Trends In Higher Education: 7 Must-Know Expert Predictions for 2020

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Trends In Higher Education 7 Must-Know Expert
Predictions for 2020

• Its all bets off in 2020. So whats next for
  higher education organizations? We consulted the
  experts to reveal the top higher ed trends in
  tech, marketing and enrollment.
• Right now, its hard to make predictions,
  especially when it comes to higher ed.
• Currently, more than 1.2 billion students have
  been affected by global lockdowns and todays
  colleges and universities are working tirelessly
  to ensure their organizations stay resilient in
  the face of a new normal.

With so much in flux, we reached out to some of
the brightest minds higher ed to get their best
predictions on how the higher education landscape
will evolve. Heres what they had to say.
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• Table Of Contents
• Top Tech Predictions
• Higher Ed Marketing Finally Gets An Upgrade
• Enrollment Trends What Can We Expect?

Higher Ed Trend 1 Remote Learning Will Continue
(But Not Like You Think) The days of online
education being synonymous with adult education
are over. The campus model as we know it is being
challenged and may potentially change
forever. Seth Odell, Vice Chancellor of
Marketing, National University System
With the recent pandemic, the spike in distance
learning comes as no surprise.  Even higher ed
organizations that were once reluctant to
transition to remote training and learning are
now moving at full speed to transition to a fully
digital operation.
But remote education is neither something new nor
experimental. In 2017, there were already over 6
million Americans pursuing online training and
the trend has only been gaining traction with
every passing year. 
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The global quarantine? That was merely fuel for
the fire.  Prior to the coronavirus epidemic,
the average online student age was 32 years old
and 68 of online students were experienced
professionals. According to higher ed expert Seth
Odell, this is set to change. It is highly
likely that we will see a dramatic increase in
demand for fully online offerings from Gen Z,
says Seth. Some studies demonstrated that
students require 40 to 60 less time to learn and
retain 25 to 60 more material when learning
online. With data like this to back it up, online
learning will become a viable option for a new
generation of students, prompting a growing
number of higher ed organizations to finally
start making it a staple in their
programs.  Higher Ed Trend 2 The Rise of
Blended and Hybrid Models This crisis will
have a particularly strong impact on how much
higher education embraces hybrid approaches to
learning and participation. Kelly Walsh,
Founder of EmergingEdTech CIO at The College of
Westchester Prior to 2020, the discussion around
traditional vs. non-traditional methods of
learning was still pretty binary on-campus or
online.  Not anymore. 
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Blended and flipped learning have been a growing
trend for over a decade now, and this will
certainly continue to evolve and expand, says
edtech expert and College of Westchester CIO,
Kelly Walsh. We already have a rich set of
studies demonstrating how hybrid and interactive
learning provides greater flexibility and
improves academic results. Now that were under
the current circumstances, more higher ed
organizations will experiment with new approaches
for educating their studentsand there will be
some bumps along the way.
It might seem a little harder for some forms of
active learning (experiential, project based,
inquiry based, constructivism, etc.) to take
place in a remote teaching environment, but it
doesn't have to be, explains Kelly.

• According to experts like Kelly, this inevitable
  shift comes down to two key trends
• Technology is catching up. Advancements in
  virtual reality, augmented reality, and video
  conferencing allows educators to reach a new
  level of engagement during their online sessions.

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• Web-based resources are becoming the norm. As
  Kelly puts it, Having a robust web-based set of
  resources is something that should be essential
  in every course and hopefully that becomes more
  the norm going forward.
• Of course, there may be some students and
  faculty who aren't having a great experience and
  may come down on the side of face-to-face more
  strongly than ever, Kelly cautions. But I
  imagine there will be a larger faction that will
  take good tools and techniques away from the
  experience.

Higher Ed Trend 3 Crisis Online Formats Will
Need An Upgrade We run the risk of creating
enemies of online formats with poorly designed
and implemented courses. Terri Griffith,
award-winning author and consultant in higher
education As higher ed leaders scrambled to
service their students amidst a truly
unprecedented crisis, many universities created
online formats reactively rather than
actively. Terri Griffith, speaker, author and
consultant spanning high tech, education, and
more acknowledges these reactive efforts as
Crisis Online Formats that should later be
improved on.
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This is a great time for higher education to
offer material in smaller bites, and bites that
are more closely tied to a person's needs at the
moment, says Terri. Online and some
asynchronous offerings can help us with
that. But the work is far from done.  Schools
that hadn't yet made big moves into testing
different types of online formats will now have
experiences to guide them as they get the chance
to move from Crisis Online Formats to more
thoughtful ones, she adds. As Terri states in
her blog on Crisis Online Formats, We run the
risk of creating enemies of online formats with
poorly designed and implemented courses. Higher
Education Trend 4 Survival Of The Most
Adaptable The crisis will result in some
institutions accelerating their reach while
others will fall behind. Institutions that are
nimble, quickly adapting in best interest of
their stakeholders, will increase in
value. Teresa Paulsen, Founder Owner, Teresa
Paulsen Communication LLC The ongoing crisis and
following recession will reveal a lot as colleges
and universities adapt to the unknown.
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The choices you make today can make or break your
success over the long term. According to experts
like Teresa Paulsen, founder and owner of Teresa
Paulsen Communication, we can expect to see some
organizations fall behind, while others speed far
ahead. As an example, studentswhether on
campus or in distance learningneed uniform,
consumer-friendly web interfaces for class
registration and other tasks, versus dozens of
distinct microsites from the same school, says
expert Teresa Paulsen. Why has it taken a global
health crisis for higher eds to finally upgrade
their online presence? Heres Teresa. Most
institutions are decades behind todays consumer
expectations when it comes to web interface.
Consumer orientation was a basic element of
success pre-crisis, and the crisis even further
exposed this weakness. Clearly, the
organizations able to pivot faster will be those
with the most agile tools to run on.
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• Higher Education Trend 5 Higher Ed Will Grow IF
  It Remains Inclusive
• I think higher ed will grow IF we remember to
  educate ALL learners across ages and
  inequalities, and if society continues to think
  people need more post-secondary experience.
• Bryan Alexander, futurist, educator, speaker
  and writer
• In his blog, Bryan Alexander, an internationally
  renowned futurist and higher ed consultant with
  over 20 years of experience, proposed three
  distinct scenarios for how the pandemic has
  changed or will change campuses
• Post-pandemic campus Colleges and universities
  mostly resumed their in-person practices with
  some students and members of staff continuing to
  operate remotely. Blended learning is now a part
  of university standard process. 
• COVID Fall Due to the ravaging outbreak higher
  education is entirely online with a large portion
  of curriculum focused around COVID and public
  health.
• Toggle Term Universities are frantically
  switching between online and in-person forms of
  education depending on the current circumstances
  of the crisis.

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Although each of these scenarios is pretty
different (and all of them depend heavily on the
unknown), its interesting to note that there are
already examples of universities following each
one. For example, both Purdue and Brown have
already announced getting back to in-person
classes in the fall, while
San José will go almost entirely online, and both
Johns Hopkins and California State have hinted at
the Toggle Term scenario.  (By the way, if
youre looking for messaging inspiration for your
reopening announcement, this NYT oped by Brown
President, Christina Paxson is a must-read.) Such
a variety of responses reflects several factors,
such as location, demographics and more. Still,
its clear that higher ed organizations will have
agency over their actions, and some will use this
as an opportunity to proactively reshape the
future.
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Higher Education Trend 6 Expect A Tighter Link
Between Education And Business Ultimately, over
time, institutions will play to their strengths
and I suspect there will be a further culling and
diversifying of higher education. Kelvin
Thomspon, Executive Director, University of
Central Floridas (UCF) Center for Distributed
Learning Depending on your perspective, the main
consumers of higher education are not students,
but businesses. And the gap between what
businesses need and what skills future graduates
possess will become even more apparent during and
after the crisis. There is already emerging
evidence from the Institute of Student Employers
that businesses are actively reducing the number
of graduates they intend to recruit. Hard fact
Recessions force businesses to cut
expenses. Unfortunately, one of the first things
to go is usually the employee training and
development programs. Luckily, higher eds are
uniquely prepared to fill that gap. Schools that
offer traditional four-year degrees may shift
their attention towards niche education. As
Kelvin puts it There will be a smaller number
of more highly differentiated institutions. 
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Higher Education Trend 7 Trade School
Enrollment On The Rise Over the coming years,
youre going to see the schools in the for-profit
market grow and expand. Managing Partner at
Campus Cloud Services According to the National
Skills Coalition, almost half of all job openings
between now and 2022 will be middle-skill jobs
that require high-quality education, but not a
four-year degree. Trade schools are going to
take off, shares Dan. With over four decades of
experience in the education field, he cant help
but notice the recurring patterns.  When
theres large unemployment, higher education does
very well, he adds.
Millions of people are being laid-off from jobs,
so its only natural for them during this period
to seek the education that will allow them to get
back to workand not necessarily from behind a
cubicle. Periods of unemployment generate a lot
of growth in the higher education industry,
especially in the career school area and the
trades, Dan explains. 
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Certain government programs may accelerate this
growth even further. For example, programs like
Pell Grant could be extended to cover non-degree
programs, as was done during the 2008 crisis. If
weve learned anything from checking in with the
experts at a time of great uncertainty, its that
its all about your organization's ability to
shift, change and grow as the rest of business as
we know it does the same.  Which leaves only one
question Where do you plan to go from here? If
upgrading your enrollment marketing is part of
your post-covid strategy, we can help. Shape is
the only higher ed CRM designed according to
leading best practices established at schools
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