Monday, January 08, 2018

Ten Reasons Why Higher Education as we used to know it will Be GONE in 15 Years

1.  Higher Education at traditional institutions is no longer affordable.  Those saving for their children's education are running a losing battle.  The big schools will become bastions of foreign and the wealthy student.  This single factor where education costs are outrunning inflation by 25% per year. In 1980 a person could attend the average college for $2320 per year.  In 2016 it was $9140.  This cannot continue long and leads to the second looming tipping point.

2.  College Debt.  During the Obama administration essentially took over all education lending.  Private lenders were left out.  This also meant that there was no limit to the amount colleges could charge.  This became a vicious cycle.  More money freely given ended up impoverishing many students many of whom left college before finishing because of debt.  Student Debt has slowed Household formation, Children and caused people to not build for the future.  This single thing is causing many to look to alternatives to the education system.  This drive will not cease.

3.  Many colleges are biased toward out of state students who pay higher tuition and towards foreign students.  Admissions have been again and again caught not admitting in state tuition payers in favor of more money.  Education is no longer about the learner but the institution.

4.  College Sports (Football and Basketball) have become essentially pro sports and lavish amounts of money spent on these ventures have sucked the life out of academic pursuits.  Worse it the promise of an education without delivering on the promise.  This has become a drug that is slowly killing the promise of what used to be higher education.

5.  Public College President's salaries have gone thru the roof.  The average college President in America at public institutions now equals $428,000.   This means that to keep the money machine rolling, college Presidents focus on fundraising rather than the product, Academics.  It wasn't always so.

6.  A single textbook at the college level now costs average of $82.  In the day of PDF textbooks should be free or of little cost.  This racket means many professors make their students buy their poorly executed text when better exist. In the future technology will replace the bookstore.  The University of Maryland has already eliminated paper textbooks.

7.  The capacity to do mass online courses with accountability has made professors less useful.  In Paris France 42 is already conducting classes without instructors.  And when instruction is needed, that is accomplished from media.  Already media is used to indoctrinate students thru TV, Movies and the internet, it is natural progression to move to this media driven instruction.  Master Classes are now being conducted by media by experts in industry.  If you want to learn how to write books, James Patterson charges $90 and you can attend his class remotely.

8. Education's trend is away from the high priced public institutions and toward the FREE EDUCATION model.  Bernie Sanders hit a nerve, the economics of it all are flawed, but public free college with technology may be the future.  This cannot continue on it's present course.  Many employers now pay for student workers to go to college.  Starbucks, McDonalds among them.  You can't go to Yale or Harvard, but you can get an education.  That is driving the cost reductions to free.  In Tennessee High School Graduates are able to attend community college for free.  Saving for a college education may have already had it's day.

9.  The future will be life long learning,  intermediate education to prepare for the next job.  It might look like Education, Job, Education, Job, Sabbatical, Job, Job, Education, Job  and maybe TEACHING a masterclass.

10.  Education may become free, but housing and food never will be.  That too must change.  Dorms are now like cruise ships.  They are over the top in many institutions.  Not the dorm of 50 years ago.  A return to normalcy will mean that education will become more affordable but won't look a thing like the education of today.

Higher education has reached a tipping point.  It cannot go on.  College Presidents and institutional participants at high salaries will try hard to maintain the status quo.  The odds are very much against them.  Will there be higher education in the future, but it won't look much like the mess we have today.  Learning must return to education. It can, but it means that the old must die and the new emerge.  What that will look like is certainly going to be very different from anything we imagine to think it is today.

Public education must die in favor of education for the masses in a life long pursuit. 







1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This sounds just like Australia, here foreign students make up the majority of the Student Body, paying upfront fees when our Australian Students mostly rely on Scholarship or bank loans.
Aussies are too poor to survive in the modern system whereas before,during a labor administration in the seventies, in a brief window of sanity, all education in the public sector was free.

Our current liberal government is gradually degrading both Health and Education for the poor in favour of the upper middle income people and the super rich.