International 'Leapfrogging': The Global Expansion of Higher Education

A new study is out with some enlightening data on matriculation and graduation rates for higher education around the world. You can find the original study here.

A study for the National Bureau of Economic Research explores the impact of what the author -- Richard B. Freeman, an economist at Harvard University -- calls the "human capital leapfrogging in the huge populous developing countries." The shift generally (and in particular for science and technology degrees) has important implications for higher education in the United States. . . . "In the face of global competition it is difficult to imagine the U.S. maintaining the dominance it has had in the latter part of the 20th century (just as it is difficult to imagine the U.S. maintaining its dominance of the global economy). But barring some horrific policies or events I would expect U.S. universities to continue to among the world’s leader in higher education into the foreseeable future and thus to keep attracting high skill immigrants to the country."

College for $99 a Month?

Kevin Carey, policy director of Education Sector, writes in the Washington Monthly about some new twists on for-profit higher ed and foresees our industry getting hit like the music industry has. He says we're lucky, in that we have more regulatory protection.

[A]n ad caught her eye: a company called StraighterLine was offering online courses in subjects like accounting, statistics, and math. This was hardly unusual—hundreds of institutions are online hawking degrees. But one thing about StraighterLine stood out: it offered as many courses as she wanted for a flat rate of $99 a month. “It sounds like a scam,” Solvig thought—she’d run into a lot of shady companies and hard-sell tactics on the Internet. But for $99, why not take a risk?

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Smith’s struggle to establish StraighterLine suggests that higher education still has some time before the Internet bomb explodes in its basement. The fuse was only a couple of years long for the music and travel industries; for newspapers it was ten. Colleges may have another decade or two, particularly given their regulatory protections.

New Players, Different Game: Understanding the Rise of For-Profit Colleges and Universities

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New Players, Different Game: Understanding the Rise of For-Profit Colleges and Universities by William G. Tierney and Guilbert C. Hentschke. "[The authors] provide a reasonably thorough introduction to and analysis of that portion of the for-profit sector of greatest interest to most planners—large university systems that are regionally accredited degree-granting institutions owned and operated by publicly traded for-profit corporations." Reviewed in Planning for Higher Education by Carol Everly Floyd.

Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?

Word cloud map of this article:The usual litany about competition from non-traditional sources, difficulty in getting student loans, fewer parents able to leverage on their home equity, and the coming demographic peak lead Joseph Marr Cronin and Howard E. Horton, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, to use this critical moment in economic history to warn of bubbles and suggest that the day of reckoning for higher education could be drawing near.

The public has become all too aware of the term "bubble" to describe an asset that is irrationally and artificially overvalued and cannot be sustained. The dot-com bubble burst by 2000. More recently the overextended housing market collapsed, helping to trigger a credit meltdown. The stock market has declined more than 30 percent in the past year, as companies once considered flagship investments have withered in value.

Is it possible that higher education might be the next bubble to burst? Some early warnings suggest that it could be.

Community Colleges Challenge Hierarchy With 4-Year Degrees

Some think community clleges offering 4-year degrees is the "Cat's Meow," others think it is a "solution looking for a problem." What do you think of this?

“It’s cooking in several states, in many work-force-related fields, but there’s a lot of debate and politics, and differing views on whether they’re still community colleges if they give baccalaureates,” said Beth Hagan, executive director of the Community College Baccalaureate Association, a nonprofit group that promotes the trend.

In Michigan, community colleges are seeking to offer baccalaureates in culinary arts, cement technology and nursing. Their efforts have stalled, said Mike Hansen, president of the Michigan Community College Association.

“We need legislation to do it, and the legislation’s been introduced, but that’s as far as it’s gotten,” Mr. Hansen said. “The four-year universities in the state are very much opposed to the idea.”

Mike Boulus, the executive director of the group that represents the four-year universities, called the plan to expand community colleges “a solution in search of a problem.”

“It’s clearly unnecessary,” Mr. Boulus said. “Community colleges should stick with the important work they do extremely well, offering two-year degrees and preparing students for transfer to four-year schools.”

Buying Low: Are the Proprietary Colleges Swooping' In?

Some of the best stuff being written in the higher ed world right is coming from bloggers. Here's a recent installment from the "Confessions of a Community College Dean" blog in Inside Higher Ed:

Apparently, the proprietary colleges are in the midst of another of their periodic booms, swooping in and grabbing students just when the public sector is reeling from yet another round of budget cuts.

I’ve seen this movie.

As regular readers know, I used to work for a proprietary. You’ve heard of it.

I’d be both more and less worried than the IHE story suggests.

The worrisome part of the return of the proprietaries is that, unlike the public sector, their income rises and falls with enrollments. This means they’re immune to the double-bind the public colleges routinely experience during recessions, when enrollments go up but funding goes down. This Fall my cc is experiencing the highest enrollments in its history, and applications for the Spring are even higher than that; at the exact same time, our operating funding is crashing. Say what you want about ‘administrators’ – I defy anybody to make that math work without pain. It’s one thing to do more with less, and another to perform alchemy.

For the DeVry’s and Phoenixes of the world, though, higher enrollments automatically equate to higher revenues. This means they can add capacity when it makes sense. In times like these, I envy them that.