A recent report by McKinsey and Company issues a bold challenge: graduate ten million more students than currently projected over the next 20 years. This is the latest in a set of audacious challenges issued in the rough wake of all that ails higher education today. Like so many other such challenges, the McKinsey report is in response to the accumulating stack of challenges facing our nation’s colleges and universities, some long predating COVID and others exacerbated by the pandemic.
Much has been written on higher ed’s post-pandemic future – how institutions got to where they find themselves, the imperative to use the crisis as a springboard to leap forward into new organizational and operating models, and the danger of failing to do so and sliding backward into pre-pandemic models, strategies, and behaviors. COVID was a needed shock to the system and higher ed, in many respects, responded well. But further change is needed if US higher education is to restore the public’s confidence and trust, adapt and evolve to reach new audiences and create new pathways to degrees and credentials, meet the challenges of today and tomorrow, drive innovation and economic growth, prepare all graduates for success, demonstrate continuing relevance, and return to its place as a national asset and global leader.
The McKinsey report makes the point that bachelor’s degrees, associate’ degrees, and Title IV eligible certificates have been proven to be the most powerful enablers of economic mobility and individual empowerment in the US. It also confirms (as has been done every year, it seems, although somewhat surprisingly a counter-narrative continues) that a postsecondary degree has both significant monetary (e.g., lifetime earnings) and non-monetary benefits (e.g., better health outcomes and greater civic engagement), as well as compounding beneficial effects (e.g., GDP gains, increased tax payments, reduced resilience on social services) on the local, state, regional, and national economy. Indeed, and once again, a college education leads to higher standard of living, better quality of life, and even greater citizenship. A college-educated citizenry leads to a stronger economy and a stronger democracy. Beyond ensuring an adequate talent pipeline of skilled and work-ready graduates our nation needs today (and will need tomorrow), building both a stronger economy and a stronger democracy appear to be at the core of McKinsey’s call for producing ten million additional college graduates in the next 20 years.
The case is also reiterated (again, as has been done by so many others in recent years, issuing both a damning assessment and a clarion call) that the well-known benefits of a postsecondary degree are no distributed equally throughout society. Nor are they distributed equally across higher ed institutions. Perhaps the most damning evidence is seen at institutions that serve a significant share of underrepresented and low-income students, where disproportionately high percentages of enrolled students leave without a degree but with considerable debt.
The report points to the trend of declining enrollments at many types of institutions across the sector. The enrollment crisis many are facing is due largely to three factors: (1) a drop in the US birth rate, (2) changing perceptions about the value of a degree, and (3) devastating and in some cases ongoing impacts of the COVID pandemic. The declining postsecondary enrollment is happening at precisely the wrong time. The report finds that 86% of new jobs projected to be created through 2030 will require postsecondary education. These include jobs in healthcare, cybersecurity, and education. The projected talent shortage, unless steps are taken, represents a “significant risk to the nation’s public health, education, security, and global competitiveness.”
The report authors urge a two-step approach for America’s higher ed sector to (a) improve its value proposition and (b) extend the benefits of higher education to more Americans while creating more equitable economic mobility and a stronger economy. First, higher ed institutions must demonstrate they can successfully graduate their students before expanding their enrollments. Expanding enrollments of students from lower-income households, for example, should only be undertaken once it is shown that the achievement (graduation) gap for these students has been closed. Second, once these gaps have been closed, institutions should increase enrollment (and graduation) of the most vulnerable students (underrepresented, Pell-eligible, and low-income).
The cost? The McKinsey team suggests it could cost as much as $1.2T across all stakeholders, spread over the 20-year issued challenge horizon, but that this cost can be lowered through efforts to increase affordability and lower barriers to completion. This will also require, they add, commitments to be in place (and even tied to funding) to ensure that students both graduate and find gainful employment. This is a new paradigm in which higher ed institutions effectively share both responsibility (for student success) and risk (of losing funding). This will no doubt invoke reaction in the sector, particularly at those institutions (or among faculty groups) that have not yet embraced career readiness as an institutional obligation, part of the compact colleges and universities must make with their students.
The report closes with five decisive actions they suggest higher education funders and institutions could take to address barriers and achieve the goal of ten million additional college graduates in the next 20 years:
1. Prioritize the estimated 52.5 million potential adult learners without college degrees through creative support structures, greater schedule flexibility and degree pathways, and tailored instructional modalities.
2. Fill excess capacity in US universities, starting with the estimated 1.65 million open seats at top-performing institutions having high degree completion rates.
3. Deploy student-specific, data-driven interventions to improve access, close the 45 percentage-point gap in completion rates, and support students from enrollment through degree completion and into employment.
4. Guide students toward high-ROI, high-employment pathways. There are many, with 64% of postsecondary programs shown to have positive ROI within ten years.
5. Explore options to improve affordability through cost-efficiencies and new financing mechanisms.
On this last point, the former is likely to be nearing the limit for many institutions with few efficiencies remaining short of program elimination. But the latter is a wide-open new frontier with companies like Amazon, Boeing, Starbucks, Walmart, and others showing us the way. Also, suggestions to tie federal aid and state support to degree progression, timely graduation, and employment seem likely as part of the emerging dialog and policy discussions around affordability, access, and ROI.
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