Higher Education Must Change or It May Die

 

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/08/16/higher-ed-must-change-or-die-opinion

Jason Wingard, Temple University president 

August 16, 2022

Enrollment for both undergraduate and graduate students at U.S. colleges and universities decreased by 4.1 percent—or about 685,000 students—in spring 2022 compared to spring 2021. The number is compounded even further when you go back to 2020. The overall two-year decline is 7.4 percent, meaning that nearly 1.3 million fewer students are pursuing postsecondary education today compared to just two years ago.

Imagine if a company lost nearly 10 percent of its profits in two years. The situation would be catastrophic. Drastic changes would be expected. We have lost nearly 10 percent of our students, but where is our sense of urgency? The status quo is not working?

The evolution of education can be broken down into four phases: 

agrarian era  (1600–1849), when a privileged few had formal education; 

industrial era (1850–1974), which introduced universal secondary education; 

knowledge era (1975–2009), when the internet transformed life, education and work; and 

post-recession era (2010–2020), where the value of a degree has never been more in question.

Who needs a four-year marketing degree graduate to run social media when you can instead hire someone fresh out of high school and sign them up for HootSuite’s Academy’s social media certification course?  Why pay for a six-figure education when HootSuite can get you some of the same skills in just six hours and for less than $200?

The importance of adapting curriculum on a yearly basis is to be recognized,  and, when doing so, the core curriculum is to be dressed up with a fine-tooth comb.

Podcast as pedagogy

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/podcast-pedagogy-discovering-joys-new-teaching-format

Threshold Concepts

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/threshold-concepts-what-they-are-and-how-they-help-students-learn

https://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~mflanaga/thresholds.html

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1477388018300069#!       Interesting article on threshold concepts