What’s next for higher education?
“Higher education will play an unprecedented role in driving economic growth” in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak, said Michael O’Connor, vice president of sales at Liaison International, in a recent article. “College is not going away. All-consuming traumatic episodes do not necessarily move society backward. They force adaptation and innovation. Just as the 9/11 attacks revolutionized airport security, coronavirus will transform higher education.” But what shape will it take? According to O’Connor, “Three (or even two) decades ago, admissions professionals lived in a world ruled by pencil and paper. Today, cloud-based solutions routinely alleviate the steep cost and burden of manual application processing. The surge in remote work will only amplify the appeal and necessity of taking admissions operations fully paperless. As coronavirus compels a number of changes in higher education that should have been implemented long ago, I can proudly say of my colleagues: We were born for this. Thanks to coronavirus, college as we know it is dead. At the same time, long live college.”
Source: University Business
Global business school leaders remain optimistic
The Association of MBAs and the Business Graduates Association recently surveyed “350 decision-makers in graduate business education and found widespread satisfaction with how well the sector is doing on a number of fronts.” Most (77%) said their institution “communicates its selling points well to student,” and 67% said they’re doing a good job of helping students and graduates find the jobs they want. Sixty percent said the quality of applicants to their programs has improved during the past five years. Nearly all respondents (94%) remain optimistic about the future of business schools in their own country, compared with just 4% who are “not very optimistic.” A large majority (84%) also said they are confident that business schools are “well-positioned to grow capacity in the next three years.”
Source: Poets & Quants
Fall enrollment could decline by as much as 20%
“Four-year colleges may face a loss of up to 20 percent in fall enrollment,” according to researchers who analyzed several surveys of high school seniors and college students that were conducted in March and April. One possible explanation is that students “do not like the online education they have been receiving” and may not want to return for another semester of remote learning. Minority students, in general, have a more uncertain outlook than others, with 41% of minority high school seniors saying, “it’s likely they won’t go to college at all in the fall or ‘it’s too soon to say.’” Twenty-four percent of white high school seniors said they feel the same way. Among college students, 32% of minorities expressed that view, as did 22% of white students.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Colleges are offering incentives to lure enrollees
More colleges desperate to “enroll students at any cost” are now offering non-traditional incentives for students to matriculate, including free parking, coveted residential living assignments, tuition freezes and free tickets to sporting events. “All of this is driven, of course, by the existential danger that too few students will sign on for college this fall because of the pandemic, which is wrecking family finances and raising fears that campuses will not reopen anyway, forcing a continuation of online teaching.” The trend has likely been exacerbated by the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s recent decision to allow institutions to adopt more aggressive recruiting strategies. “Because colleges are no longer banned from pursuing students who commit to other schools by May 1, the traditional deadline day (moved by some colleges this year to June 1), the changes also guarantee that the already-stressful admissions period will stretch well into the summer, with recruiters trying to steal students from one another.”
Source: Washington Post