New Economy and Changing Demographics that Will Impact Professional, Continuing and Online Education
Higher education is at the crossroads of economic, demographic, technological and global change. The U.S. higher education system has long embraced a degree-based model that was designed to improve the nation’s manufacturing, agricultural and transportation infrastructure. The Morrill Land-Grant Acts of 1862, while creating the land-grant colleges, also established the 17 historically black colleges and 30 American Indian colleges. Land-grant institutions also were among the first to admit women to higher education. While these groundbreaking acts have served our nation well and were foundational as the world moved through the internet and mobile economies, the dependence on them is likely to be less, as much of the world moves to what has been coined the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) by Klaus Schwab, the executive chairman of the World Economic Forum.