Needless to say, 2020 has been an unprecedented year for higher education, as it has for nearly every other facet of our lives. With uncertainty around every corner, it’s more important than ever to stay up to date on what’s happening across t… [Read More...]

The COVID pandemic has created an existential challenge to higher education in the United States. As we have argued in earlier blogs, however, the cracks in the higher education business model were evident long before any of us had heard of the co… [Read More...]

In a blog last spring, I argued that universities needed to respond to the uncertainties created by the COVID pandemic by utilizing scenario planning to identify possible futures for their institutions and to develop strategic and operational resp… [Read More...]

Before 2020, higher education was faced with increasing financial challenges caused by declining demographics, a dwindling international student base, and numerous other issues. The COVID-19 crisis forced schools to transition their spring semeste… [Read More...]

As the higher education industry and the rest of the world are in the process of transitioning their face-to-face operations to remote, one thing is becoming abundantly clear: more colleges and universities are looking to upgrade their current lea… [Read More...]

In April 2019, I published an article with ESI attempting a prognostication on the future of US higher education. Little did I know that 2020 would be the most dramatic and unpredictable year ever in higher education. That said, I was pleasantly s… [Read More...]

At this point, few in academe are unaware of the digital divide—minority, low-income, and rural students and their families are severely restricted in their access to broadband internet connections and high-speed computing platforms. “…[O]nl… [Read More...]

Thoughtful planning has never been more critical for higher education institutions. The COVID-19 crisis coupled with the already difficult enrollment and financial challenges facing higher education is leading many institutions to engage in a deep… [Read More...]

Early this year, we at Optimal Campus began thinking about posting a series of blogs focused on what many perceived as a crisis in higher education.  Shifting demographics of potential students, rising costs, challenges to the value of higher edu… [Read More...]

Existential crises are not new to regional public universities. Three years ago, an article entitled “Public Regional Colleges Never Die. Can They Be Saved?” suggested that, while regional public universities are the “workhorses of a publi… [Read More...]