(no subject)
I've started and stalled several times trying to post my thoughts on the direction higher education is heading, because this is the time of year I get to update a couple of proprietary EFC calculators against the Dept. of Ed's draft specifications.
The cost of a bachelor's degree has been rising at about 3 times the rate of inflation for decades, to the point where most families have not and often cannot save enough to pay tuition at a middle-tier school up front without refinancing the homestead or dipping into retirement funds. Both high school graduation rates and college enrollment rates are also climbing, as they have been for decades; but degree completion rates are dropping. The college industry has not expanded to accomodate demand, with the result that schools at all levels are growing increasingly selective, pushing average students into less selective, and lower-quality, schools.
That part is easy, the part where I bog down is in imagining the campusless, peer-tutored, computer-instructed, public-domain-textbooked higher education of The Future. So I'll leave it at that.
The cost of a bachelor's degree has been rising at about 3 times the rate of inflation for decades, to the point where most families have not and often cannot save enough to pay tuition at a middle-tier school up front without refinancing the homestead or dipping into retirement funds. Both high school graduation rates and college enrollment rates are also climbing, as they have been for decades; but degree completion rates are dropping. The college industry has not expanded to accomodate demand, with the result that schools at all levels are growing increasingly selective, pushing average students into less selective, and lower-quality, schools.
That part is easy, the part where I bog down is in imagining the campusless, peer-tutored, computer-instructed, public-domain-textbooked higher education of The Future. So I'll leave it at that.