Students who arrive at BGSU in fall 2020 will have a much different worldview than today’s students. What are their expectations for the college experience and how can we deliver? As the student body changes, our institution must reconsider everything from how students learn to where they want to live. That requires vision and agility. Will BGSU be ready?
Day 6, Sept. 2: Who are the students of 2020?
Sep 2nd, 2008 by strategicplanning
12:04 am - 9-3-2008
The demographic changes in the student body are inevitable and foreseeable. However, I don’t think what we postulate will be the personal concerns of freshman in 2020 is predicable. Their concerns about the environment and personal safety will depend upon what happens over the next 12 years. Prior to 9/11 did anyone predict what our current political/world situation would be? I do believe the general generational characteristics of the ‘millennial’ generation can be discerned and yet don’t believe that we as a university have adjusted accordingly. If BGSU cannot first keep up with the types of students we see now and expect to see in the next four years, we would be foolish to build systems to accommodate what we predict will be the dominant characteristics for 2020. We should consider how to build processes and systems to better accommodate such generational changes, whatever they may be. Building flexibility into our systems, constant incremental change, and ‘tinkering’ should be undertaken rather than accepting a particular student profile and proceeding. We have to be able to address the current ‘millennial’ situation before considering anything else.
For example in the chart provided, 27.9% of students reported submitting applications to six or more colleges and only 17.3% reported only submitting one application. Although these figures are probably accurate on a national scale, are they accurate for our BGSU student population? My peer-facilitator asked the students in my V class last week how many schools they applied to before coming to BGSU. The largest number of students had applied to two universities, with one and three schools being close behind. One student of the 29 reported that a friend had applied to seven colleges which the group expressed amazement at. What are the ‘application’ figures for the BGSU (heavily first-generation college or ‘my sibling went here’) student population? Other faculty teaching V classes quite possibly asked the same question as it was posed within the V-class Faculty Handbook as an example discussion point. It is possible that my class is not representative of the freshmen class as a whole. However, our students are not necessarily following national trends. Before deciding how we are to compete for students nationally and internationally, we should discern which profile elements follow national trends and where BGSU diverges in our current student population. If our pool of students differs dramatically from national trends, we need to know that and understand why. If we wish to pursue students applying to more than six universities rather than something more closely resembling our current student population, what will our yield be and by making that choice, will we lose part of our traditional base? I think this type of analysis can be done and changes can be pursued to address them but such approaches cannot be divorced from where we are now and our current student profile. We need to make continual adjustments and be able to react to such generational changes in an effective manner rather than choosing an arbitrary profile of what we think our students will be like in 2020.
12:01 am - 9-3-2008
The demographics of the average college student continue to change as more adults want to continue their education and all students, in general, want to further their education without having to further go into debt. If things continue to move in the direction they are going, students both today and in the future will have full or part time jobs and will value a University that is willing to provide a flexible and accessible course schedule for them. Even the traditional full time students are taking on part-time jobs and co-ops and are involved in many organizations, thus prompting a very great and very necessary demand for flexible and accessible courses.
One way BGSU can meet this need is to offer more courses and degree programs partially or fully online. As technology has advanced over the past 5 years, the internet is not only the information super highway, but also the communication super highway (i.e. blogs, wikis, podcasts, video chats, social networks, email, etc.) and thus a proven medium for a rich learning environment. The demand from students for online options is strikingly clear in the most recent Sloan–C survey (http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/survey/online_nation). The survey indicates that over the past 5 years, there has been a 9.7 percent growth rate for online enrollments, which far exceeds the 1.5 percent growth of the overall higher education student population. In addition, offering more online course options is a direct response to Goal #1 of the University system of Ohio — Graduate More Students.
The students of today and tomorrow desire flexible and accessible education that fits into their lifestyle rather than the other way around. As the Assistant Director of the Center for Online and Blended Learning, I have seen BGSU meet this challenge head-on by successfully supporting and adding more online courses and programs each and every year, however, the demand has continually outpaced the supply. Hopefully, as more colleges become aware of these needs, we will see an even greater increase in online programs that meet the demands of 21st century students.
11:27 am - 9-3-2008
I’m not sure the term “feminization of undergraduates” is a helpful description of the phenomenon of a decreasing male undergraduate population. I don’t know where the term came from, but I’d hate to see it catch on as a “buzz phrase” in higher education that starts popping up everywhere. I suggest that as an institution, we steer clear of it.