This is a rather dark Dickensian time in higher education, caught in the storm of societal and economic sea change. Yet, there is hope for those institutions who recognize and respond to the changes that are upon us.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” So begins A Tale of Two Cities. So it seems to be in higher education today. Federal subsidies have helped us weather the pandemic storm so far. Some states have stepped up their support. Yet, enrollments continued the decade-long overall downward trend. As a result, the percentage of tenured/tenure-track faculty members has continued a downward trend, with only 23.7 percent of faculty members at institutions across the country tenured, and 10.2 percent on a tenure track. Meanwhile, 66.1 percent of faculty members are not part of the tenure-track system. Most of those are part-time adjunct or short-term contract employees, who, in many cases are woefully underpaid (but that is another story).

The number of traditional college-age youth will begin a significant drop in 2025, reflecting the birth-rate decline triggered by the 2008 recession. That will continue for years, followed by a pandemic-triggered drop in births thereafter. These “enrollment cliffs” are further declines on top of the current trend for high school graduates to seek alternatives to college.

It is clear that college is not meeting the great expectations of prospective full-time on-campus students as it did previously. In study after study, we see that among the top priorities of high school students and their parents for college outcomes is the expectation that they will attain a career pathway with at least a middle-class income. With artificial intelligence–driven technologies creating rapid changes in workforce needs, most colleges are not in a position to guarantee those pathways in all degree programs.

Pew Charitable Trust puts the middle income (67 percent to 200 percent of median income) at $42,000 to $125,000. Many college majors fall short of that mark. In a recent study using PayScale’s 2020 College Salary Report, 50 college majors fell below the standard, with many topping out in the $50,000 range. These include some expected areas such as the arts and social service work, but notably they also include such fields as speech and hearing disorder specialists, legal assistants, conservation biology, and medical assistants.

Meanwhile, the cost of attending college continues to rise. The average cost of college has more than doubled in the first 20 years of this 21st century, with an annual growth rate of 6.8 percent. The average cost of college in the U.S. is $35,332 per year, including tuition, books, supplies and living expenses.

No longer is four years the average length of completing a college degree. The U.S. Department of Education reports that fewer than two-thirds of all college students complete their degrees within six years. At $35,000 per year for six years, the investment tops $200,000. The cumulative current student loan debt that is financing these attempts to finish college in the United States totals $1.747 trillion.

Those are the worst of times: dropping residential undergraduate enrollment, dropping revenue due to reduced tuition funds, decreasing full-time permanent faculty and the primary traditional clientele is looking for a higher return on investment through alternative entry to careers.

Yet the best of times is also here. A huge growth in the certificate and certification market is upon us. Lindsay Daugherty, senior policy researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation, reminds us that the traditional college degree is not the only pathway to the middle class:

There are, in fact, many pathways to the middle class, and not all of them run through four-year degree programs. Colleges, continuing education training providers, and even employers now offer an array of short-term credential programs. Most of these require fewer than two years of coursework, and offer opportunities to more or less immediately move into good jobs. Such programs grant individuals credentials like certificates, or short-term educational credentials that often come with college credit; industry certifications, in careers as varied as engineering, nursing, and human resources; and apprenticeships in fields like health care, IT, and welding.

Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda predicts successful college programs will provide certificates embedded in degree programs:

Students will soon expect to be able to get both a degree and a professional certificate from their university, according to the chief executive of one of the world’s largest edtech firms, who believes that the change will be the next major development in online learning. Jeff Maggioncalda, who has run Coursera since 2017, said job-specific training courses for students, developed alongside top businesses, is the biggest growth area for his platform. Although on-campus teaching is returning post-pandemic, Mr Maggioncalda predicted that online learning is here to stay—but it will be in offering short courses for career development where companies such as his can have the most impact initially.

Maggioncalda goes on to say, “I think universities are like: ‘Whoa, we were the only game in town and now very rapidly there’s a lot of other games in town; how can I compete with them?’” His answer is “You’re going to have to change your diet—the world is profoundly changing at a rate we’ve not seen before.”

There are two communities of learners; one is experiencing the best of times; the other is experiencing the worst of times. The traditional residential program is threatened at many institutions while the continuing and professional education programs for adult learners is soaring. Who is digging deeply into the data at your institution to assess enrollments in these two communities of learners? Are they diverging? How are you adapting?

This article was originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s Transforming Teaching & Learning blog.

Too often we assess our own learning by how pleasant the learning experience is, rather than assessing retention as well as how authentically relevantly and meaningfully those experiences and outcomes apply to real-life situations.

For nearly half of my faculty career, I taught mostly through a face-to-face lecture mode. Yes, I dabbled in simulations and games in some classes, but for the most part, in the last century from 1971 through 1995, I did little to adapt my teaching to enable students to better achieve the most meaningful outcomes. For the most part, those students were able to succeed even though I was using one of the least effective modes of teaching—oral delivery, supplemented by whiteboard. This mode required students to become auditors, transcribing what I shared and translating it into their personal context of background and applicability to their career aspirations.

It is certainly true that many of us enjoy well-formed and responsive lectures that relate well to the audience. They can be great entertainment, as well as fact-filled. It is the fine art of the sage on the stage. Yet this approach has not been proven to be the very best in building retention. As professor emeritus of communication, I know that engaging learners in active learning is superior in retention of knowledge and in applying knowledge to a wider variety of situations.

Learning by doing or simulations—especially through teaching others—has been shown to elicit better retention than merely describing a concept or action. The learning pyramid, sometimes referred to as the “cone of learning,” developed by the National Training Laboratory, suggests that most students only remember about 5 percent of what they hear in lectures and 10 percent from textbooks, but they retain nearly 90 percent of what they learn through teaching others!

“Active learning” is the term we most often apply to the foundational concepts of engaging learners in the process.

Active learning is a pedagogical technique coined by professors Charles Bonwell and James Eison in their 1991 book Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom. Bonwell and Eison argued that teaching should be less about imparting information to students via lecture-based learning and more about developing skills, while also engaging students in higher-order thinking, whether by reading or writing about the task at hand or by discussing it. Active learning refers to teaching practices that give students opportunities to work with concepts over and over, in a variety of ways and with opportunities for immediate feedback, so that knowledge can take hold in their own minds. (Top Hat)

Active learning activities can involve such activities as role-playing, problem solving, polling, debates, group work, case studies and simulations. Certainly, many aspects of internships, apprenticeships and other on-the-job work can be effective active learning when supplemented with materials or mentorship.

This approach in most cases necessitates that the educators collaborate with the professionals in the field. It is in that nexus between professor and practitioner that is more critical than ever in our rapidly changing world where technologies are driving constant innovation and reinvention. We are called upon to teach for tomorrow in an environment where the rapid development of new products and practices are driven by the scaling of artificial intelligence and digital networking.

A whole host of benefits become immediately apparent when active learning is applied. Perhaps, most important, is that the learning process moves from a one-way “professing” by the instructor to a two-way engagement among the learners and the instructor. It is in this engagement that new ideas and topics emerge, not just from the person paid to teach the class, but also from the learners who bring important perspectives, expectations, ideas, and questions to the process. The Cornell Center for Teaching Innovation describes it this way:

Active learning methods ask students to engage in their learning by thinking, discussing, investigating, and creating. In class, students practice skills, solve problems, struggle with complex questions, make decisions, propose solutions, and explain ideas in their own words through writing and discussion. Timely feedback is critical to this learning process either from the instructor or peer feedback from fellow students. Education research shows that incorporating active learning strategies into university courses significantly enhances student learning experiences (Freeman et al., 2014; Theobald et al., 2020).

A key aspect of active learning is the use of authentic assignments and assessments. The Indiana University Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning writes, “An authentic assignment is one that requires application of what students have learned to a new situation, and that demands judgment to determine what information and skills are relevant and how they should be used. Authentic assignments often focus on messy, complex real-world situations and their accompanying constraints; they can involve a real-world audience of stakeholders or ‘clients’ as well.”

There are many great websites and online tools to assist in the development of authentic assignments and assessments. Professor John Mueller of North Central College maintains one of them, the Authentic Assessment Toolbox.

This article was originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s Transforming Teaching & Learning blog.