Among the top trends in enrollment, students are increasingly using mobile devices to obtain information.
The top trends “have created a marketplace situation where higher education administrators must think differently and evolve in a manner that responds to the needs of individuals, families and our society,” says the study — titled Ten Trends for 2013: How Marketplace Conditions Will Influence Private Higher Education Enrollment — And How Colleges Can Respond.
The study was produced by the Lawlor Group, a Minnesota-based higher education marketing firm.
Tony Pals, a spokesman for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said the study “confirms the many challenges facing colleges and universities today.”
“Economic, demographic, marketplace and technological trends are converging to cause an unprecedented time of change for higher education,” Pals said.
Michael J. O’Leary, vice president for enrollment management at Goucher College, a private college in Baltimore, said with the exception of the rise of MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, the trends identified in the report are “not new in terms of recent new.”
“But a lot of it is new since really the summer or fall of 2008, when the economy really tanked,” O’Leary said. “And that’s when families started having more difficulty paying for higher education. That’s when colleges and universities felt the crunch.”
