bigot! See the part about expulsion of Jews here... Just because he's been DEAD for 760 years doesn't mean I'm going to forgive him. Not a chance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_de_Montfort,_6th_Earl_of_Leicester

 

Could've been worse. They could have named a deli after him. That would be disrespectful.