Heaven forbid they just lower tuition.

[cookderosa]

Special Report: Tuition spikes send higher education enrollment tumbling
As price rises, students drop by 1.2 million, sparking run of mergers

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_c...t_tumbling

Sound to me like online education will only become more crucial.

If you've ever heard people talk about "adopters" of a trend or something like technology - or if you've seen the chart, it's like a bell curve.
Anyway, people in my children's age range are innovators and early adopters of tech products - no question. In fact, my 22 year old -to the best of my knowledge- never once took a pen or pencil to a college class. All tech, all the time. But us middle aged folks, we are late majority / laggers simply because computers became integrated into our lives during our lives - we weren't born into it. So, my analysis is this- when you see adults here and on other DL sites, and WE are using technology, it's time for the colleges to wake up to the fact that tech won't be LESS important in the future, so 1.2 fewer people are enrolled than in 2011 (according to your link) why?

Well.... yes, probably price, but not only price. STEM trumps liberal arts all day long. We all know that. Employment numbers demonstrate that. Who is hanging onto the idea of traditionally earned liberal arts education? Old people. People in my age range and my parent's age range could graduate with any degree and go to work- now, employers want skills <gasp> and the young people figured this out. Still a lot of parents (my age group) pushing their teens into liberal arts education / any degree, because they have the same mentality I had - but the problem is that the world has changed and we (late majority/ laggers) have taken a while to figure it out.

Colleges will eventually figure it out...even though it takes losing 1.2 million in enrollment to send the message.

Degrees should be cheap, fast, attainable, portable, and result in some type of career advancement or placement. In addition, you should be able to access information digitally becasuse....duh....everything can be done digitally - videos of lectures, textbooks, email to peers/instructors, submitting papers for grading, reviewing papers for plagiarism. So, the point of sitting in a lecture hall is what? The point of paying $1400 per credit is what? Colleges will have to morph.