College admissions statistics that have been and are so critical to the high
tuition universities, have finally begun to show signs of substantial turbulence
in the university student marketplace. Even these purveyors of long-term student
debt and didactic level college education are beginning to privately worry a
change is underway! As human nature so often allows however, the prevailing
belief in campus administration offices everywhere, is that nothing fundamental
is really going to change. Not student loan availability. Not families with
equity to back the almost always needed student loans. Not tuition rates, except
that they will go up as always. Not government funding. Not students' sense of
economic reality. Not even GM (now Government Motors)!
All across the
academic world, universities are tracking results which indicate students who
felt sometimes heavy competition as they applied for admission to their choice
of schools, are, just a couple of months later after being accepted by one or
more of their choices, declining enrollment 'for financial reasons'. Colleges
online are coming of age. They have been questioned and tested. Now with
economic conditions worsening in many countries around the globe, students are
taking a breather while they explore the advantages of studying online. This
will have a viral effect over the next two years. The outcome for
brick-and-mortar campuses could be critical. How far students will go elsewhere
to seek more favorable university experience solutions, of course, remains to be
seen.
Students are learning, refreshingly, that there are options, yes,
even preferred options, to the insane level of student debt imposed on students
and their families for so many decades. There is always the community college
option to help save expenses for a couple of years. There is also the option of
colleges online. The advantages and freedoms of earning an on line degree can be
significant and very seductive, once experienced. Frankly, I see a paradigm
shift beginning. Unless a student needs socializing and, to put it like more
than one PhD educator I have interviewed has said, 'some high priced
transitional babysitting', most will have very little desire to return to their
previous campus-bound status.
The educational establishment's Pandora's
box has been opened. Once opened, as everyone has experienced, things will never
be the same. Even the 'kings men' can't make it so.
For the newly
developing online educational establishment to continue to impose similar
tuition rates, now that the decades long infatuation with student loans is
cracking as evidenced by this years trend reversing statistics, would appear to
be text book predictable self destruction. Competition will drive down tuition
rates. Why? How can it? To put it simply, absent the vestiges of the education
establishment's past, there is no fiscal reason or excuse for what was once
insanely high tuition. Any attempt will vaporize under the glare of the college
online buying publics' scrutiny. For too many years, establishment universities
have gotten fat and laughed all the way to the bank, as hard working graduates
and dropouts alike have labored under the load of their student loan paybacks
that I have personally seen amortized over thirty years, while unable to enjoy
the fruits of their labors, save for their children's college, and in recent
years even keep up with their mortgages! On line degrees are rapidly becoming
more appealing and bargains are beginning to appear...a college online buyer's
dream.
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