Mitchell Stevens, associate professor and director of Stanford University's Center for Advanced Research in Online Learning, looks at the forces changing the higher education landscape in the US and proposes a potential way forward in California where there is a need for more capacity at colleges and universities as well as stronger alignment with what employers need.

1. WHAT IN THE 🌎
MIGHT HAPPEN TO U.S.
HIGHER EDUCATION?
MITCHELL STEVENS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY
30 NOVEMBER 2016

2. Why North Dakota?
Why beautiful?
Why “sticker price” vs. ”net price”?
Why football and lacrosse and field
hockey…
Why residential?
Why tax-exempt?

4. THIS MORNING
• A schematic picture of epochal change in US higher education
between 1945 – present (per Stevens & Gebre-Medhin 2016)
• An overview of findings from a just-completed field study of
postsecondary educational provision in a single region (Kirst & Scott
forthcoming)
• Thought experiment: what would you do if you were a legacy brand?

5. 20TH CENTURY HIGHER EDUCATION
• Product of the Cold War:
• Massive investment in science/technology through universities
• College attendance as reward of military service & quasi-right of citizenship
• Part of a general effort to aggrandize US democratic capitalism worldwide
• Higher education was substantially a project of government
• Opportunity cost of college = lost wages
• Minimal regulatory oversight of productivity especially on instructional side
• College happened in particular times and places
• Schools were sovereign over operations; faculty were sovereign over ”their”
classrooms

6. sov∙er∙eign∙ty (n):
the authority of an entity
to govern itself
Schools were sovereign over operations; faculty were sovereign over ”their” classroo

7. 21ST CENTURY US HIGHER EDUCATION
• Capitalism globally accomplished; US in ambiguous ideological relation to the
world
• Non-growth of public investment in higher education + ever-increasing
enrollments
• Steadily rising cost of college in excess of inflation; underwritten by government
loans
• Opportunity costs of college now routinely include debt
• Instructional provision is not bound by time and place
• Measurement revolution has come to higher education
• Uncertainty about state and federal-government regulation and funding of higher
education

9. Studying a regional postsecondary ecosystem
(Kirst & Scott forthcoming)
Never forget: Most workers are spatially sticky

10. TECH CONTINUOUSLY REQUIRES NEW
SKILLS/WORKERS
Note: used with permission from Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation
Project (2015)

11. Postsecondary enrollment has not grown substantially since 1980
0
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
300,000
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Enrollment
Year
4-year Public
4-year Nonprofit
4-year For-profit
2-Year Public
2-year Nonprofit
2-year For-profit
Source: Kirst, Scott, and Biag (2016) calculations using IPEDS data.

12. EVEN THOUGH THE ACADEMICALLY ELIGIBLE SHARE OF HIGH
SCHOOL GRADUATES IS GROWING
Note: Used with permission from the Public Policy Institute of California; Jackson, Bohn and Johnson
(2016) Sources: University of California, California State University, California Department of Education

13. Few traditional colleges operate in the region’s exurbs
Source: Original data gathered for Kirst, Scott, & Colleagues (forthcoming)

14. THOUGHT EXPERIMENT:
WHAT SHOULD THE LEGACY
SOVEREIGNS DO?

15. Stanford Instructional Television Network 1969 -

16. OPEN QUESTIONS
• Will the legacy brands be asked to demonstrate value, performance,
responsibility?
• Will new postsecondary providers be expected to measure/perform at certain
levels stay in business and/or receive government subsidy?
• Will the legacy brands be able to extend their sovereignty to the new versions of
themselves that they already are creating (e.g. Coursera certs, MIT micros)?
• Will there by any pressure to reform or replace accreditation with another
governance apparatus?
• Remember: HEA will eventually need to be reauthorized; FERPA..ED…FTC?