Community-centric universities
On baby busts, the sheepskin effect, and why a former US Senator is on the right track about changes needed in higher education
One of the highly consequential trends of the day is the demographic cliff coming to bear on colleges and universities. Because of a contraction in births tied to the financial panic of the 2008-2009 era, there’s a real shortfall in 18-year-olds available to enter higher education. It’s not just a one-year blip, either; the population pyramid is worth a close look for what’s to come.
■ Speculation runs rampant that this will be the trigger to put many marginally sustainable colleges and universities out of business. Another trend, though, might offer a map to one possible way out.
■ As Ben Sasse remarked in his insightful interview with “60 Minutes”, lifelong learning hasn’t been the model for higher education, but it’s exactly the model the American public needs. Not exclusively for career purposes, but not exclusive of those purposes, either.
■ Lots of things -- perhaps too many -- are being converted from goods that are purchased once and used indefinitely into services that come with a recurring subscription model. But higher education should be able to serve two concurrent purposes: The signaling effect of a diploma remains as valuable as ever and it isn’t going away, but the future may well belong to those institutions that can offer a sort of perpetual renewal plan -- like a lifetime warranty on the actual learning content.
■ We have community colleges already, often very prudently focused on accessible delivery of highly practical learning. We need more community-centric universities, where a social compact can be fulfilled between scholars and the public. Students can and should graduate, of course, but it should become normalized for them to return after graduation to round out their learning, brush up on forgotten skills, and get brought up to speed on the state of the art. The community of learners needs to move beyond the student body as a bunch of four-year vagrants and evolve into a persistent, life-long relationship.
■ The community should see the necessity of its role in financially sustaining the community-centric university as one half of the social compact, while the scholars need to see their mirroring obligation to look after the intellectual well-being of the community by keeping the people well-informed. What precise form that should take is up for reasonable debate, if only because it really hasn’t been tried before. But if the problems are as significant as they appear to be, we need to find the energy to start experimenting with solutions -- and without delay.