Most experts predict we will not have a vaccine for COVID until mid, more than a year from now. In the meantime, the American higher education community is going to be turned upside down, and the educational effects will last long after the virus has been brought under control.
What will the impact be? Here are 10 predictions. Summary: disruption will finally arrive. Most private colleges and universities, and a large number of public ones, will welcome students on campus this fall, because they face a total financial disaster if they do not. The semester will, however, in no way resemble what we knew before the crisis. Many large lecture classes will meet online, all dorm rooms will be singles, dining halls will operate at reduced capacity with long lines and most traditional campus activities will be curtailed.
As the weather gets colder, universities will experience COVID outbreaks, and many students will head home again. Some parents will sue when their children get sick or die; other will demand refunds or sue because the interrupted education does not meet their expectations. Every withdrawal will be accompanied with a percent refund request. Universities will struggle to deal with all this, particularly because they will have laid off many of the student affairs and financial aid staff members on whom they would ordinarily rely to cope.
Even if they open, universities will be hammered financially. Enrollment, and thus tuition revenue, will drop substantially, probably by as much as 30 percent. Meanwhile, operations costs will skyrocket, given decreased dorm and dining hall density and higher cleaning costs, IT and health services demands, and loss of offsetting ancillary income.
State schools will see a major drop in state funding. Massive layoffs, salary cuts and program terminations, already underway, will continue and deepen.
Expect some schools to declare exigency and use the emergency to drive a major reordering of academic programming, to the detriment on the humanities, arts and traditional in-residence education. Now that most colleges and universities are operating online, university presidents and administrators will want them to stay online. Short term, faculty will go along with this.
The old guard, people who have practices that were developed before modern technologies or employ learning models that no longer meet the developing needs of modern learners if they ever fully did , may hinder the successful progress of a university in both and beyond in the post-pandemic future. To remain relevant and beneficial to the needs of their students, universities must commit to solutions-focused strategies in response to an ever-changing world.
Short-term credentials will dominate the higher education landscape. In the modern world, employers are primed to place a greater emphasis on the value of skills over degrees. In the new normal of our post-pandemic future, college students will come to see the benefit in stackable certificates — a documentation of developing skillsets while pursuing undergraduate or graduate degrees. With growing unemployment and lost jobs over the last year, the value of certifications is evident and even instrumental in finding new work as primary income earners do not have a year window to earn a degree before they rejoin the workforce.
For traditional college-age students, education and experience need no longer be mutually exclusive in their timelines. Innovative universities will provide students the opportunity to earn credentials as they are working toward their degrees.
With flexible class schedules, students can gain marketable skills and credentials to start or resume their careers while still pursuing their degrees. Solutions such as these will undeniably bridge the gap between college degrees and marketable skillsets for college students in the future.
How universities support the health and well-being of students must dramatically evolve. I suspect the long-term trend of more online students will continue as it has for many years. Even before the pandemic, 35 percent of college students were taking at least one online class, and something like 15 percent were totally online.
I think you have a relatively small number of institutions that will succeed at that at scale, but most of the colleges that exist now will still exist.
Colleges are very resilient historically. At what point should students and parents seriously reconsider the value of higher education altogether? Not all colleges are the same. So no one should wait to think hard about the value of higher education. The moment is now to take a hard look at all of the choices and not believe all the promises that colleges make. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.
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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Is it time to rethink the value of college? Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Students wearing protective masks talk on campus on the first day of classes at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, on August 25, Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email.
Email required. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. Several universities, most recently the University of Massachusetts , have started online colleges in recent years to plant a stake in the ground in distance-learning and to recruit adult students as populations of year-old students decline.
Fredericksen said that keeping online learning separate or in a silo may become irrelevant over time as demand for distance-education from all ages grows. It's just going to be learning. Student learning. Please Sign In and use this article's on page print button to print this article. Oct 11,
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