For years, think tanks, academics, and journalists have sounded the alarm about the transformation of the modern workforce through job automation and artificial intelligence (AI). The question posed has always been “when” rather than “if.” When will new technologies...
Adult Learner Demand Archive
Higher Education Predictions for 2021, Part 2
In last week’s Wake-Up Call, we shared the first two of four higher education predictions for 2021, forecasting an enrollment recovery and an end to the academic program “arms race.” This week, we tackle predictions three and four:
Looking Back on Our 2020 Higher Education Predictions: Recession, Certificates, and Bootcamps
COVID-19 has humbled prognosticators everywhere: an impossible-to-predict global pandemic has impacted higher education in 2020 far more than anything this rusty analyst’s musing could conjure in the halcyon days of last January. A year ago, my first of three annual...
The Higher Education Spending Problem: To Spend or Not to Spend?
At the recent Eduventures Summit Virtual Research Forum, I presented an eye-popping chart showing the longstanding surge in higher education instructional and student services spend this century. Instructional spend at public four-year schools grew 140%, but student...
A New “Guilded” Age? Education-as-a-Benefit Arrives
Seven months into the pandemic, prospects for a rapid economic recovery are dimming. The persistence of COVID-19, and an evaporation of federal stimulus aid signal rough waters ahead for many postsecondary institutions, particularly community colleges. But amid these...
Here Today, Online Tomorrow? Adult Learners and Post-Pandemic Learning
2020 will long be remembered as the year of learning differently. Whether you’re enrolled in first grade or graduate school, online learning has become an unavoidable fact of life.