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Note:

I have knowingly and purposefully taken some liberties with the APA formatting within this paper.

Abstract

A perfect storm has been building within higher education. Numerous, powerful forces have been converging that either already are or soon will be impacting the way higher education is offered and experienced. This paper focuses on one of those forces – the increasing price tag of obtaining a degree within higher education. It will seek to show that what goes up…must come down. Some less expensive alternatives are already here today; but the most significant changes and market “corrections” appear to be right around the corner. That is, higher education is a bubble about to burst.

Introduction

A perfect storm has been building within higher education. Figure 1 depicts some of the numerous powerful forces that have been converging that are – and/or soon will be – impacting the way higher education is offered and experienced.

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Figure 1. Some of the elements of the perfect storm in higher education.

This paper will focus on one of those forces of the storm – the increasing costs of obtaining a degree within higher education. It should be noted that in this paper, the “costs” of obtaining an education are typically from the student’s perspective – that is, on the amount of money a student has to come up with for tuition, fees, room and board. As Romano & Djajalaksana (2010) state, “When we say that the public is worried about the rising cost of higher education we almost always mean the price paid by the student and not the real or full cost of educating that student.” (p. 4)

This paper will attempt to outline what has been occurring in the area of the cost of obtaining an education and will attempt to show that the predominant model within higher education is not sustainable. For example, the colleges who are able to offer courses with only 15-20 students per classroom is excellent, but it appears that only the wealthiest people will be able to afford that form of teaching and learning environment in the future.

The Problem

“In public higher education, prices are increasing, costs [for the institutions, not the students’ net costs] are remaining fairly steady, and subsidies are declining.” (Delta Project, January, 2009, p.2) Similarly, “prices are increasing faster than costs at most private institutions; and the proportion of costs paid from institutional subsidies is declining.” (Delta Project, January, 2009, p.3)

For most students, the net effect of these trends is that with each passing year, there continues to be an upward movement of the price of obtaining a degree, as seen in Figure 2.

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Figure 2. Tuition and fees have been climbing for years.

This would not present such a dilemma if the average family’s ability to pay was keeping up with these increases. However, this is not the case. Figure 3 illustrates that there is a growing gap between the family’s ability to pay vs. the cost of obtaining a degree (Lewin, 2008, para. 2).

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Figure 3. College tuition continues to outpace median family income.

As a result, students are taking on a greater amount of debt. Hinze-Pifer and Fry (2010, para. 1) at the Pew Research Center confirms this trend as well:

Undergraduate college student borrowing has risen dramatically in recent years. Graduates who received a bachelor’s degree in 2008 borrowed 50% more (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than their counterparts who graduated in 1996, while graduates who earned an associate’s degree or undergraduate certificate in 2008 borrowed more than twice what their counterparts in 1996 had borrowed, according to a new analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data by the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project.

Figure 4 illustrates the growing debt burdens that students have been bearing.

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Figure 4. The average debt load has been steadily increasing for American students.

In fact, student debt has been mounting for years:

According to Mark Kantrowitz, a financial aid expert and publisher of , the United States has an $830 billion national student debt load – which recently surpassed total credit card debt for the first time in the U.S. – and this could mean that parents are still paying off their own loans when it comes time to send their children to college (Sentementes, 2010, para. 13).

Not only is the average American family unable to keep up with the percentage increases in the cost of obtaining an education, but Figure 5 illustrates Schneider’s (2009, p. 1) assertion that “college tuition costs are rising much faster than inflation.”

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Figure 5. College tuition is rising at a faster rate than the rate of inflation.

Reynolds (2010) makes this phenomenon more personal when he points out a costly, but increasingly common type of scenario:

A New York Times profile last week described Courtney Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University with nearly $100,000 in student loan debt – debt that her degree in Religious and Women's Studies did not equip her to repay. Payments on the debt are about $700 per month, equivalent to a respectable house payment, and a major bite on her monthly income of $2,300 as a photographer's assistant earning an hourly wage.

The figures above show that this is not just a 1-3 year type of occurrence, but rather this phenomenon has spanned decades; and the forecast, at least at this point, is not a good one. Budgets are tightening due to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and most experts say these cost hikes are destined to continue for years to come. (Lumina, 2010, p. 6) Lindsay McCluskey, president of the United States Student Association – which keeps a close eye on the affordability issues affecting its constituency – concurs. “Overall, the picture is pretty grim in terms of college affordability,” she says. “Most of the (aid) programs are not keeping up in terms of cost.” (Lumina, 2010, p. 6)

The Other Side of the Coin

Not everyone has the perspective that costs are too high. On the other side of the coin, Svorny (2010) focuses on what is happening in California and argues that “the state's prosperity rests on public policies that encourage economic activity, not on heavy subsidies to higher education” (para 2). Svorny argues that students can bear more of the burden, and not the already-struggling state of California.

Also, many professors, deans, and members of administrations argue that providing an education – because it is so labor intensive – is, and will continue to be, an expensive endeavor. Some administrators point to the increase in healthcare-related costs, increased costs due to technological innovations, and other market forces. For example, Archibald & Feldman (October, 2010, starting at para. 9) argue that “the most important drivers of college cost are the technological forces that have reshaped the entire American economy”; they list items such as higher education is a service industry, it relies on a highly-educated workforce, and costs have increased due to the increased use of technologies.

Why is the Issue of Increasing Costs Important?

According to Romano, R. & Djajalaksana, Y. (2010):

A college degree has become the arbiter of opportunity for entry into the American middle class (Carnevale, 2008); and, since most of the high wage jobs in the future will require a bachelor’s degree or higher (Dohm & Shniper, 2007), the inability to pay for it has the potential for causing a deep social divide within the country. In his February 2009 address to Congress, President Obama called attention to the problems of higher education and promised a policy agenda to restore the U.S. to its leadership role in student access and completion rates. For those within the higher education community, however, the rising cost of obtaining a bachelor’s degree and the widening gap between opportunities for the rich and poor have long been important topics of concern (for recent perspectives see, Ehrenberg, 2000; Vedder, 2004; Bowen, et al, 2005; Martin, 2005; Archibald & Feldman, 2008; and Wellman, 2008). In 2006, the highly publicized report from the Commission on the Future of Higher Education (better known as the Spellings

Commission) focused the nation’s attention on the high costs and low accountability of postsecondary education (U.S. Department of Education, 2006).

Taylor (2010, para. 2) asserts that higher education has never been more important to society or more widely desired. He posits that the skyrocketing cost of private education threatens to make college unaffordable for millions of young people and notes that if the trends continue, four years at a top-tier school will cost $330,000 in 2020, $525,000 in 2028 and $785,000 in 2035.

Others, such as Kelly (2005, p.1) assert that “social justice, equal opportunity, and economic reasons should be sufficient incentives for Americans to pursue equality in higher education.” Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economics professor and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, agrees with Kelly on this, asking the rhetorical question, “As prices rise, who is most affected? Low-income people. And many of them are going to say, ‘I just can’t afford it.’” (Lumina, 2010, p. 6)

Dickeson (2004, p.1) believes that if the cost issue is left unchecked, there will be more limited access and opportunity for aspiring college students – particularly low-income students – thereby “threatening America's future in the global, knowledge-based economy.”

The issue of a growing gap between rich and poor – as well as between whites and minority students – was the topic of a report from the National Association of System Heads from December 2009, with such excerpts as:

• Despite significant gains in college-going rates for all students, gaps between white and minority students have grown over time.

• Though the rate at which low-income students enroll in college immediately after high school has more than doubled since the 1970s, these students have yet to reach the college-going rate of high-income students 35 years ago.

• Once in college, minority students are much less likely than white students to graduate. Nationally, about six in ten white students earn bachelor’s degrees within six years, compared with only about four in ten minority students. (p.4)

It is in America’s best interests to see that all of its citizens have degrees: “Increased educational attainment as been shown to result in higher personal incomes, a better-skilled and more adaptable workforce, fewer demands on social services, higher levels of community involvement, and better decisions regarding healthcare and personal finance.” (National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, 2004 as quoted in Kelly, 2005, p. 1)

Kelly (2005) outlines several key trends that emphasize the importance of addressing higher education inequality:

• The U.S. population is becoming increasingly diverse. By the year 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau projects a 77% increase in the number of Hispanics, a 32% increase in African-Americans, a 69% increase in Asians, a 26% increase in Native Americans, and less than a one percentage point increase in the White population. The majority of the growth (in numbers) will occur among the populations that are the least educated.

• The U.S. has lost its leadership role as the most highly educated nation in the world. We are losing ground to several countries, particularly with respect to our younger population which represents the future workforce.

• History (from 1980 to 2000) shows that the educational attainment gaps between Whites and Hispanics, African-Americans, and Native Americans are widening. If these educational disparities are not addressed, anticipated demographic shifts will have a major impact on the educational attainment of the U.S. population.

• Minorities (Hispanics, African-Americans, Native-Americans, and Asians) earn substantially less than Whites at equivalent levels of education. These disparities, if unaddressed, will have a substantial impact on total personal income of the U.S.

• Hispanics, African-Americans, and Native Americans are underrepresented at each stage of the educational pipeline—indicating that most state systems of higher education are doing a poor job addressing these disparities. (pp.1-2)

Tidal Waves: Events in the Recent Past Seem to be Shaping Higher Education’s Future

Tidal Wave #1: Technology and the Internet.

The Internet has already caused major disruptions, leaving numerous industries forever changed in its wake. For example, consider what the Internet has already done in the recent past to such industries as:

The music industry:

• Where, according to Bangeman (2008), Apple’s iTunes passed Wal-Mart in early 2008 to become the #1 music retailer in the United States, using the Internet to distribute individual songs (vs. entire albums/CDs)

The newspaper business:

• Where websites have even been created to sound the death toll for a variety of newspapers around the country, such as Newspaper Death Watch

• Carey (2009, para. 1) asks an important question in What colleges should learn from newspapers' decline: “Newspapers are dying. Are universities next?” He goes on to say that the “parallels between them are closer than they appear. Both industries are in the business of creating and communicating information. Paradoxically, both are threatened by the way technology has made that easier than ever before.”

The movie rental business:

• Where those organizations who once dominated their business – but who clung to the status quo – are now in big trouble. Consider that Blockbuster, after a long decline in stock price and shareholder value, finally filed for bankruptcy in September of this year (Spector, 2010).

The bookstore business:

• Where , and Target Corp.'s online divisions have significantly disrupted the way books are sold and at what price (Associated Press, 2009)

• Where e-books and e-readers are once again bringing change to this industry

The hotel business:

• Where , , and and others have changed the game in that market and have altered pricing structures as a result

Retail in general:

• Where , eBay, and others have created online exchanges that essentially host the world’s largest garage sales and often represent the first “places” bargain shoppers go to find lower prices on items

So while disruption has already occurred in a variety of other industries, it appears that higher education is next (and arguably no longer just “on-deck, but is already at bat). Consider the following relatively new additions to the higher education landscape:

• :

“At a time when a year of college can cost as much as a luxury car, StraighterLine Inc. offers a cheap alternative: online courses starting at $138 a month, or $999 for a year of ‘101’-style classes typically taken by freshmen, ranging from mathematics to English to business statistics.” (Sentementes, 2010, para. 3) Per ’s blog on 12/10/10 as they look ahead to 2011: But here’s one thing that will not change. We are not planning to raise the costs of our courses.  With StraighterLine, you pay only $99 per month, plus $39 for every course you start.  You can take freshman and introductory-level classes and save thousands of dollars while you are earning a college degree. (This pricing structure is very hard to compete against.)

• :

“Udemy's goal is to enable anyone to teach and learn online. In less than 5 minutes, you can create your own online course on Udemy. You can upload presentations, videos, host live classroom sessions and write articles. It's fast, easy and free. By making it easy to teach online, Udemy also brings together the best teachers on the internet in an effort to educate the world. That means if you want to learn Multivariable Calculus, you can. If you want to learn Photoshop, you can. If you want to learn more about the metaphor for good and evil as presented by the dark and light colors in Star Wars, you can on Udemy.” (Udemy, 2010)

• iTunes U:

“A powerful distribution system for everything from lectures to language lessons, films to labs, audiobooks to tours – is an innovative way to get educational content into the hands of students.” (Apple, 2010)

• :

“Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education. As more and more high-quality educational content becomes available online for free, we ask ourselves, what are the real barriers to achieving a world class education? At Academic Earth, we are working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning. We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars. Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment in which that content is remarkably easy to use and where user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable”. (AcademicEarth, 2010)

• YouTube Edu:

“An institution can create their own channel or upload items to the common area within YouTube Edu. YouTube grants one channel per institution (that encompasses the entire campus)”. (YouTube, 2010)

• University of the People ():

“Is the world’s first tuition free online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education. The high-quality low-cost global educational model embraces the worldwide presence of the Internet and dropping technology costs to bring university-level studies within reach of millions of people across the world. With the support of respected academics, humanitarians and other visionaries, the UoPeople student body represents a new wave in global education”. (UoPeople, 2010)

• :

“The Virginia-based startup that is revolutionizing education. The co-founders wanted to create a service with the outrageous goal of empowering education for everyone. They had experience in the eLearning/LMS market, but needed to learn more about open education. They consulted with several thought leaders, professors, and students around what a next generation learning platform might look like. The result is NIXTY! NIXTY combines powerful technology with open education to meet the audacious goal of empowering education for everyone!” (Nixty, 2010)

Tidal Wave #2: People are beginning to question the value of a college degree.

While the disruptive impact of the Internet generated one tidal wave, another tidal wave is developing. Increasingly, due to the ever-increasing costs and the gap between costs and the average American family’s ability to pay (see Figure 2 above) – people are beginning to question whether college is really worth it, and are beginning to question the value/return on investment from attending college (Kamenetz, 2010, EDUdemic, 2010; Oloffson, 2009; Welsh, 2010; Reynolds, 2010; Young, 2010; Godin, 2010). Leadership in higher education needs to take this embryonic (but growing level of) questioning very seriously, as alternatives to the more traditional means of educating students are popping up on almost a monthly – if not weekly – basis. Leadership needs to work at keeping their institutions highly relevant and beneficial – bringing something distinctive to the table…so as not to become a commodity.

Finally, more people are beginning to ask whether higher education is a bubble about to burst (Alini, 2009; Barone, 2010; Christian, 2010; Reynolds, 2010).

Tidal Wave #3: Online-based marketplaces: A new alternative.

At some point in the future, major transformations – in how people obtain their formal and information learning – may take the form of online-based exchanges, also called marketplaces. In other industries, the Internet has set up a variety of exchanges between buyers and sellers; examples include: Craig’s List, eBay, , , and . The same type of phenomenon will most likely occur in higher education as well.

How can this be? Looking at such sites/services as OpenSesame, Knoodle, WiZiQ, Tuts+, Learn2Lingo, Bloomfire, Examville: The Education Marketplace, etc., it appears that this process is already underway. Institutions of higher education should not discount the disruptive impact of technology nor the power of Internet-based marketplaces (see Figure 6); such institutions must remain relevant and engaging.

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Figure 6. Online marketplaces could easily and further disrupt higher education’s landscape.

Institutions of higher education also are underestimating the pace of change, which is staggering. Figures 7 and 8 illustrate the increasing rate of adoptions:

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Figure 7. Note the increased pace of technological adoption.

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Figure 8. Again, note the increased pace of technological adoption.

And consider the fact that the iPod came out in October 2003 and had overtaken Wal-Mart as the #1 retailer of music in 2008 – less than 5 years later!

Potential solutions at the 50,000-foot level:

Some of the potential solutions that have been proposed to address this issue include:

• Christian (2010), recommends having the United States Federal Government – via the Department of Education – work with billionaires like Gates, Buffett Allen, and others to obtain even 1-2 billion of the fortunes about to be donated by these billionaires. These fortunes would be used to create interactive, multimedia-based, engaging, customized/personalized, online learning-based materials that could be offered free of charge to various age groups/cognitive levels. Creative simulations and animations could be built and offered — free of charge — to students throughout the world. The materials would be available on a variety of devices for maximum flexibility (laptops, notebooks, iPads, iPhones, tablet PCs, workstations, etc.). An amazing amount of digital scaffolding could be provided on a variety of disciplines. This could represent the Walmart of Education that Christian (2010) has been talking about since 2008.

• Implement 3-year degrees. From the section entitled, “If time is money, speed up”: Depending on the cost of the institution, estimates a three-year degree program has the potential to shave from $10,000 to $50,000 off the price of a college education. (Lumina Focus, 2010, p. 17)

• Leverage more open source systems and software. The use of Moodle as a Course Management System, for example, has the potential to shed tens of thousands of dollars off the books of a college or university for licensing a proprietary, commercial system such as Blackboard.

• Put more courses and educational materials online. Creating an engaging, interactive, multimedia-based course takes a lot of effort, time, and money. But once it’s built, the per-delivery costs are less than a face-to-face course. As Vedder (as quoted in Poliakoff, 2010, p. 4) asks:

Could not enormous savings be realized by expanding audiences via electronic means, by using taped lectures on multiple occasions, or by utilizing interactive computerized learning approaches in survey courses? A number of for-profit providers are showing that these techniques do have considerable promise, yet they are still used only sparingly in higher education.”

• Increase teaching loads.

• Increase the number of students per class.

• Make changes to the curriculum whereby there is a reduction in the number of courses students would need to take in order to obtain their degrees.

• Wellman (2008) offers the following recommendations:

…such a change includes 1) setting sharp-edged goals for degree attainment, 2) looking at spending and aligning it with those goals, 3) improving degree productivity by focusing on ways to reduce excess credits and shortening the time to degree, 4) improving  public accountability for costs, and 5) improving governing board oversight of spending.

• Whereas Schneider (2009, p. 1) recommends that: “Federal and state governments should tie funding to performance measures to introduce greater accountability” and that we “…should give parents and students the tools to shop carefully for colleges and universities whose performance justifies their costs”.

• The Center for College Affordability and Productivity (2010) recommends:

o Reducing administrative staff

o Cutting unnecessary programs

o Ending the “athletics arms race”

o Overhauling the FAFSA

o Eliminating excessive academic research

o Streamlining redundant programs at the state level

o Promoting collaborative purchasing (para 1-7)

While some support technology-based methods of lowering the overall costs involved in providing an education, there are many skeptics. Some would say that new technologies can help add some new things to what they do, but they do not think that such technologies can change the core of what their disciplines are and whether they can save colleges any money.  They argue that the essence of the teaching that they do is reading and discussing texts, students writing essays, and professors grading them.  Regardless of the format, the process is labor-intensive and time-consuming.  The issue, they say, is not delivering content. Rather, the problem is that good education requires close contact with small numbers of students in order to teach them how to read and write with sophistication, clarity, and insight.  Even team teaching, which can help deliver content in interesting ways, still requires low student-teacher ratios to be effective.

But Carey (2009) has a response to this type of perspective:

Some people will argue that the best traditional college courses are superior to any online offering, and they're often right. There is no substitute for a live teacher and student, meeting minds. But remember, that's far from the experience of the lower-division undergraduate sitting in the back row of a lecture hall. All she's getting is a live version of what iTunes University offers free, minus the ability to pause, rewind, and fast forward at a time and place of her choosing. (para. 10)

Change is not easy, but it appears to be inevitable

As change is not easy on anyone, administrators, deans, provosts and especially instructional technologists will need to have a great deal of emotional intelligence to lead through this tumultuous landscape. Technologists will need closer business relationships with subject matter experts (SME’s) while respecting the fact that faculty members and instructors are often at different spots along the change continuum: Some can’t wait to try technology ABC and they are excited. However, others may feel threatened, frightened, angry, or skeptical by what changes technology ABC brings to the table; and with one set of problems out of the way, another set may be settling in. So having some emotional intelligence – and patience – here is important.

But change is coming. The perfect storm has been brewing within higher education, and it does not appear that current models are sustainable. Further impetus towards change is a related and compounding issue for today’s graduates – the unemployment rate. Per Robinson (2010):

The unemployment rate for people with a college degree hit 5.1 percent in November – the highest it’s been in 40 years, the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. reported Friday. A total of 2.4 million college graduates age 25 and older are out of work nationwide, EPI economist Heidi Shierholz said.

The point here is that no one wants to fork over what amounts to a second mortgage/the price of a new home, only to discover that they – or their son or their daughter – cannot get a job. This is not the return on investment that colleges have been touting for years. The waves are already hitting the beaches, bringing massive change with them.

As Carey (2009) posits:

Perhaps the higher-education fuse is 25 years long, perhaps 40. But it ends someday, in our lifetimes. There's still time for higher-education institutions to use technology to their advantage, to move to a more-sustainable cost structure, and to win customers with a combination of superior service and reasonable price. If they don't, then someday, sooner than we think, we're going to be reading about the demise of once-great universities – not in the newspaper, but in whatever comes next. (para. 16-17)

In fact, change may be inevitable because, “What goes up, must come down.”

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