A New Agenda for Higher Education

AGB Editor Julie Bourbon is attending the Foundation Leadership Forum and sends this quick update from meeting.

Plenary session: Higher Education's New Agenda
Michael M. Crow, President, Arizona State University
 
Michael Crow energized a plenary session with his predictions of the most significant challenges facing higher education in the next 10 to 15 years. Starting with a quick history of higher ed, then situating it in today's fast-paced, ever-changing world, Crow sees the future as one in which differentiation, not sameness, will be the driving force. The Arizona State Foundation: A New American University is leading the way in advancement.
 
Top 5 challenges has Crow sees them:

1. Capacity expansion. Who will meet demand and what resources will go to them?
2. Technology-based and international-based change. 
3. Reduction or elimination of state support, as medical expenses, prisons and more siphon off funding. Further, the percentage of personal wealth going to higher education is going down and will continue to do so. Donors are largely unwilling to continue to give based simply on headcount and historical models.
4. Emergence of mega-universities, global institutions (e.g., University of Chicago Business School in Singapore).
5. Speed of change -- financial, political, technological, cultural. Higher ed has not yet grasped the way that incoming students are culturally different from those in the administration.