The Road Ahead For America'S Colleges And Universities

Current commentary about the US higher education system is steeped in crisis rhetoric of impending doom. High costs, exploding debt, and a digital tsunami supposedly will combine to disrupt and sweep away many of the nation's higher education institutions, or change them beyond recognition. In this book we evaluate the threats - real and perceived - that American colleges and universities must confront over the next thirty years. Those threats include rising costs endemic to personal services like higher education, growing income inequality in the US that affects how much families can pay, demographic changes that will affect demand, and labor market changes that could affect the value of a degree. We also evaluate changing patterns of state and federal support for higher education, and the new digital technologies rippling through the entire economy. Although we see great challenges ahead for America's complex mix of colleges and universities, our analysis is an antidote to the language of crisis that dominates contemporary public discourse. The bundle of services that four-year colleges and universities provide likely will retain its value for the traditional age range of college students. The division between in-person education for most younger students and online coursework for older and returning students appears quite stable. Apocalyptic tellings often have a happy ending as an online future makes higher education both better and cheaper. We are less pessimistic about the present, but more worried about the future. The diverse American system of four-year institutions is resilient and adaptable. But the threats we identify will weigh most heavily on the schools that disproportionately serve America's most at-risk students--

• | Author: Robert B. Archibald, David Henry Feldman
• | Publisher: Oxford University Press
• | Publication Date: Aug 01, 2017
• | Number of Pages: 297 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover/Business & Economics
• | ISBN-10: 0190251913
• | ISBN-13: 9780190251918