Higher Education Evolution Part 3: Administrators’ Challenge in 2023


For university administrators, whether they’ll still have a campus to govern come 2023 will depend on how quickly they can embrace changes in fundraising, faculty demands, and student demographics.

administrators
Administrators will face a series of tough choices over the next decade.

Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity and Google X, last year predicted that only 10 institutions would be delivering higher education in five decades. Researchers at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Education said between 25 and 50 percent of universities will be in bankruptcy in 15 years.

While many educators said these numbers are drastic predictions of the future, they also admit universities that don’t embrace technological changes in education could be in serious danger by 2023.

This is the third story in an eCampus News series examining the technological changes in higher education over the next 10 years. Read parts one and two.

“There are schools at each margin, the very safest and the most in-danger, but the winners and losers across the vast majority of the sector will be defined by the speed and thoughtfulness with which they iterate and improve over the next decade,” said Charles Thornburgh, the former president of Kaplan Virtual Education.

Mark Milliron, who left his post as chancellor of Western Governors University-Texas earlier this year to help lead the adaptive learning company Civitas Learning, said many university administrators are already looking to future.

“If the academy can be at its best, diving deep into good data with critical thinking, creativity, and thoughtful action, many more institutions will not only survive, but thrive on the road ahead,” Milliron said.

But administrators are not the only ones involved in this transition.

Convincing faculty members to accept technological change could be one of the key challenges for college leaders over the next ten years.

The beginnings of this growing conflict can already be seen at places like San Jose State University, where its president’s embracing of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has led to a schism of sorts.

SJSU’s Academic Senate voted overwhelmingly Nov. 18 to request an independent review of the university’s governance after many faculty members publicly opposed a MOOC partnership there.

And as more and more tasks originally designated to faculty, like lecturing and evaluating, are handed over to private companies, the debate can only get more heated.

“Post-secondary institutions have outsourced non-mission critical services like food services, laundry services, and printing services for years,” said Ellen Wagner, executive director of the WICHE Cooperative for Education Technologies. “Outsourcing curriculum development or assessment services or content management or analytic services that are normed to company needs rather than institutional needs seems to be a little bit different.”

As a result, some predict that administrators will have to think and act more like business leaders.

That has faculty skittish – and perhaps rightfully so, as there is no way of truly knowing what the effect will be on higher education, experts said.

John Ebersole, president of Excelsior College, the rare private institution that touts its online learning program, said it will be important for institutional leaders making technology decisions to remember that faculty will be the ones using this tech on a daily basis.

“Honestly, the faculty role is probably changing far more dramatically than the administrator’s,” Ebersole said. “Not any more quickly, but more dramatically.”

Administrators in 2023 will also have to be aware of how much the student body has changed. Administrators will be dealing with a more equal share of “traditional” and “post-traditional” students, and not all kinds of technology will be a right fit for the differing demographics.

While a large number of students and faculty will be interacting online, physical universities will still exist in order to create, discover, and research the knowledge being shared through the internet.

“The things that are going to be different for me and my university are not of the same importance to the research university, and I think we have to draw that distinction,” Ebersole said.

Across the board, dwindling state funds will force many public college leaders to act more as fundraisers and marketers for their universities. They’ll have a larger online presence, reaching out to current and prospective students on social media and to alumni through fundraising platforms like EverTrue.

“People in my shoes are going to have to be entrepreneurial for sure,” Ebersole said. “They are going to have to be much more risk tolerant than many academic administrators are today.”

Follow Jake New on Twitter at @eCN_Jake, and join the conversation with #eCN2023.

Sign up for our newsletter

Newsletter: Innovations in K12 Education
By submitting your information, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Latest posts by Jake New (see all)

Oops! We could not locate your form.

Sign up for our newsletter

Newsletter: Innovations in K12 Education
By submitting your information, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.