LVAIC Continues Facing Higher Education’s Future Learning Series with Program on Demography in Higher Education
April 15, 2019, @ 4:39 PM
In order to commemorate 50 years of collaboration, LVAIC is hosting a year-long learning series regarding the future of higher education. The second event in this series took place on Friday, April 12, 2019 at Lafayette College. The focus of this event was on Demography in Higher Education and hosted Dr. Nathan Grawe, Professor of Economics at Carleton College and author of Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education.
Grawe addressed the ways in which major demographic shifts are going to impact the higher education industry over the next 5 years. The migration of traditional college students to the northeast United States will experience a drastic decline. Paired with declining fertility rates and a decreasing population of high school graduates in the northeast United States, the colleges and universities in LVAIC will rapidly realize the impacts of these changes. In the mean time, minority populations are becoming the majority and college-age populations are growing on the west coast. While colleges are tapping new populations, including international students and more diverse populations, the price competition that this creates will lead to a zero-sum game. This has led to the rapid closure of numerous colleges and universities in the northeast United States as these effects begin to take shape.
Following the keynote address, LVAIC’s staff and Grawe facilitated a workshop for participants. In this session, attendees were seated with others from their home campus and asked to work together to develop a list three ways in which their campuses will be different in 2025. They were then mixed with peers from different campuses in their same roles and tasked with addressing how their work will need to be different in order to meet the challenges discussed in the first conversation.
The next topic in this series is focused on access and affordability and will take place on Thursday, May 30, 2019 at Muhlenberg College from 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM. The focus of this program is Access & Affordability: Flipping the Conversation. Exploring what it will take to attract, enroll, and graduate the students of tomorrow. Moving from asking “Are students ready for our campus?” to asking “Is our campus ready for students?” The program will host a panel of experts on this topic, including the following:
- Martin Kurzweil, Director of the Educational Transformation Program at Ithaka S+R (Moderator)
- Cornell B. LeSane, Vice President for Enrollment and Dean of Admissions, Alleghany College
- Robyn Piggott, Chief of Staff to the President at Franklin & Marshall College
- Carl J. Strikwerda, 14th president of Elizabethtown College
