The future of graduate education: as graduate student demographics change, institutions also must change to keep pace

University Business, August, 2004 by John Ebersole

With regard to instructional planning, a mix of degree and other academic credit options (certificates and diplomas) will be needed. Formats will likely shift from traditional quarters and semesters to more hybrid, need-specific periods. Pressure will emerge for more year-round programs to accommodate these students; especially in competitive fields where time-to-completion will be a concern.

In the area of student recruitment, institutions will increasingly need to recognize that service and convenience are major competitive advantages. As the 200,000 University of Phoenix students have already demonstrated, when forced to choose between prestige and customer service, many prospective students can be expected to opt for the tatter. This has significant implications for staffing levels, training, hours of operation and overall institutional culture.

For the distance education student, administrators will need to recall that the regional accrediting bodies have adopted uniform standards regarding the services that need to be provided for geographically remote students. The expectation is that a distance teaming student should have access to all the student support services that are available to a student who attends classes on campus. This includes the library, financial aid, academic advising, career services, and bookstore.

Information systems will be needed that can track a student's progress through a variety of instructional formats and methods of learning--traditional terms, intensives, online, classroom, and so on. Higher education's traditional "assembly line" approach (whereby everyone proceeds through the teaming experience at a similar pace, receiving prescribed doses of content at standardized, pre-determined intervals) will decline in applicability.

Each graduate student will expect a unique program, that they have a voice in tailoring to meet specific needs in their professional and personal life. Planning, tracking and reporting this student's progress will become more and more complex.

The graduate student of the future will place increased value on an institution's career assistance programs. Instead of focusing only on initial job placement for graduating seniors, these services will be expected to continue to assist with career management over a student's professional lifetime. Those universities that rise to this challenge will not only be able to better serve their alumni, but also to identify and fill the lifelong learning needs of their graduates.

One of the great challenges with the growing movement toward remote access and part-time study will be that of community creation. Students who come to campus just one night per week, or only attend classes via the World Wide Web, will not likely develop the same attachment to the institution as that of on-campus, full-time students. This may have implications for institutional loyalty and future activity in alumni and development efforts. However, research is finding that a sense of community con be formed online, and those distant students, grateful for the opportunity to have had access to a university and its programs, can be quite proud of their affiliation. The growing number of universities providing online access will be well served to better understand and foster the methods by which such allegiance is being generated.