As quickly as artificial intelligence models develop, so, too, their impact across different facets of higher education. It may be dizzying, but here are some of the most prominent ways AI affects your school.

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Admissions

Artificial intelligence is poised to streamline the workload of both the applying student and the receiving admissions officer.

Students today can ask ChatGPT to create a 500-word response to an open prompt that they’d otherwise feel paralyzed to complete themselves. They can direct the bot to write a dramatic story about an adolescent overcoming a significant life event that includes references to a city of the student’s liking. Admissions officers already struggle to detect college applications’ authenticity, and the prevalence of AI language modeling will make plagiarism that much more difficult. While new software aims to combat applications littered with AI, some leaders believe the next step forward is introducing video prompts instead.

However, AI technology might be an antidote to the  increasing workload and turnover rate for admissions officers. Colleges have begun employing technology that can sift through student transcripts and create preliminary assessments on students’ acceptance likelihood. Allowing software such as Student Select or Sia to do the legwork of review helps officers manage their time and compartmentalize their priorities. Colleges to embrace AI software in admissions include Rutgers, Rocky Mountain College and Maryville University.

Cybersecurity

The education industry experienced a 576% increase in phishing attacks in 2022, according to recent Zscaler research. While phishing attempts could once be easily detected by grammatical and spelling mistakes and an awkward tone, communication written by ChatGPT appears more natural, and by extension, easier to trust.

Additionally, hackers are finding ways to leverage ChatGPT’s coding capabilities to hack security systems, tricking the AI into creating malware strains. However, just as bad actors are using the emerging technology maliciously, cybersecurity teams can use AI to test their defenses faster.

Student Exams

Not only can ChatGPT ace the SAT and AP exams, but it’s also stunning scholars in its performance on licensing exams. It passed the Uniform Bar Examination by a “significant margin,” approaching the 90th percentile of test-takers. Additionally, ChatGPT passed three exams associated with the United States Medical Licensing Exam with a 60% accuracy rate. GPT-4, on the other hand, answered medical licensing exam questions with a 90% accuracy rate. “I’m stunned to say: better than many doctors I’ve observed,” said Dr. Isaac Kohane, the test administrator, according to Business Insider.

The accuracy of ChatGPT is prompting professionals to explore how students can use the software to augment their work. The America Medical Association’s medical education innovation unit has begun exploring some foundational AI modules, and it is also collaborating with the National Academy of Medicine to host a workshop on AI in health professions education this spring.

Class curriculum

Allowing ChatGPT to do the legwork of writing preliminary drafts frees up time for professors to judge the content of a student’s work by their content and ideas rather than by their ability to communicate via proper grammar, style and structure.

“I’m changing all of my assignments to involve more high-level concepts and more integrative knowledge,” said Adam Purtee, an assistant professor of computer science, according to the University of Rochester.

It is heightening the level of work students can do, but it’s also streamlining professors’ administrative responsibilities.

“ChatGPT can be used to help professors generate syllabi or to recommend readings that are relevant to a given topic,” said Manav Raj, co-author of the study that discovered college professors’ high exposure to AI language modeling.

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Harvard has its own continuing education program that offers enticing degrees, certificates and courses, catering to students balancing a full-time job or even retirees who just want something intellectually stimulating to engage in.

However, these programs face a slew of challenges that are preventing higher ed leaders from truly capitalizing on this new market of hybrid learners, according to a new report conducted by Modern Campus in conjunction with The EvoLLLution, the Canadian Association for University Continuing Education (CAUCE) and the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA). The problems may also seem to be worsening.

“The future higher education institution is rooted in CE, but delivering on that promise requires both strategic and operational support from the institution,” said Amrit Ahluwalia, senior director of content and strategic insights at Modern Campus and editor-in-chief of The EvoLLLution, in a press release. “It is our sincere belief that the findings of this study will enable CE professionals to advocate for greater resources and allow them to be seen for the critical functions that their portfolio plays for institutions and learners alike.”

Conducted annually, the State of Continuing Education (2023) comprised the responses of 140 different institutions in January with directors and deans being the most common respondents.

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Strong interest / Weak application

Senior leadership is continuing to buy into their school’s professional, continuing and online (PCO) unit, 71% of respondents attested to that. A chief reason for this interest is probably correlated with the majority of respondents citing revenue generation (90%) and overall enrollment growth (76%) as key business drivers for PCO units. Adult learners were the most targeted demographic (95%) for PCO unit enrollment.

While it all seems optimistic in the abstract, lack of staffing (27%) was the most-cited primary challenge PCO units face to program expansion. When asked about general challenges, the administrative burden was cited most at 68%. Consequently, more than half of respondents don’t believe their institution is adequately staffed to meet their PCO unit goals (57%): only 22% of respondents believe they have the appropriate number of staff.

With the discrepancy in senior leadership support and appropriate staffing, there lies another big issue: Almost half the respondents this year do not find it easy for members of their institution to access enrollment data (46%), compared to the 34% of respondents who do. Moreover, 47% of the respondents themselves did not know PCO unit enrollment numbers when asked.

There is also still a considerable barrier for PCO unit students being able to attain college credits: 60% of respondents said that students cannot earn credit for enrollment in those offerings. Institutional barriers are the biggest hurdle to developing non-credit-to-credit pathways, which may have a lot to do with the administrative burden and lack of staffing illustrated earlier.

“While 41% of respondents agree that continuing education programming positively affects enrollments in traditional programming, 60% disagree that continuing education offerings are well integrated into the structure of the institution’s portfolio of traditional offerings,” according to the report.

Administrative strain, real-time data access and institutional barriers are worse than last year

Support for PCO units among senior leadership has increased by 5% compared to last year, but the issues schools are facing with its implementation are only growing. For example, respondents citing administrative burden as a challenge to expanding PCO units jumped 15% from last year. Additionally, 8% more respondents disagree that it is easy for members of their institution to access real-time enrollment data. Moreover, fewer respondents this year confirmed students taking PCO units can earn credit in those enrollment offerings and the institutional barriers preventing that have increased by 9%.

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Technology is uniquely designed to support educators in fostering a sense of belonging in the inclusive classrooms. It also has the potential to boost inclusion through anonymity. As the CEO of a tool designed to increase engagement in classrooms, I believe universities should prioritize these two factors when choosing technology.

1. Creating a culture of inclusive classrooms

Classroom culture in higher education is evolving as students enter universities with increasingly diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and expectations. Educators must establish a positive culture in inclusive classrooms that are equitable, inclusive, and respectful. To create an atmosphere of belonging, universities should cultivate a culture of open dialogue, with an emphasis on listening to and valuing all voices.

Empowering students to be curious and ask questions can create a safe space for them to engage in meaningful ways and express their unique perspectives. When educators truly listen to their students’ questions, thoughts, and needs, students are more likely to enjoy participating, ultimately creating a sense of belonging.

Through intentional efforts, universities can ensure their classrooms are places of learning and growth, where all students feel comfortable and accepted.

2. The role of anonymity in the classroom

In a lecture hall of 500 students, raising your hand can be incredibly intimidating—especially for introverts. It’s no surprise, then, that 72% of university students recently surveyed felt more confident participating in classroom discussions through anonymous engagement platforms. Anonymity can help create a more open and honest environment as everyone’s voice can be heard, rather than just the loudest in the room.

In particular, anonymity eases difficult conversations, as it allows for students to express their opinions and ideas without fear of judgment or intimidation. Anonymous tools also help facilitate open dialogue between students from different backgrounds, as they can reduce the potential for bias or discrimination.

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T Delfín, an educator at California State Polytechnic University , needed a way to increase participation in the classroom. In a case study, she noted that the fear of saying the wrong answer in front of peers prevents engagement, but anonymous tech tools reduce this fear and increase participation. Similarly, a study of online learning environments found that anonymity allowed students to be more honest and open with their comments and feedback.

Keeping these factors in mind, here are three things universities should consider when evaluating technology for inclusive classrooms:

1. 1. Accessibility: Ensure the tool is accessible to students and teachers alike. Students across cultural, age, ability, and demographics can have different experiences with the same technologies. Accessibility is a much more technical consideration than usability and relates to the visibility of text and the provision of audio versions for the visually impaired. Ensuring students with disabilities can see, hear, and understand how to use digital teaching tools should be at the top of your priorities list.
   2. Usability: You should also evaluate technology tools to ensure they are easy to use and understood by all students. Understanding how students from different cultures or age demographics may interact with some tools should also inform how you introduce tools into your practice. For example, some students assume a rigid hierarchy between students and teachers, while others are more likely to view educators as their peers.
   3. Security: A final consideration for classroom technologies must be security and the protection of user data. This includes evaluating the tools for vulnerabilities, ensuring data is encrypted and stored securely, and that user authentication is properly implemented. This should be the role of IT professionals at your institution.

When implementing engagement tools, university educators should be mindful of how their students will interact with the new technology. Tools should be user-friendly so that students will actually want to engage with the tools and, tangentially, the curriculum. While distractions may occur when introducing technology into inclusive classrooms, overall it can be used for good to create an environment where students feel safe, focused, and engaged.

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The tip first came from an unnamed source cited by The Information, alleging that “Microsoft has discussed incorporating OpenAI’s artificial intelligence in Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and other apps so customers can automatically generate text using simple prompts,” the article reads.

The company has reportedly been using OpenAI’s GPT technology to enhance users’ search results in Outlook, according to The Verge. Microsoft is also said to have looked into how AI can help to improve document change recommendations in Word.

“Microsoft will face many challenges bringing more advanced AI text-generation features to its productivity apps,” according to The Verge. “Chief among them is accuracy. ChatGPT still has a tendency to present incorrect information as fact, which would make any type of document creation or advanced integration difficult.”

At AMD’s CED 2023 press conference earlier in the month, Panos Panay, Microsoft Windows and Surface chief, said, “AI is going to reinvent how you do everything on Windows.”

If Microsoft gives the green light on this initiative, it will pose some major concerns shared by educators and students alike. Most notably, it may serve as yet another resource for students to use to cheat on their assignments.

According to a recent survey by Study.com, an online study and test prep program, more than one-third of educators in both K12 and higher education want the chatbot banned from their institutions.

“My entire department is nervous about the sudden easy access to AI writing tools, and we’ve already seen assignments from our students using it,” according to one educator cited in the survey. “For now, it’s fairly easy to spot, but we’re afraid that it’s a matter of a year or so before we’ll be able to suss out the cheating. We don’t have a plan and are eager to find one.”

For others, the chatbot serves as an opportunity to increase student engagement.

“In the future, we need to lean in as educators,” said Don Killingbeck, superintendent of Hemlock Public Schools, in a recent interview with District Administration. “Because let’s face it. There are people out there thinking, ‘This is bad. It’s everything we told kids not to do.’ People are going to say we shouldn’t be using this and that kids shouldn’t be touching it. The bottom line is in the real world we’ve got to be more productive. You only get 24 hours in a day, so how are you going to make the most out of it? And I think a tool like ChatGPT maximizes that opportunity.”

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1. Students in 2022 are reporting “substantial improvements” in the overall online learning experience and feel confident they can learn to use new ed-tech tools.
2. Younger students believe they learn less effectively online, which means campus leaders must contend with perceptions of lower quality. Students over 25 years of age say they learn just as effectively online as they do in person.
3. Students feel positive about how colleges and universities will launch online and hybrid programs in the future but are less enthusiastic about taking online courses themselves.

These are the major findings from the 2022 CIN EdTech Student Survey by the College Innovation Network at Western Governors University. Digging deeper into these three big takeaways, the survey found that fewer students reported having problems accessing edtech tools in their courses.

Students are also increasingly expecting their schools to offer academic support, career counseling and even some social activities online. “Institutions have made many improvements in students’ tech-enabled learning experiences since the 2020-21 academic year, but there remain areas for innovation,” the report says.

Online learning evolution

One of the big lessons of the MOOC craze of the early 2010s is that simply pairing digital content with assessments is not a recipe for success for many students, says David Andrews, the chancellor of University of Massachusetts Global (formerly known as Brandman University).

Strong digital content and professors who are adept at delivering it are essential, but institutions also must ensure online and hybrid students have access to academic coaching and other outside-of-class supports as demand for remote instruction grows, Andrews adds.

“Even in face-to-face universities, students are continuing to gravitate toward some combination of online and in-person,” he points out. “If you’re a working adult and have to choose between traveling to a fixed location on a fixed schedule vs. being able to learn on demand, there’s no choice.”

This is placing more pressure on administrators to accommodate remote students’ individual needs. UMass Global, for example, has an advising corps that helps students with time management skills and balancing school assignments with work and family. Because of these interventions, the institution has among the highest retention rates in the online sector even though the average age of its undergraduates is 35 and nearly all of its students are working, Andrews says.

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“Instead of waiting for someone to ask for help, we have proactive indicators that they’ve disengaged and we reach out to get them back on track,” he says. “Our population needs to be encouraged and supported in a much more holistic way.”

Most of UMass Global’s students enroll to learn new job skills, switch careers, or for other workforce-related reasons. That has led the institution to prioritize employee-supported tuition programs, one of the fastest-growing components of adult and online learning. UMass Global works with one of the state’s largest hospital networks to provide master’s and bachelor’s degrees as well as smaller micro-credentials.

“Scheduling is as much in the control of students as it is the faculty members,” Andrews concludes. “Online also allows you to have a talent pool around the country that can match student needs.”

Advancing online learning

The early identification of students who struggle with edtech is one key to improving the online experience, the College Innovation Network survey recommends. About a quarter of the students polled said they struggled to learn to use edtech while more than a third reported having used new technology in the past year.

Colleges and universities can provide training on campus-wide technology such as the learning management system, email and other communications channels. During the first week of a class, faculty should survey students about their skill levels and confidence in using edtech.

Also, college leaders must assure students that virtual courses are designed around learning science standards to build confidence in the value of credentials earned online.

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However, the dramatic shift in instruction also created a demand for certain services that had gone unnoticed for years.

220 million students were directly affected globally by the pandemic in April of 2020, according to the Boston College Center for International Higher report. Yet, throughout the year as colleges provided remoted instruction, the unprecedented reliance on technology caused a significant surge in the education technology market.

According to an August 2021 report from Fortune Business Insights, the market size grew by 9.9% to nearly $78 billion in 2020. By 2028, that number will more than double and is projected to reach $169 billion by 2028 as the demand and reliance on education technology increases.

“Online learning has started to gain much pace in the higher education sector,” the report reads. “The availability of high-speed internet, increasing usage of personal computing devices, and governments’ initiatives toward digital learning are the key factors for driving the popularity of online learning platforms.”

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This projected growth lines up with student perceptions of online learning as per a 2021 report from Sykes Enterprises as the majority of students highly favored remote instruction. According to the report, 95% of students felt their professors were addressing their personal needs while allowing for understanding in submitting coursework on time. Additionally, 85% of them felt as if they were part of a “classroom community,” and 84% said remote learning was effective.

“The rippling effects from COVID-19 have dramatically transformed higher education systems for good—and with students indicating that virtual learning can offer an effective learning environment, now is the time to further invest in elevating the virtual student learning experience,” Steve Davis, Higher Education Business Development Executive at Sykes, told University Business.

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Higher ed leaders are lagging far behind when it comes to digital transformation. Take a look at the leadership of companies that have long leveraged digital and are at the top of the list of Gen Z.

Thanks to technology, student support expectations are at heights that have never been seen before. Why? Because they have grown up surrounded by brilliant experiences in a digital-first realm. Therefore, universities and colleges that aren’t providing digital student engagement can lose fast.

This in turn can damage almost every critical step of the student experience – admissions, enrolment, satisfaction, retention, graduation. When it comes to digital transformation — it’s more than apparent that higher ed needs to move quickly or get lost in this game. The state of enrolment rates dropping in the rise and fall of the pandemic hasn’t helped.

“These ongoing enrollment declines demand immediate attention from all who support students in high school, in postsecondary institutions, and in the workforce,” Kim Cook, CEO of the National College Attainment Network, wrote in an emailed statement to Inside Higher Ed.

So how can higher education meet these expectations and fulfill their students’ support demands? Simply offering digital support channels that are seamless, fast, convenient, personalized, and helpful for students.

It starts with the adoption of digital channels and moving away from phones — no matter what time it is — students can get answers in that moment. Leadership can step in by implementing strategies for student support services to adopt the right technologies. To step up student connections and strengthen student engagement, live chat is an excellent go-to. The speed of live chat is what students are looking for: immediacy.

Live chat lets students connect with an agent when they need it most and on their most convenient device. There’s nothing better than a real connection to lift student engagement.

Live chat customer satisfaction (CSAT) – 88.3% (84% across industries) — Comm100 Live Chat

Automation comes next, and chatbots are always ‘on call’ by offering support 24/7 to prospective students; this is almost impossible through traditional support channels. But it is an absolute necessity to manage the mounting incoming queries, both locally and internationally, which increases opportunities for student acquisitions. Chat bots take over after hours and support staff will see the good side too.

Chats handled by chatbots – 21% (43% across industries) — Comm100 AI Chatbot

Let the flood of incoming and repetitive FAQs be answered by a chatbot. But how can the more challenging queries be triaged? An agent takes over connecting with a student by chat or even video — and can turn a bad situation into a better one.

A unified knowledge base is a fundamental tool for student engagement for two big reasons. Overwhelming email is something agents often struggle with in this endless loop. Time and again it’s because a student can’t find an answer to their problem. A complete and well-directed knowledge base can cut this loop by showing students fast and accurate self-service.

The next big benefit is for training and onboarding. High staff turnover interrupts a seamless student experience and ultimately can affect the guarded reputation of many higher ed institutions. Moreover, costs can mount for investing more in recruiting and training. A complete knowledge base can make training easier and new support staff can quickly learn the “need to know.”

Foremost, students want to connect on multiple digital channels, from live chat to chatbot and even email. An omnichannel platform provides the connected experience that students anticipate, and it treats every one of them as a unique individual. With live chat, email. Twitter and What’sApp connected; it makes an agent’s day so much easier and seamless when information is right in front of them to help students. At the end of the day, they send them off as a happier student.

This may seem like a colossal feat, but the opportunities to excel in digital transformation are a larger benefit. Connecting with new and returning students to offer helpful and personalized support will only boost acquisition and retention.

Leadership at schools is now waking up to the necessity to invest in digital transformation to meet the sky-high demands of students and reduce costs. Moreover, institutions can rise to student support expectations and support their staff through tools that set up everyone for success.

Chris Bechtel is VP of Marketing at Comm100.

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Those realities are squarely on the minds of progressive higher ed leaders who see the merits of the new vision in real dollars, especially as the market is set to grow tenfold in the next two years. They have begun forays into the metaverse, even though that’s all they are right now. Achieving the goal is still two giant steps away, according to Sam Gobrail, principal solution architect and customer experience strategist at technology solutions company Pariveda.

Gobrail says colleges and universities are largely in the Virtual Lecture phase, which is exactly as it sounds and became so popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, namely the widespread use of video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and furthering the development of remote and online courses. Getting past the Interactive phase and into Phase 4—the Metaverse phase—will require time and a whole lot of investment from institutions.

“We are primarily in Phase 2, as we took a lot of material and put it online,” he says. “Some places have created better content for online, but it’s still pretty much, ‘Did you see my PowerPoint online? Did you download anything online? Did you fill out the form online?’ The metaverse is aspirational at the moment, especially for higher education. It’s going to take a lot to build it out. And there will be a ridiculous amount of detail and complexity being built out for unclear profitability.”

However, colleges and universities must make the effort, or they risk getting passed by competitors and passed over by students who are looking for more value.

“It’s sink or swim, even if they don’t realize the riptide is here,” he says. “For much of their history, universities have competed locally. They’re not really competing internationally. They’re not really even competing nationally. They’re the No. 2 place in Maryland, or the No. 1 school in Florida. Let’s say virtual becomes really effective. Let’s say Georgia Tech creates the best aerospace engineering degree. It’s fully online. It’s an amazing student experience. And they can scale it, so they cut the cost in half. And now they’re the No. 1 national program in that degree. How will a Florida school compete? What happens when that’s not one degree, but their entire engineering school that is now outcompeted? And now it’s two or three of their schools?”

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Think it can’t happen? Looks at the inroads that have been made at mostly or fully online institutions such as Southern New Hampshire University or Western Governors University, which have grown exponentially in the past decade. If other state publics or big privates can get to the metaverse more quickly, what will the future be for those stuck in tradition?

“The physical building, the nice lawn, the dorms will be less relevant than, ‘Is it a really great experience? Will this actually help me get a job?’ ” Gobrail says. “[Some institutions] that use AR or VR, they can say they’ve already done that. They’ve gone from 10,000 students to 200,000 students to 300,000 students. I can see this happening in five to 10 years. If you don’t start doing bits and pieces now, it’ll be very hard. Schools are bureaucratic. Some have money, but not all of them have deep pockets. This has to be incremental for many reasons. But the good thing is you can start now. The double-edged sword is, if you don’t make incremental progress—those compounding returns in five years—catching up would be really hard, maybe impossible.”

Inside Pariveda’s four phases

The pandemic accelerated institutions past Digitization, or Phase 1 (the shift away from textbooks and other resources to digital), and into the Virtual Lecture phase, although it was not without its pains or even its stubborn detractors, who continue to push in-person learning even when hybrid might be an option. Students, however, want flexibility. They also want to be far more collaborative.

Meet the Interactive phase, which brings far more personal engagement experiences for students. Driven by artificial intelligence and improved systems, it allows for far more frequent, far more agile and adaptable virtual interactions. Think of it as not just a one-off session or course, but many across many departments that eventually coming seamless and routine. That will take some time, but Gobrail offers a benchmark for moving forward.

“I think it’s treating the online and making it as good, or at minimum, at par with the in-person and then making those things swappable,” he says. “So Step 1 is, how can I make the virtual as good? Forget the super fancy technology. From a student experience, how can I make that swappable, so that you can one day be in school, the next day, you want to drive your car across the country and still attend a class and then come back in class without missing a beat? You can do that instead of waiting three days for a recording to upload, for example.”

In its white paper on the metaverse, Pariveda lists seven areas that colleges need to shore up to get through the Interactive phrase:

• Meshing the virtual with in-person seamlessly
• Getting faculty and other stakeholders on board with the changes
• Ensuring that virtual offerings meet accreditation standards
• Becoming truly personal and customizable for students
• Embracing the idea of gamification and rewards within virtual spaces
• Making it all visually appealing and aligning it with branding and mission
• And perhaps most importantly, seeing that IT, systems and networks can handle all of it

Once all of those items are neatly buttoned, the metaverse will be within reach. And what a world it could be, supreme 3D immersion in almost field one can imagine—both on campus and off. Getting there will require deep commitments to new technology that might even go beyond what current national infrastructures can handle. But it’ll get there, and it is important to dive in now.

“I think even the scrappiest of universities can make progress,” he says. “That’s why I focus so much on the interactive and less on technology. You can get scrappy on Zoom and make it work. Or if you have a billion-dollar endowment, you can build a custom metaverse. I think it’s finding what you want to be good at and investing incrementally there. So, using out-of-the-box tools. If you really want to experiment with technology, proofs of concept can be affordable. A lot of the tech firms will pay for some portion of it. There are grants, there are other ways available to those that have few dollars. But it’s got to be the right step in the right direction that matters to your university.”

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At the ASU-GSV Summit last week, LeBlanc again expressed his worries in a session with College 101 CEO and Senior Harvard lecturer Stig Leschly in which he discussed why colleges and universities must rethink how they do business, how they build content and how they must reach more than just the upper crust of students.

“I am concerned about students from lower- and middle-class socioeconomic backgrounds who face an uncertain future,” LeBlanc said. “They need something different, better suited for their lives. We’re leaving too many people behind. This is bad for all of us. It’s bad for us as a country.”

LeBlanc pointed to an epidemic he called the “the worst Triple Crown you can have” – nearly half of students don’t complete their college studies; 40 million people have credits with zero degrees; and collectively, they have piled up more than $1.7 trillion in loan debts. He fears that many higher ed institutions have completely abandoned huge bases of students because of “rankings, status and mission creep.” But he proposes that there is a potential remedy – competency or outcomes-based education.

“Someone who graduates with a two-year associate’s degree, when they transfer to a four year school, loses on average 43% of credits. And who goes to community colleges?” LeBlanc, a first-generation student himself, asks rhetorically. “We’re going to make poor people take longer and charge them more? It’s obvious. We have to really rethink this system.”

LeBlanc said time, e.g. the credit hour, has been the biggest obstacle to sea change, along with a lack of understanding by accreditors and the comfortable lean by institutions to resist any upheaval. He admits that assessments in a CBE can be more challenging and that getting faculty and administration buy-in are difficult, but the alternatives might be more foreboding – dwindling enrollments, widening gaps in equity and failure to house learning models that actually prepare students for the future of work.

“In some ways, higher education is a faith-based initiative. If all of these inputs are there, we have faith that good things will happen on the other end,” he said. “What you’re really arguing for in competency-based education is to shift the spotlight to the outcomes and assess what students can actually do. When we shift the spotlight to outcomes, you unleash innovation.”

Changing the narrative

Just look at what Southern New Hampshire has done since LeBlanc took over a struggling institution in 2003, and what he referenced in his interview with Alexander – an increase of 40,000 students year-over-year to now 170,000 overall, 1,000 more hires from 2020 to 2021 while rising to $1 billion in operating capacity. Even with an increase in tuition cost over the past year, it is still half of what it was in 2019-20. And because of a multitude of shorter course options and with more flexibility, that can open a lot more doors to students on the go. His book contains several examples of institutions using CBE that work.

“We know how to do CBE well, and context right now matters a lot because employers are in a talent war,” LeBlanc said. “They’re looking for skills. The context is in our favor right now. And there are tools we can use. Demonstration projects are things that Congress can do. And they allow the Department of Education to waive the standard rules. We now have enough practice in place. One of the great impediments is the way we have to administer financial aid.”

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If the widespread acceptance of CBE occurred it not only could bring education across key areas to millions of potential learners – and in the process, revive enrollment figures for all students – but also could even bring back much-maligned areas such as the humanities, LeBlanc said, as the need for “human kinds of work” rises in a hyper-algorithm-driven society.

So what could a CBE strategy look like as opposed to a traditional model?

“I start with the end product,” he said. “What does that look like? How do I define it? What is the rubric that would tell me someone possess those skills? And then, what would the learning look like? I’m going to give you real-world simulations and hypotheticals you have to do at a workplace. That’s authentic assessment, as opposed to the world of assessment that’s so common in higher education – exams and tests and quizzes, which none of us do at work.”

Resistance to this formula is real, and LeBlanc describes the often stodgy approach to learning as “calcified” and “canonized” and potentially unwilling to budge. But if institutions can make trial runs to “create safe spaces to experiment [and] give people the latitude to break the rules,” there is a chance to move higher education forward. The key is to give these programs time for implementation and to not try to ram them through, putting faculty and other leaders in a place where they feel their whole systems are being uprooted and tossed away.

As for the theory that faculty buy-in might tough to overcome, LeBlanc said, “There is throughout higher education, a deep sense of calling. So many people come to the industry do it, because they want to educate, they want to work with students and want the world to be better.”

And holding onto the past will only fly for so long. Employers are calling for change and will demand more in the future. Traditional higher ed may not be able to keep up with that pace.

“We will still see accreditors,” LeBlanc said. “But increasingly, employers will be the accreditors, and they will be the arbiters. What can my people do? What can’t they do? What do they need to do tomorrow? We’re going to have to be really good at working with employers. Our program design is going to be really good at understanding competencies and know that our employers will sometimes struggle with that. The war for talent and 10 million unfilled jobs is going to drive quicker adoption of microcredential programs. It may finally allow us to start dropping the college degree requirement for jobs that don’t require college degrees.”

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From Ghana to Turkey to Ukraine, Arizona State is working to not only “advance American ideals” for thousands of leaders and learners, according to Crow, but to help them use new technologies and tools to build sustainable education models for the future. As the No. 1 school for innovation in the United States for seven straight years with an astronomical global reach, ASU is committed to being a conduit that helps drive pedagogical change, enhance  student experiences and build lifelong learning pathways.

But, as their session title highlighted, Envisioning Higher Education in an Unknown Future is more than a challenge. There are myriad considerations that Friedman and Crow explored during an engaging interplay of long-term possibilities – notably, where the sector is headed in the coming years and how that may impact students. Take for example, the college degree.

“We’ve got to stop thinking about college degree in a traditional sense only,” Crow said. “Is a degree out of date? Definitely not. What’s out of date is the notion that the degree is the be all and the end all. We have to think about it as a learning moment, a pathway on your learning process. We have to move away from step functions – kindergarten through college, and you’re done with learning. Then you go to work, you retire, you die. Nothing will work that way in the future. College is a stage of learning. And college-based learning is only one pathway.”

Crow said Arizona State – which has increased the number of learners by 50 times over the past couple decades and scaled up instruction through online environments – is not trying to simply prepare students for a specific job but trying to create environments where they become “master” learners. “Most people that go to college in the United States never finish, sadly,” he said. “Moving forward, there will be formal learning, structured learning, unstructured learning, personalized learning. We’ve just got to accept all of this. It doesn’t mean blowing up Brandeis or Bowdoin College. That’s one type of learning for some people to be able to go to.”

He said learning will be continuous and the tools utilized likely mind-blowing for those who have or will encounter the changes that are coming. Traditional methods of education won’t be completely scrapped. They’ll just be part of the equation.

“We’re not talking about doing things in lieu of something,” Crow said. “We’re talking about using these technologies to enhance the breadth of learning, the speed of learning, the depth of learning, to the individual’s tastes. People go to classes [at ASU] as an avatar right now. A thousand students are studying their biology lab by virtual reality in an alien zoo orbiting in space with thousands of unknown species. That doesn’t mean that they’re consigned to a life in this artificial reality world of an avatar. It’s a tool. We’re looking to overcome barriers, particularly to math and science. But we’re not all going to end up in the metaverse.”

More from UB: Colleges ditch their legacies, embrace switch to the Cloud

He said of STEM disciplines, which haven’t fully met all the needs of a fast-changing society and industry yet, the problem is the way they’ve been approached traditionally.

“We decided that math and science were exotic, that it wouldn’t be operationalized younger in life, like language and other things,” Crow said. “We turned it into a social dysfunction and made it less interesting. People constantly asked, ‘what is this math for? Why am I taking algebra?’ We’ve done a poor job of connecting to the broader population. We need better ways to teach, more ways of empowerment. In algebra, all we’re trying to do is to teach the skill of solving for unknown. Why call it algebra? Why not call it problem-solving? So, we’re looking at completely different pedagogies, completely different methods and new technologies that help learning. We’ve got to face the fact that we got off on the wrong direction a long time ago.”

Crow said some of the issues that are preventing that pipeline from flowing starts in K-12 schools.

“Most [public] schools are suffering from three or four simultaneous complexities. One is a lack of innovation at a very, very large scale. There’s never been this national push for innovation. We still have largely a 19th century model, with valiant teachers trying to advance that model in a society that looks nothing like the 19th century, and in a future that looks like nothing that we’ve ever encountered in the past. A second issue is micro control. We have many political controls that are now being pushed into publicly funded school districts. I’m not suggesting that parents shouldn’t be actively involved in the design of curriculum. But we have to have some uniform set of objectives that we’re moving towards. And we have, in general, a lack of respect of education within society at large.”

As new technologies are being created and accepted at light speed, there are concerns about the impact of social media, further polarization and isolation as individuals adopt them. Crow said ASU and its School for the Future of Innovation and Society is working to address those, too.

“Universities must be bastions for the maintenance of free speech, doing everything we can do to maintain free and open discourse, both within the academic programs themselves, but then also within the environment of the university,” he said. “We have high-speed forces for the transmission of information, which has little probability or chance of being verified as truth. We didn’t really think through the full impact of massive-scale, multibillion-participant social media. We have huge amounts of distortion in the speed with which the debate is being carried out. Universities need to figure out how we’re going to produce better teachers, who can better teach how democracy needs to work. How do we produce better learners, better citizens? We’re as responsible as any other group for the for the instability we have in our democratic processes.”

In the next decade, what does Crow hope to see?

“That we’ve so greatly enhanced the technological assets that we now have been able to empower individual and personalized learning, both for children, students, adults, retirees … but that we’ve figured out how to make this work across the entirety of the society. Because technology will be accelerating at an even more rapid pace.”

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