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In today’s issue: The four storylines that will shape 2025; what happens when students live in a college desert; and other predictions for higher ed.
🎉 This month marks the 5th anniversary of the launch of Next as a newsletter. I’m grateful for the 138,000+ subscribers who get this email or the slimmed-down LinkedIn version. I hear from so many of you who respond to my welcome email asking for what you want from Next.
In reading those messages, I know that there are two primary groups of readers. One is parents and counselors who want to know more about what’s next for their kids, especially when it comes to college admissions; the other is college leaders and faculty members trying to navigate what’s next for higher ed.
Writing a single newsletter for very different audiences is challenging at times. As we enter a new year, I’ve thought a lot over the holidays about my goals for Next in 2025. In many ways, the mission of this newsletter is the same as it was when I started it five years ago: to write about what’s happening in higher ed broadly and what that might signal for the future of colleges and the world these institutions are preparing students for.
This isn’t a newsletter solely about admissions, nor is it one focused only on innovation in higher ed. It’s a mix of both, and no matter where you sit, my hope is that you’ll find something useful, something that makes you think in most editions of Next in the year ahead.
Happy New Year.
THE LEAD
When I started at The Chronicle of Higher Education as a reporter in the late 1990s, different groups of reporters would gather with the top editors a few times a year to pitch story ideas for the coming months. Although not all of our pitches turned into stories, the exercise was helpful in that it required me to look ahead and think about the storylines on my beat.
And that’s what I’m doing today with this first edition of Next for 2025. Ever since the pandemic hit in early 2020 and upended our lives, I’ve tried to refrain from crystal balling too much at the beginning of the year.
With that said, I think 2025 will be a year of a great reckoning for higher ed, one where it faces the consequences of its past missteps.
That might sound like I’m worried about the year ahead for higher ed. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. I find myself feeling remarkably hopeful because I think some institutions will feel that the financial, demographic, and political trends already taking shape well before this year started will allow them to finally break free of their legacy models.
This will be the year of a reset for those institutions. It won’t happen at most colleges, but it will at enough that we can finally point to a few more examples than the usual suspects for innovation in the sector.
Here are four storylines I’m following closely as the year begins:
1️⃣ THE TRIFECTA IN WASHINGTON. Not sure higher ed is ready for what’s coming with the GOP fully in control of Washington: higher taxes on big endowments, restrictions on foreign students, and budget cuts across agencies that supply a pipeline of research dollars to universities.
All three will hit the elite private universities that lawmakers in both parties love to hate, although flagship publics will also be hurt by less spending on research if that comes to pass.
If this were 30 years ago, the lobbying associations that represent various sectors of higher ed in Washington would band together to fight back. Not only are they in a weakened state themselves these days, but in recent years each of the major associations has looked after the best interests of their own members, not higher ed as a whole.
The big picture: The Ivy-plus institutions with their tens of billions in the bank will be fine, even if they have to pay a bit more tax on those dollars and have their presidents hauled up to Capitol Hill to defend themselves.
What to watch: The role of Washington in higher ed. Federal support for higher ed remains stuck in the late 1960s view of the original Great Society’s Higher Education Act. That landmark legislation largely favored legacy institutions and traditional full-time students.
There’s an appetite now on both sides of the political aisle for something different. Where that leaves us exactly with this next Congress and Education Department remains unclear.
Two areas I’m tracking: The talk about accreditation that focuses more on the outcomes of institutions, particularly in the job market. And the use of federal work-study dollars that could flow to hands-on learning opportunities off-campus—the kind of experiential learning that’s largely reserved right now for students with financial means.
2️⃣ THE ROOF IS LEAKING. The mid-aughts were a boom time for campus construction: nearly 90 million square feet of space were built on campuses just between 2004-2006, according to Gordian, a construction consulting firm.
If you own any sort of property, you know what happens after 20 years? Things start to fail.
The “age of plant” at colleges, a metric that the bond-rating agencies like Moody’s tracks, continues to tick up. The median for private universities has hit 15.7. In 2017, it was just under 14 years. Colleges face upwards of $950 billion in spendingover the next decade for deferred maintenance, facility upgrades, and construction projects, according to Moody’s.
The big picture: For years, most colleges tried to manage their growing deferred maintenance bill by using extra cash at the end of the year—their so-called margin (or profit in business terms)-—to fix the proverbial leaky roof. But in recent years, those margins are non-existent, and at some colleges, they have turned into deficits
What to watch: As enrollments shrink, space utilization will become a more popular term on campuses. In many cases, it will be cheaper for colleges to tear down older buildings than struggle to maintain them. In urban areas, colleges will sell off under-utilized buildings. We’ll also likely see more public-private partnerships (P3)—already popular in student housing— where private companies will manage or take over space for other uses.
3️⃣ THE DISAPPEARING STUDENT. There is this remarkable story out of Kansas of a public university president accusing a public technical college of “competing for students” (🧐 isn’t that what colleges do?). What’s more, this president warned of a hostile takeover as a result! That’s the new reality of a world where there are simply fewer 18-year-olds to spread around.
The big picture: I took a deep dive on the demographics of college freshmen in a December edition of Next, which The Chronicle of Higher Educationexcerpted this week. Everyone knows this is the peak high-school graduation year. But what continues to be largely ignored by too many higher ed leaders is that college-going rates are falling and the demographics are shifting of those who are going to college-—students who are increasingly non-white and low income.
What to watch: As Robert Kelchen pointed out this week, more than 40% of private colleges posted a loss in fiscal-year 2023; 20% of public colleges did. Some 50 colleges have been running deficits for eight or more of the last 10 years, according to his analysis.
The reaction I got to this week’s Chronicle excerpt that suggested deeper partnerships between colleges was this: never going to happen. It once was said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Persistent deficits, however, have a way of changing a college’s strategy.
Two things need to happen for colleges to form deeper partnerships and alliances. One is that leaders can’t assign this to someone on their team with an already packed schedule. They need to dedicate a person or team.
Second is culture. Institutions aren’t built for fundamentally working with each other. In many ways, it’s why they were created in the first place as their own institutions.
In an episode of Future U. last fall, I suggested colleges develop a “master plan” for their culture, much like they have strategic plans. I’ll be writing more about this in the year ahead as I develop a culture playbook for higher ed.
4️⃣ THE END OF COMPREHENSIVE U? Two big trends converging this year-—the rapidly shifting landscape of college athletics and graduate education—means we’ll see the end of more universities that are truly as comprehensive as they used to be. Expect to see the shuttering of majors, the consolidation of schools within universities, and a rethinking of athletics.
The big picture: Between the transfer portal, NIL (Name, Image, Likeness), and athletes as potential employees, the fact is fewer universities can operate a Division I athletics department that even comes close to being in the black. Even before all these changes most athletic departments were losing money.
There’s also the drop off in enrollment in all but the most practical of graduate programs at many universities. The talent pipeline for faculty of all kinds is drying up. About half of graduate students pursuing a Ph.D. will not finish, and among those who do, about half won’t land full-time jobs as professors. This bleak academic job outlook seemed to play a major role in Boston University’s decision last November to suspend admissions in a dozen humanities and social-science disciplines.
What to watch: This is perhaps the reckoning that’s most needed—a much-needed differentiation in the market.
Instead of every college trying to be like the one across town or another rung up the ladder in the rankings, the fiscal and demographic realities will require institutions to figure out where they want to “play” in the decade ahead.
Until now, such realities haven’t been enough to push colleges and universities to shift course. But coming changes in the Carnegie Classifications, and the likely resulting impact on how states fund public colleges and how U.S. News classifies colleges, may finally be enough of an incentive.
🚨 At least twice before, higher ed went through a period of rapid change in response to shifting societal needs and disruption in the economy.
The first was in the years after the Industrial Revolution, when hundreds of colleges closed, but many new ones—including today’s land-grant universities—opened to serve the needs of a society that was being mechanized.
The second was in the late 1960s, as the Baby Boomers were graduating from high school and the Great Society programs of the Johnson era encouraged higher education to expand to the comprehensive “system” it is today.
Perhaps we’re in the third era now—one where as David Brooks pointed out in his much-discussed cover piece in The Atlantic last month—there’s a new “meritocracy.” This new meritocracy will help “each person identify, nurture, and pursue the ruling passion of their soul.”
Probably overly optimistic and simplistic on the part of Brooks, but what if we had more institutions/programs/pathways after high school that better matched up with the goals of students and their families?
That’s the driving time to the nearest public two-year college in Texas that researchers found is a barrier to completion for Black, Hispanic, and lower-income students, according to a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.
White, Asian, and higher-income students who live in so-called “community college deserts” will gravitate toward a four-year college, no matter how far. They’re more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree, while Black, Hispanic, and lower-income students forgo college enrollment altogether.
SUPPLEMENTS
⛺️ The Future of Boot Camps. Last decade, boot camps that provided needed skills in short-term programs were all the rage. Now as Kathleen deLaski writes in a LinkedIn post they are dying off. Why? She blames four forces, including the financial model and a slowdown in tech hiring, but also notes that colleges, and not external players, might be “best positioned to deliver the powerful model” of short intensives for job specific skills. (LinkedIn)
🔗 A Different Kind of Transfer. Jay Hartzell sent shock waves through Texas this week when he announced he’s leaving the presidency of the University of Texas at Austin for the same job at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. UT is four times as large as SMU. A decade or two ago you would have never seen a move like this in higher ed, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to run a major public research university in this political environment. As a result, Hartzell, who has confronted several controversies in his time at Austin, decided to transfer. (The Texas Tribune)
🔮 Four Predictions About Higher Ed. I avoided looking too much into the crystal ball above. Sure, my term “storylines” is probably a euphemism for predictions, but James Murphy actually made four predictions in this piece in Town & Country. If you can’t get beyond the paywall (try Apple News if you have it), I’ll let you know what they are: 1.) The Department of Education is not going to disappear. 2.) The “Better FAFSA” is and should remain better. 3.) Things will remain tough for all colleges, but closures will remain rare. 4.) Figuring out your chances of getting into a college is going to keep getting harder. (Town & Country)
