Predictions For The Future Of Higher Education

In the documentary, “Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk,” explains how going to college is part of the American dream and is a rite of passage. Nowadays, college education is a necessity to survive and reach to middle class. Unfortunately, in this documentary it is mention how teachers concern more on conducting research to increase their pay rather providing quality teaching for the students, which is clearly unfair. The main issue that higher education consist of is the cost of it. In the first article, it stresses how college tuition’s prices have soared sky-rocket over time and makes it very difficult for people to afford this privilege. In the second article, it is about how which college one attends to makes a difference in

All Students, Regardless of Social Status, Race, Gender, or Minority, Have Equal Opportunity to Pursue a High Quality Education

Online degrees are becoming an ever more trendy method to receive a college education and many students are switching to online education due to the quality of material, ease, and the level of flexibility in distance education programs. Recently, the internet has developed into a reliable capital of information for college seekers. Everything from applying for financial assistance to taking a course can be done online. Now, a student can even obtain online degrees from one of many schools offering online education as a practical choice to a traditional classroom education. There’s a load of information regarding online education, and distance education is becoming increasingly popular for students everywhere.

Research indicates a steep upward trend in the cost of higher education throughout the 20th century. In recent decades, America has witnessed a widening gap between inflation and tuition. An incoming freshman at a typical college incurs charges for tuition, university fees, books, room and board,

Getting into college are the goal for many students, yet MOOCs are a much cheaper option for students who are ready for the material and the challenge. Cristina mendoza is one of three students, along with James Gregory, and Hugh Gallagher, who’s goals are to go into into a good college and acheive success in life. She is one of many smart and diverse people who are capable of completing a MOOC. There are many things, such as her acceptance of her diverse nature, her smarts, and uniquness of her work shows that she is the most capable of taking part in and completing a online learning environment successfully.

Even with these disadvantages, Massive Open Online Courses are still a positive aspect for the current and future online students because with the free and easily accessible MOOCS classes, perspective online students have an alternative to education and it’s free! In order for the online universities to stay competitive, it is likely that MOOCS may force online universities to significantly lower online courses that are for credit (Casement, 2013).

“We are now taking the lead because for too long the public school system in Camden has failed its children”, exclaimed Chris Christie, the standing Governor of New Jersey. On the one hand, The New Jersey Public School System was awarded number 1 as the best system in the nation by 2012 Education State Ranking (Morgan, 2011). Yet on the other, only 2 percent of the graduates from Camden High School scored high enough on the SAT’s to be considered college prepared. This blatant inconsistency echoes the hyper-polarization of wealth and indigence throughout not only the state of New Jersey, but also the country as a whole. In response to this crisis, NJ’s Governor Christie has proposed the Opportunity Scholarship Act, which would stimulate competition between schools and in turn boost the quality of education. The act would create this competitive open market by providing scholarship funds to eligible low-income children who attend a chronically failing school district in order for them to choose to attend an alternative public or non-public school.

The overwhelming cost for higher educational institutions is causing a huge concern over whether higher education will be an attainable financial concept to the ordinary student in the upcoming years. Many Americans now tend to believe that the path to obtaining a degree has turned into distraught with financial traps. Recent studies done by the U.S. Department of Education show that “college tuition and fees have ballooned 1,120% since 1978. A year of college tuition for

The report shows that even though “state support for higher education increased by 13 percent from 1982 to 1998, tuition and fees increased by 107 percent over the same interval” (“Losing Ground”). At the federal level, while “more than fifty percent of federal financial aid was in the form of grants in 1982-1983, by 2002-2003 grants made up only forty percent of such aid,” Ronald Ehrenberg and Michael Rizzo state in “Financial Forces and the Future of American Higher Education,” which appeared in the July-August 2004 issue of Academe (Ehrenberg). They add that “during the mid-1970s, the average Pell Grant covered about 46 percent of the average costs, including room and board, of attending a public college or university. Last year, the average grant paid for less than 30 percent of the costs” (Ehrenberg). Low-income students are being squeezed out by middle- and upper- income students for available school

In a study conducted by the Association of Higher Education Facilities (APPA) over a period from 2003-04 until 2012-13, the average instate tuition at America’s 52 top public Universities has gone up 31%. The new rates are effectively quadruple the tuition 25 years ago, while the average income has only increased 50%. The effect of this disproportionate rise in tuition means Americans must either save longer, or finance a greater portion of their education that in the past. During the same 25 year period, on average need based grants, such as Pell, went from covering approximately 75% of an education to only about 33%. This means that families are paying two and a half times as much for an education today as opposed to 25 years ago (2014, p. 31).

The primary responsibility of the federal government in higher education is to ensure equal educational opportunities. This is accomplished through enforcement of equal opportunity in education through civil rights rules, regulations, and litigation; and, through the creation and support of a variety of federal student assistance programs (Longanecker, 2008). The federal government has set policies that provided funding for those who could not afford to attend an institution of higher learning in the past. At one point higher education was limited to those with privileged background but with programs that included the G.I. Bill and the Pell Grants introduced by the federal government, a college education was open to greater number of individuals. Even though it is thought that legislation is the guiding light of public policy, but at the federal level, appropriations of law greatly shapes the U.S. government’s role in higher education (Longanecker, 2008). This is seen with the budget and appropriations process and how it has had a significant influence of the federal financial aid policy which has affected higher education and the funding of students. This has allowed low-to middle -income individual to attend. Higher education became a ladder to opportunity (Mettler,

The tuition increases have come in response to the lack of federal funding to universities, leading them to find their own way to provide for their upkeep. “Recent increases in university tuition fees are part of a new entrepreneurial trend in higher education in which institutions are expected to generate more of their own revenue” (Quirke). The universities have decided that since they can no longer look towards federal funds to fuel their costs of maintenance and revenue, they must find a new route towards attaining much needed funds, and they have chosen to

“Nearly one half of all college-qualified, low-and moderate-income high school graduates are unable to afford college. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, 4.4 million high school graduates will not attend a four-year college, and about 2 million will not attend no college at all” (“Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance 2002”). The increasing cost of college tuition is both a personal problem for many and a public issue as well. The rise in college tuition prevents students from getting the education they need, prevents students with limited options, and prevents the unemployment rates to increase.

One of the most interesting developments in the education space within the last several years, with regard to leveraging online spaces, is the advent of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). GXM proposes to conduct a pilot MOOC focused on Technology Transfer with one of the Nation’s

In many schools, online classes are becoming more available to students. Recent studies show that the use of online classes has been rapidly increasing over the past three years. Currently, there are a total of 6,700,000 students enrolled in all different variations of courses