Last year I read an article that within 10 years, students in college in the U.S. will become primarily one of four types: 1) Their parents are rich 2) They are scholarship athletes 3) They are scholarship academic 4) They won the education
How many of the actual students will still be able to study when these 4 types will be applied? 10%? India, Russia and Ukraine have a huge amount of very skilled IT workers. Their education costed probably a fraction of the US cost. This will have implications for the future. And the problem is not limited to IT alone, also in other sectors the same happens. Count the number of non american scientists at Johnson&Johnson. A second problem will be that more and more none american or non european companies become worldplayers in all area. They will have less problems in finding skilled peopl in their own country, and at a lower cost.
I don't know any percentage but the fact is that most students are not in college on athletic or academic scholarships and most students did not win an education. Simply, most universities will lose most of their student population due to the cost of an education is too high. Yet, reality, most universities can not afford to allow such to happen. If such happens, they will no longer be able to afford the salaries of professors, can't afford particular sports teams, can't afford particular university events and loss of scholastic rankings. Therefore, what happens when education continues to increase ? There will be this migration of the student population to other types of education and cost saving...such has already started. I'm not talking about students leaving the U.S. to go to other countries although I will give an example of such in my P.S. statement. What I'm talking about is that there are more junior colleges offering more education alternatives including degrees that's competitive with traditional 4 year degrees because the junior college offered the same classes specific to the degree without the other requirements, more technical schools, more schools offering cheaper online education, more employers paying back their new hired employee student debts, more employers offering college tuition to the children of their employees, more students working full-time jobs while going to college part-time, more students joining the military to their costs payed for when they exit the military, more students from one state immediately establishing residency in another state so that after their first year of college...they than can establish themselves as an in-state student instead of an out of state student that pays tuition 2 to 3x higher and there's many other alternative education cost savings I have not mention. Simply, parents and students need to make changes in their lifestyle if they want to be able to afford a traditional college education. Currently, most are unwilling but rising education costs have not reached a price that forces most to do so. It's kind'uv like the things about oil/gas/automobiles. What price (how high) does gas need to get to force people in a mass number to use alternative transportation that is cheaper ? I don't know that magic number but I do know that when oil reached its highs...it started conversations among my personal friends but nobody actually did anything. Seriously, I remember one friend said he may need to move nearer to his job, another said she may start car pooling, another said he may start riding motorcycle more often, another said he may buy a hybrid, another said he may have his kids go to school closer to home instead of that extra 30 minute drive each school day. My point is that people adapt but only if the costs reach a point that forces that adaptation. P.S. A friend of mine has dual citizenship in Canada (born in Canada) and the U.S while residing in the U.S. His birth right allows his daughter to attend college in Canada. The university cost in the U.S. is too high (University of Michigan) and his daughter made the decision to attend university near her grandparents in Canada...its extremely cheaper than the same education in the U.S. Yet, she plans on attending graduate school in the U.S....hopefully on a scholarship (endowment). They adapted.
The cost of college in 10 years will be zero. In fact, it's already zero. You can replicate a degree for free through MOOCs currently. It's just not "socially acceptable" yet. Meaning there is still some stigma that the online education is not a "real" education which I completely disagree. I have taken many online courses in very high level subject areas and the quality is just as good as any university I have attended. You can learn French, program in R, take Calculus I, II, III and study International Economics. What's stopping this? One, people are lazy in general and they are not utilizing their time effectively with online courses. And two like I said, it sounds a lot sexier saying I went to Northwestern vs I took a bunch of online courses from schools all over the world. So how will this change? Well, most big schools are already jumping in on this MIT, Stanford, UC, Northwestern, etc which is giving it more credibility. Also the technology is getting better making the courses more interactive. There is an option to pay for certification which most likely will be the hybrid approach where you take the classes online for free and pay universities for testing. That will authenticate the process. This approach will take time because it requires a LOT of work on the student to be diligent about their studying. But there is no doubt that this is the future. In fact you can now get your MBA online completely for free from tier one schools. The tools are there, you just have to take advantage of them.