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The population makeup is changing, and education institutions will be forced to think in new ways, said Arthur Levine, president of Woodrow Wilson Foundation, as he addressed “Ed Schools and Teacher Education in the Context of Large Changes.”

All over the US, the demographics are “aging, changing color, moving, and coming from abroad,” he said. Full-time students who are 22-year-olds make up 25 percent of today’s university population. These students are looking for convenience, service, and high-quality instruction at low cost. They’re not interested in electives, clubs, and gyms. For them time and money are at a premium. “They want a stripped down version of the old university system.”

That makes them prime candidates for online degree programs. As the population migrates from the Northeast to the South and West, it’s crucial to keep an eye on California. The Golden State has a tidal wave of new students - 500,000 - who cannot be accommodated by the current universities and their systems. It will have to invent something new for all of these students and that will be the digital and online universities, he says.

As the economy has moved from industrial to information-centered, the focus is on outcomes not processes like the assembly line. A time-fixed based education model will need to be replaced by time-variable based instruction to keep up. In the information age, the focus is on learning rather than teaching, on outcomes and real-time assessments rather than high-stakes testing.

This new model gives students more choice as consumers, including personalized pedagogical styles that work best for them. Just in time learning replaces just in case learning. What’s important is continually developing skills and competencies over a lifetime.  Levine envisions a system whereby people carry lifelong passports of all of the competencies they’ve developed that have value to the individual and employers.

Meanwhile, the competition for education dollars has intensified as the baby boomers, who had made education the priority in the U.S. when they and their children were in school, have shifted focus to their needs in healthcare, elder care, and Social Security. 

Given these trends, education is under the microscope from the media, the government, and funders.  As the U.S. makes the transition from a national, analog, industrial model to a global, digital, information model, our educational institutions need to be fixed. The options: repair or replace. Nonprofits tend to work toward repair; for-profits aim to replace, he says.

Similar discussions have happened in the past. Levine described that in 1828, the state of Connecticut told Yale University that classical education was a waste of time, and Yale was not going to be funded anymore. Yale formed a committee and came back with a report, which said how much do we need to change and how soon? But others said you’re not asking the right question. The key questions: What’s the purpose of a college? What is the purpose of a school? What’s the purpose of education?

We’re asking those same questions now.

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The views expressed on this post are ours and do not necessarily reflect the views of NAIS.