Continuing the Conversation about the Purpose of Education

The current issue of Business Officer from NACUBO focuses in part on the role of universities in preparing students for work. A quote from Contributing Editor Karla Hignite captures what many see as the prima challenge for university admissions officers in the years immediately ahead:

"Making the case for college must include convincing an often-skeptical public that higher learning prepares individuals not only for the right job in the dream career, but for the many jobs and multiple careers that the current generation of students will explore in their lifetimes. Helping students identify and pursue experiences that set them on a successful and fulfilling career trajectory is likewise getting enhanced attention on campuses across the country."

Going further and tracking along with something we have been saying in this space and at conferences is this from the campusmatters.net blog:

"Two distinctly different views of reality were on display at the 2014 Society of College and University Planning conference: traditional and nontraditional – bundled and unbundled. The cognitive dissonance was there for all to see and hear.

"The traditional view  residential experience with marching bands and the book-lined study. The nontraditional view unbundles all of this, offering credit hours and progress toward a degree without dorms, touchdowns or libraries. This all makes sense as long as they are serving different audiences – different customers interested in different value propositions."

We have long held that American higher education was in the process of stratifying into bands of schools with different missions, different audiences and different products. Our forecast is that there will be ever fewer "traditional, bundled" and ever more "nontraditional, unbundled" models on display.The open questions for individual schools are about how much of the value proposition to attach to preparation for work, and how low into K-12 will this zeitgeist permeate.