college of 2020 – Page 2 – The Future of Higher Education

College Accreditation is Needlessly Mysterious

November 21, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf

Higher education in America has become so large, so complex, and so rigid, that there are many functions at its heart that few understand. One of the most important is accreditation. Without accreditation from a recognized body, a college or university cannot get federal loans or other financial aid for its students. Given the importance of federal financial aid — the total of outstanding student loans is now greater than outstanding credit-card loans — one might think that the accreditation…

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The College Experience: Preserving Culture

November 16, 2011 Grant Sabatier

I remember the snow falling on the quad and my friend Allen muttering “The only people for me are the mad ones.” He had recently read Kerouac’s On The Road and was convinced that people around him weren’t really living… “like really living, man,” he said. It was the middle of the night and The University of Chicago campus, with its ivy, and benches, Gothic towers, and sidewalks – was like a turn of the century movie set. We were…

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OpenCloud and Free Learning Management

November 1, 2011 Grant Sabatier

Pearson – the world’s largest provider to educational support materials and textbooks has launched OpenClass, a free, cloud-based, Learning Management System that is tightly integrated with Google Apps. Last week the Pearson OpenClass story spread like wildfire. Is OpenClass really as groundbreaking as it seems? OpenClass is truly a cloud-based service. There is no hardware, licensing or hosting costs for the users. In the same way that free e-mail has become an indispensable part of many peoples lives, Pearson is hoping that a free Learning Management…

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The Future of Mobile Learning

October 29, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf

I was inspired just reading these visions of mobile learning, collected by T.H.E. Journal, which is all about transforming education through technology. Some of them make our current modes of learning seem quaint by comparison. Hang on to your memories of text books and pop quizzes at wooden desks — they’ll be as outdated as your VCR. These are some of my favorites: The mobile learning device of the future won’t be a separate piece of equipment. Rather, mobile learning…

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Liberal Arts Colleges: the Tsunami is Coming

October 22, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf

Of all the colleges that stand to face difficulties in the coming decade, liberal-arts colleges are at the top of the list. This is not news to anyone who follows higher education, but this thoughtful interview with Victor E. Ferrall, the former president of Beloit College, brings a lot of the points home. One of the points of pride of the many liberal-arts colleges in this country is that each one is different: in culture, in appeal, in teaching style. All…

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How Escalating Cost Pressures Will Change the College of 2020: Guest Post by Lloyd Armstrong

October 10, 2011 collegeof2020

(This is the second of two guest blogs by Lloyd Armstrong, University Professor and Provost Emeritus at the University of Southern California, and author of the blog, Changing Higher Education.) Previously, I wrote about why the cost of higher education keeps spiraling upward beyond the willingness of most colleges to support and the willingness by most to pay for it. Today, I will look at how the response to those costs will change colleges by 2020. Different institutions will begin to respond…

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What will The College of 2020 look like? Part 1: Guest Post by Lloyd Armstrong

October 5, 2011 collegeof2020

(This is the first of two posts written by guest writer Lloyd Armstrong, University Professor and Provost Emeritus at the University of Southern California, and author of the blog, Changing Higher Education.) Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future Niels Bohr What will the College of 2020 look like? It probably will be similar in at least one way to the College of 2011 -there isn’t any one archetypal College of 2011 and there won’t be any one archetypal College of…

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Charting the Future of Higher Education

September 30, 2011 Grant Sabatier

Here are a collection of insightful videos from The Charting the Future of Higher Education event in Washington DC on September 15, 2011. Tweet

The Statistics That Matter

September 26, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf

Mark Twain popularized the statement: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” But anyone who is planning for what a college will need in 2020 needs to start with these statistics. Okay, they are projections, but the carefully researched and methodical look at 2020 by the National Center for Education Statistics needs to be the starting point for planning by most colleges. We have written extensively about this in our report, The College of 2020: Students, but these latest…

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Top 10 List: Prepare for The College of 2020

September 15, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf

Is your college ready for 2020? Are you anticipating how society is going to change and trying to position yourself where your customer wants you to be? Or, are you stuck in the old mode of thinking that what we have is good enough? This is a partial checklist of what colleges should to be doing to be ahead of the game: 1. Articulation — Is your college negotiating agreements with community colleges, other institutions with similar missions and programs…

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