We can all bear witness to the sad fact that Covid-19 is a negative shock to higher education that will result in long term economic scarring of both individual and institutional futures.
But what happens after COVID? My sense is that COVID is just the beginning… as COVID declines it will be opening the way to demographic changes, economic changes, and policy changes coming to higher education that were already gaining momentum long before COVID.
I think two of those change trajectories are relatively predictable: namely demographic change and economic recovery.
Then there are five wild cards in the game: first technology change, which is relatively certain, and four other key, but more uncertain, policy change trajectories that bear watching.
- The first of those wild cards is legislated transparency and accountability at the institutional, and more importantly, at the program level, in postsecondary education and training;
- We are probably going to see a lot more training programs eligible for some version of Pell grants for training and new support for apprenticeships and short-term training. I suspect these programs will be regulated by completion rates as well as an employment and earnings standard;
- The fourth wild card will be an infrastructure bill
- and a fifth; the fate of free community college, transfer policies, and the community college BA.