“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” as the quote goes by Yogi Barra & Niels Bohr. I was reminded of this quote as I read an article on trends in liberal arts colleges. "Since 1990, the number of liberal arts schools in the U.S. has dropped from 212 to 130, a 39 percent decrease". This information came from a study by Roger Baldwin from Michigan State University "Are liberal arts colleges disappearing" The author states that only a handful of colleges have gone out of business, but many have added vocational programs in nursing and business and have changed their focus so dramatically that they no longer retain a liberal arts identity. It's a shift of great magnitude without any major headlines for the outside world to notice. I strongly feel that education will continue to change without dramatic public headlines.
I want to discuss five predictions and analyze how these changes will affect student recruitment and marketing activities.
Five predictions that will have an impact on university and enrollment marketing:
- Internationalization of student bodies will expand (This blog article will be published in the week of November 5th)
Please note, that I didn’t even add the continued pressure to offer competitive tuition packages and hold net tuition increases under control - that's a given.
You probably agree that none of these trends mentioned above will have a specific due date that will happen in an instant, but will be gradual processes. As we know from the well known, but incorrect frog metaphor. According to the frog experiment, a frog will immediately jump out of hot or boiling waiter, but will remain in the water if the water is heated gradually. The lesson of that story is that small incremental changes are more difficult to react to as opposed to dramatic changes. So let’s look at the individual trends. Click on each trend headlines above for the detailed discussion.
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