WHAT IN THE 🌎MIGHT HAPPEN TO U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION?MITCHELL STEVENS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY30 NOVEMBER 2016

Why North Dakota?Why beautiful?Why “sticker price” vs. ”net price”?Why football and lacrosse and field hockey…Why residential?Why tax-exempt?

THIS MORNING

• A schematic picture of epochal change in US higher education between 1945 – present (per Stevens & Gebre-Medhin 2016)

• An overview of findings from a just-completed field study of postsecondary educational provision in a single region (Kirst & Scott forthcoming)

• Thought experiment: what would you do if you were a legacy brand?

20TH CENTURY HIGHER EDUCATION

• Product of the Cold War:• Massive investment in science/technology through universities• College attendance as reward of military service & quasi-right of citizenship• Part of a general effort to aggrandize US democratic capitalism worldwide

• Higher education was substantially a project of government• Opportunity cost of college = lost wages• Minimal regulatory oversight of productivity especially on instructional side• College happened in particular times and places• Schools were sovereign over operations; faculty were sovereign over ”their”

classrooms

sov∙er∙eign∙ty (n):the authority of an entity to govern itself

Schools were sovereign over operations; faculty were sovereign over ”their” classrooms

21ST CENTURY US HIGHER EDUCATION

• Capitalism globally accomplished; US in ambiguous ideological relation to the world • Non-growth of public investment in higher education + ever-increasing enrollments• Steadily rising cost of college in excess of inflation; underwritten by government

loans• Opportunity costs of college now routinely include debt

• Instructional provision is not bound by time and place• Measurement revolution has come to higher education• Uncertainty about state and federal-government regulation and funding of higher

education

Studying a regional postsecondary ecosystem (Kirst & Scott forthcoming)

Never forget: Most workers are spatially sticky

TECH CONTINUOUSLY REQUIRES NEW SKILLS/WORKERS

Note: used with permission from Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation Project (2015)

Postsecondary enrollment has not grown substantially since 1980

1970 1980 1990 2000 20100

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

4-year Public

4-year Nonprofit

4-year For-profit

2-Year Public

2-year Nonprofit

2-year For-profit

Year

Enrollment

Source: Kirst, Scott, and Biag (2016) calculations using IPEDS data.

EVEN THOUGH THE ACADEMICALLY ELIGIBLE SHARE OF HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES IS GROWING

Note: Used with permission from the Public Policy Institute of California; Jackson, Bohn and Johnson (2016) Sources: University of California, California State University, California Department of Education

Few traditional colleges operate in the region’s exurbs

Source: Original data gathered for Kirst, Scott, & Colleagues (forthcoming)

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT:WHAT SHOULD THE LEGACY

SOVEREIGNS DO?

Stanford Instructional Television Network 1969 -1996

OPEN QUESTIONS

• Will the legacy brands be asked to demonstrate value, performance, responsibility?

• Will new postsecondary providers be expected to measure/perform at certain levels stay in business and/or receive government subsidy?

• Will the legacy brands be able to extend their sovereignty to the new versions of themselves that they already are creating (e.g. Coursera certs, MIT micros)?

• Will there by any pressure to reform or replace accreditation with another governance apparatus?

• Remember: HEA will eventually need to be reauthorized; FERPA..ED…FTC?