So, is the US higher education sector going to continue to decline?

[mahagonny]

I'm not in any way bitter about leaving academia

Me neither!

Many small no-name schools in the northeast quadrant of the USA are going to get crushed in the coming academic year:

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2021/01/26/common-apps-new-data-show-overall-gains-applications-not-first.

And SUNY -- holy cow.

From the link to the SUNY article,

"Finally, we must embrace the reality that education is also no longer a static two- or four-year process, but a life-long journey in which people—me, you, everyone—will need to retrain and learn new skills at various points during their lives and careers."

Which means more evening and weekend classes, among other things. How many faculty are going to embrace that?

With checkbook in hand.

There are more faculty positions than ever before in the whole of US academia.  However, the faculty job growth is in areas that many people don't view as being a legitimate college majors (e.g., engineering, criminal justice, nursing, computer science)

I don't hear people saying that. Must be I should get out more.

[Caracal]

Which means more evening and weekend classes, among other things. How many faculty are going to embrace that?

There's not a lot of unmet demand for those. Non-traditional students are rarely working 9-5 jobs anymore in the first place. They also don't really want to take weekend or evening classes for the same reasons many faculty members don't want to teach them. They pose problems for kids and childcare and think that 9 pm is a time to sitting on the couch thinking about bed, not in a classroom.

[marshwiggle]

There are going to be plenty of unemployed faculty looking for jobs who will probably be pleased to teach whenever they can.

For classes that can be online easily, I expect a move away from evening and weekend classes to online.

You're probably right there.

Which means more evening and weekend classes, among other things. How many faculty are going to embrace that?

There's not a lot of unmet demand for those. Non-traditional students are rarely working 9-5 jobs anymore in the first place. They also don't really want to take weekend or evening classes for the same reasons many faculty members don't want to teach them. They pose problems for kids and childcare and think that 9 pm is a time to sitting on the couch thinking about bed, not in a classroom.

There are still going to be many other issues about teaching "lifelong learners", which will require significant changes from the status quo:

• Students may not have taken the "prerequisite" course or did so 20 years ago.
• Students may not be interested in a major; rather they want to take whatever courses interest them.
• Related to the point above, assignments, exams, etc. that are designed for students in a program may not suit people studying for interest.
• Even with online classes, the academic term schedule may not be ideal.

The point is, that serving that "non-traditional" audience will almost certainly require significant changes to not only how faculty teach, but to what they teach as well.

[lightning]

* My theory is a lot of people who have left the higher ed industry or could never break into it in the first place, harbor bitterness and resentment, and get a little satisfaction in thinking that the well is being poisoned for the rest of us who still drink from the well and are doing OK. Yeah, the water tastes funny, but it's not killing us.

It's not a poisoned well so much as a huge shift in societal mindset from any postsecondary education being viewed as valuable to some forms of postsecondary education actually being valuable and many specific instances of institutions being unsustainable under any likely current scenario. 

The problem isn't that no one anywhere has a job in academia; it's that far, far fewer good, stable, middle-class jobs in some parts of academia exist than qualified folks who want those jobs. 

There are more faculty positions than ever before in the whole of US academia.  However, the faculty job growth is in areas that many people don't view as being a legitimate college majors (e.g., engineering, criminal justice, nursing, computer science) and the areas where many, many people want jobs are losing the good jobs (e.g., many humanities fields).

The shift from general education being an in-house endeavor for most institutions to students arriving with college credit (AP, dual enrollment, CC transfer) ready to start their majors that have few general electives is another huge blow to the institutions that were primarily about a liberal arts model of college education that is 1/3 general education, 1/3 major, and 1/3 general electives.  The jobs teaching the general electives and general education (usually in the humanities and some of the social sciences) are just gone.  Even the adjunct slots are going away in many places where the general education courses were already assigned to the army of adjuncts in an effort to be cheap enough that students gaming the system would choose there this semester to keep the doors open.

At this point, the method of funding the institution matters more than almost any other factor in keeping the doors open.  The institutions that are primarily relying on currently enrolled students to pay the majority of the costs of running the institution are just hosed (and that's not limited to the tiny places we only learn about as they appear on the Dire Financial Straits thread).  The institutions that have a budget mostly funded by a combination of income streams not directly tied to current enrollment are much more likely to be around in 10 years. 

That surviving group is not just the elite big places we all know, but includes also the work colleges and some of the unique smaller places that have shepherded their resources well over the decades and therefore have not only a healthy endowment, but also a fantastic network of alumni and friends who ensure that tuition can be much less than the cost of attendance.

I'm not in any way bitter about leaving academia for a fabulously cool job that uses my PhD, is where I want to live, and pays enough that I have no money worries.  I am extremely worried that people are underinformed about the wide span of academia and what going to a lesser place may really mean in terms of job stability.

I'm sure you would be a great no-nonsense administrator or productive faculty member, if you end up back in academe at a place that is not like super-dinky. But in any case, I'm glad you found a happy space.

[Harlow2]

[/quote]

Which means more evening and weekend classes, among other things. How many faculty are going to embrace that?
[/quote]

This is common practice for many graduate professional programs.  The Ivy I attended for grad school offered at least one evening class out of the 4 we took each semester, and the program at my state university has both evening and Saturday sessions. Some undergrad classes are also in the evening, even for full time students. As long as faculty schedules are reasonable we've managed well.

[apl68]

Which means more evening and weekend classes, among other things. How many faculty are going to embrace that?
[/quote]

This is common practice for many graduate professional programs.  The Ivy I attended for grad school offered at least one evening class out of the 4 we took each semester, and the program at my state university has both evening and Saturday sessions. Some undergrad classes are also in the evening, even for full time students. As long as faculty schedules are reasonable we've managed well.
[/quote]

Some MLS programs also have evening classes, either in-person or synchronous online.

[marshwiggle]

This is common practice for many graduate professional programs.  The Ivy I attended for grad school offered at least one evening class out of the 4 we took each semester, and the program at my state university has both evening and Saturday sessions. Some undergrad classes are also in the evening, even for full time students. As long as faculty schedules are reasonable we've managed well.

Some MLS programs also have evening classes, either in-person or synchronous online.

My point was that if lifelong learners become the norm, in-person weekday daytime classes will become the exception rather than the rule. As someone else pointed out, online classes may become the most popular option.

[Hibush]

There are still going to be many other issues about teaching "lifelong learners", which will require significant changes from the status quo:

• Students may not have taken the "prerequisite" course or did so 20 years ago.
• Students may not be interested in a major; rather they want to take whatever courses interest them.
• Related to the point above, assignments, exams, etc. that are designed for students in a program may not suit people studying for interest.
• Even with online classes, the academic term schedule may not be ideal.

The point is, that serving that "non-traditional" audience will almost certainly require significant changes to not only how faculty teach, but to what they teach as well.

There will be considerable demand from "lifelong learners", so there is clearly opportunity there. This list is a good start on why regular undergrad programs are poorly designed to meet their needs. There is a variety of venues providing such training, including community colleges, social non-profits, for-profit trade schools, Cooperative Extension and more. There's no coherent structure to that, so a "returning student" is likely to have more trouble finding what they need than the high school senior looking at colleges.

What part of this demand can effectively be met by what we call the higher education sector? Which audiences are the best match for which kind of institution? To what extent will PhDs who enjoy teaching provide the education?

Community colleges are great at some of these. People who left college, or never started, because of other obligations, can enroll part time and start getting the basic courses done even with a job and family.

However, there is also demand for advanced material for those who completed college and are working. CCs are not the right venue.  The "Executive MBA" was developed for those moving up the corporate ladder. It serves a very specific audience, and has been a money maker for business schools that already have the faculty in place. What about training people who are in local government, who suddenly need to know a bunch of law, human resources, infrastructure planning and maintenance? Who teaches them, and where?

[mahagonny]

Overall, however, I don't see an apocalypse. The sad sack stories get all the attention, and sadly, too many members of the fora, the CHE readers, and insidehighered readers, for some reason or another*, prefer to focus on the failures in our industry, as opposed to the institutions that have been quietly humming along with minimal drama.

But here's the problem: your provost is saying the same thing, and when the drama comes along he says he attempts to quell it by saying 'our faculty don't need money and benefits. They are already financially solvent. They teach because they want to give back to the community.' Then when he wants to say 'higher education is underfunded' the state legislators are in a position to say 'you just told us you're getting your teaching done through acts of charity.'

[mahagonny]

con't

* My theory is a lot of people who have left the higher ed industry or could never break into it in the first place, harbor bitterness and resentment, and get a little satisfaction in thinking that the well is being poisoned for the rest of us who still drink from the well and are doing OK. Yeah, the water tastes funny, but it's not killing us.

(expressing myself coarsely)
Sure, some express themselves bitterly, but the plan is so often to run the operation on the trained labor of so many who will never 'break into it' as you put it. Thus academia is its own problem in creating people to be disposed of so it will be intolerant of criticism from either within or outside, and the adjunct faculty are both simultaneously. They are supposed to leave after the career didn't work out. That's the advice given them.
It's not that much a matter of wanting to poison a well. It's more a matter of surprise you've been getting this much sympathy. The word among those who are bona fide lifers is that higher education has been 'underfunded.' Compared to what? Compared to 1970, when everything cost less and there was no shortage of students? Get a grip, folks. Law of probability should tell us that public funding is as likely to be reduced going forward as be increased. I accept this. So who's bitter?
Polly_Mer and others of her ilk are bitter from managing adjuncts who are paid poverty scale. Literally, money for gas and maybe your electric and heating bill. Not surprising. How does anything good come of that, for anyone?
Whereas, too, many colleges have more buildings and property than they need and take full advantage of real estate and other tax breaks, there is probably trouble coming, and not tons of bleeding hearts.
On another thread someone is talking about checking out the market while already on the tenure track. Sure, it can make all the difference to be able to leverage a better deal. I have a friend, a lovely man, who retired from our department 30 years ago. He's collected well over a million in pension so far, excluding health benefits, and still going strong. And he wasn't hurting prior to that. State university. When it runs into the trouble it's the taxpayers who cough up. Going to keep this kind of thing going? Who do you expect to be in your corner?