Changing Demographics in Higher-Ed

TheBizofKnowledge ^ | June 11, 2006 | Dr. Bill Belew

[G. Stolyarov II]

With so many adult students, opinions are flying everywhere on how they might be served best and what is needed most.

Gary Berg, author of Lessons From the Edge, offers up these four main pressures:

1. Diminishing financial support

2. The call to serve adult learners and first-generation college students

3. A need to balance liberal-arts and applied curricula

4. A subsequent necessity of maintaing an evolving institutional mission.

Fopros are in a position to address these pressures.

Like them or love them, many experts credit the University of Phoenix with being the most innovative of the higher-education bunch.

UoP meets the needs of its students - it changes the criteria that accreditation agencies look at - it brings the classroom to the student - it trains practioners to be teachers - it does a lot of things that help students get an education when they might not elsewise.

And they are making money and growing.

Fopros are making an impact, and they are not going away soon. Isn't it time for a dialog between the big two - fopros and nonfopros?

What do you think?

[G. Stolyarov II]

The for-profit universities can indeed fulfill the rising demand for college educations-- especially in applied fields-- among younger and older students alike. The market price mechanism is excellent for matching supply with demand-- whereas under a non-profit system supply tends to fall well short of demand. Thus, the rise of for-profit universities could bring supply up to the immense levels of demand for higher education today. See Dr. Belew’s blog at TheBizofKnowledge