On December 19th, the U.S. Department of Education released final regulations to improve oversight and protect more than 5.5 million distance education students at degree-granting institutions including nearly 3 million exclusively online students by clarifying the state authorization requirements for postsecondary distance education. To ensure that institutions offering distance education are legally authorized and monitored by states, as required by the Higher Education Act, the final regulations clarify state authorization requirements for institutions to participate in the Department’s federal student aid programs. The regulations also address state and federal oversight of American colleges operating in foreign locations worldwide.
The new regulations will not take effect until July 1, 2018. Given this timeframe, many in the higher education policy community believe the rule will be undone by the incoming administration.
For more information from the Department on these regulations, click here. For a final copy of the regulations, click here.
The evolution of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is a major innovation that will have a profound impact on the economy, contributing to both the loss of existing jobs and the creation of new ones. With each level of innovation and adoption of these vehicles, there will be an increased loss of jobs within the economy across many different connected segments. Although this loss will be gradual over the next several decades, the estimated number of jobs that could be lost is substantial. The jobs created related to autonomous vehicles during this period of time are unlikely to outnumber those lost, and will require entirely different skill sets. Education will undoubtedly be affected with this shift in the economy; however, analysis of the predicted job loss reveals that most jobs lost due to the increase of autonomous vehicles have minimal education requirements, and the development of AVs is projected to create a number of jobs that require a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Snapshot of Key Findings
- By 2030, an estimated 15% of all car sales will be self-driving vehicles.
- The adoption of AVs may cause the loss of more than four and half million jobs and $168 billion dollars in annual wages. While some industries will be directly impacted, AV technologies will also create new jobs.
- In addition to the transformation that the transportation sector will experience, other indirect, but connected, industries will also be affected, including insurance, smart signals, location-based or GPS dependent sectors, hospitality and municipalities.
- Higher education institutions have an opportunity to enhance their existing curricula in the areas of specific value to the AV and related industries.
Competition among higher education institutions is increasing both nationally and internationally, often driven by cultural shifts, globalization, advancements in technology, and decreases in state funding among other factors. Many universities have responded to these pressures by becoming more entrepreneurial. The future success of universities will depend in part on finding more opportunistic and creative means by which to increase market share. Without doing so, they risk not just falling behind, but failing altogether.
One avenue to market growth is developing new programs that are sustainable, positive net revenue generating and in alignment with the institution’s ability to deliver expertise in the area. Unfortunately, many education providers are having difficulty creating a robust and profitable new program portfolio. Helix Education and the University Professional and Continuing Education Association have co-authored a study of continuing education metrics related to new program development inefficiencies.
The study found that many universities have no formal process for new program development, and instead rely on intuition-based factors to make such decisions. This informal decision-making process is mismatched with the top two data-driven outcomes of program development: revenue and job market demand.
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