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WHAT IN THE 🌎MIGHT HAPPEN TO U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION?MITCHELL STEVENS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY30 NOVEMBER 2016
Why North Dakota?Why beautiful?Why “sticker price” vs. ”net price”?Why football and lacrosse and field hockey…Why residential?Why tax-exempt?
THIS MORNING
• A schematic picture of epochal change in US higher education between 1945 – present (per Stevens & Gebre-Medhin 2016)
• An overview of findings from a just-completed field study of postsecondary educational provision in a single region (Kirst & Scott forthcoming)
• Thought experiment: what would you do if you were a legacy brand?
20TH CENTURY HIGHER EDUCATION
• Product of the Cold War:• Massive investment in science/technology through universities• College attendance as reward of military service & quasi-right of citizenship• Part of a general effort to aggrandize US democratic capitalism worldwide
• Higher education was substantially a project of government• Opportunity cost of college = lost wages• Minimal regulatory oversight of productivity especially on instructional side• College happened in particular times and places• Schools were sovereign over operations; faculty were sovereign over ”their”
classrooms
sov∙er∙eign∙ty (n):the authority of an entity to govern itself
Schools were sovereign over operations; faculty were sovereign over ”their” classrooms
21ST CENTURY US HIGHER EDUCATION
• Capitalism globally accomplished; US in ambiguous ideological relation to the world • Non-growth of public investment in higher education + ever-increasing enrollments• Steadily rising cost of college in excess of inflation; underwritten by government
loans• Opportunity costs of college now routinely include debt
• Instructional provision is not bound by time and place• Measurement revolution has come to higher education• Uncertainty about state and federal-government regulation and funding of higher
education
Studying a regional postsecondary ecosystem (Kirst & Scott forthcoming)
Never forget: Most workers are spatially sticky
TECH CONTINUOUSLY REQUIRES NEW SKILLS/WORKERS
Note: used with permission from Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation Project (2015)
Postsecondary enrollment has not grown substantially since 1980
1970 1980 1990 2000 20100
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
300,000
4-year Public
4-year Nonprofit
4-year For-profit
2-Year Public
2-year Nonprofit
2-year For-profit
Year
Enrollment
Source: Kirst, Scott, and Biag (2016) calculations using IPEDS data.
EVEN THOUGH THE ACADEMICALLY ELIGIBLE SHARE OF HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES IS GROWING
Note: Used with permission from the Public Policy Institute of California; Jackson, Bohn and Johnson (2016) Sources: University of California, California State University, California Department of Education
Few traditional colleges operate in the region’s exurbs
Source: Original data gathered for Kirst, Scott, & Colleagues (forthcoming)
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT:WHAT SHOULD THE LEGACY
SOVEREIGNS DO?
Stanford Instructional Television Network 1969 -1996
OPEN QUESTIONS
• Will the legacy brands be asked to demonstrate value, performance, responsibility?
• Will new postsecondary providers be expected to measure/perform at certain levels stay in business and/or receive government subsidy?
• Will the legacy brands be able to extend their sovereignty to the new versions of themselves that they already are creating (e.g. Coursera certs, MIT micros)?
• Will there by any pressure to reform or replace accreditation with another governance apparatus?
• Remember: HEA will eventually need to be reauthorized; FERPA..ED…FTC?