Do we need more universities?

The last ten years of higher education news (in English) has often included gloomy views of academic life written by adjuncts, a story interrupted by coverage of university closures, and ever-growing student debt. But for those involved in education technology there are stories of booming growth. What’s going on?

In 2018 more than 218 US colleges shut down - about 4 per week. Some colleges had multiple campuses; in the period 2014-2018 a total of 1,234 campuses closed in the US. When an institution shuts down, the negative consequences disproportionately affect those with the lowest incomes. Terrible. [1]

About 4.76% of US colleges closed in 2018. The majority were relatively small - beauty colleges, religious institutes, etc (less than 250 students). About 100 of these institutions shut down with ~1,000 or more students. [2]

 In the last 5 years almost half a million students have been displaced by college closures. All this sounds pretty alarming.

 If you drew such a conclusion, then you’d be forgetting the scale of the higher education industry. In the US alone, autumn 2019 saw 19.9 million concurrently enrolled students. The 98,063 students affected by closures in 2018 represented 0.49% of students. [3]

There are a lot of higher education institutions in America. Depending on what you classify as a college (aka ‘university’), there are 4,583 post-secondary, degree-granting, institutions processing US Federal aid. US higher ed grabs the English-language headlines, and that can distort perceptions of the future of the university. But we shouldn’t let it obscure our view of the overall trend - and that is one of staggering growth.

There are ~27,000 colleges today, serving 207m students. So let’s say the average university is about 7,666 students. Higher education is doing ~$1.9tn in annual turnover - representing (roughly) $9,178 per student per year. (Yes, there are several ways to slice the data; if you know a better way, please help.)

Here is the thing: it is hard for us to imagine what growth of 5.68% CARG is going to do to higher education on the ground. Annual spend will grow from $1.9tn USD, where it is now, to about $3.3tn in 2030.

Right now 207m students represent (directly and indirectly) an average of $9,178 a year for a college. Globally, universities are adding about $377m in growth – every day. That’s an added $1.38tn over the next decade.

In case you missed it, there were 100m college students in the year 2000. What we’ve seen since then is staggering growth. By 2014, there were 207m students. In less than fifteen years, 107m students were added to universities. If you haven’t been paying attention, giant universities have been getting built and filled with students all over the world. I can count at least ten started by colleagues I’ve met at Woolf.

When we talk about 207m students, it is worth noting that, that means concurrently enrolled students - not the total number of graduates accumulated over the last ten years. Concurrent enrolments require an increase in teaching capacity, not just a throughput ability. It means people studying right now.

In the next ten years, concurrent enrolments will grow even faster. Many factors affect just how fast – especially the population size of secondary school graduates, and relative economic prosperity. From the 207m students today, we should expect growth to 350m students in 2030 (‘middle of the road’ prediction, IIASA) or 377.4m (‘moderate pathway’ prediction, Calderon). [4, 5]

Either way, we’re looking at adding 150m additional, concurrently enrolled students to the higher education system’s existing 207m. This marginal increase is greater than all concurrently enrolled students in the year 2000. It is about 41,000 additional students per day.

Conclusion

So, the wider global picture is this: we need an increase in college teaching capacity equivalent to 5 average sized universities. Every day. Or we need to increase the teaching capacity of existing institutions. A lot.