Higher Education Will Be Forced to Do This Recession Differently, and That’s a Good Thing – ACE
You know the familiar logic: Higher education is countercyclical. When everything else is contracting, colleges and universities are booming as Americans who would otherwise be working head to college. What is not as universally acknowledged is that while more students show up, not enough make it through. In the last recession, outcomes dipped, especially for students who were previously in the workforce.
Even in the best of times, higher education has to work hard to support students who are older than 24, working, parenting, or all of the above. Pre-COVID-19, students who combined work and caregiver obligations with education, so-called “post-traditional” learners, represented about 60 percent of all undergraduates, but their outcomes were generally worse than “traditional” students.
As we move from recession through recovery, we can expect a surge in demand for higher education that will disproportionately come from post-traditional students who are newly unemployed or underemployed and possibly by a decline of traditional-aged students scared away by an uncertain fall. To respond, colleges and universities must swiftly adapt by broadening their view of learning, adopting competency-driven approaches, providing lower-cost and lower-risk on-ramps, and creating partnerships with employers.