Education summary
Looking ahead to 2024, our teachers, administrators, and institutions of learning face a convergence of complex challenges, from declining enrollment and stagnating student completion rates to financial aid fraud and the adoption of new models of teaching and eLearning.
Higher education plays a vital role in our society as our colleges and universities advance the frontiers of human knowledge, preserve timeless wisdom, and provide post-secondary teaching to a wide range of learners. Our institutions of learning face a number of unprecedented challenges as we head into the new year.
To expand upon a few of these challenges, fewer students are enrolling in and graduating from our institutions of higher education. This is a trend that holds true in many countries, including the United States. While undergraduate enrollment in the US grew for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic in 2023, overall student enrollment is down, especially at community colleges. Some of the biggest factors contributing to the challenges of the student enrollment crisis include:
A demographic cliff of high school graduates that is producing a smaller pool of high school graduates.
Attitudes toward higher education, which continue to worsen as students and families question the value of the financial commitment to earn a degree instead of alternative paths such as apprenticeships or vocational programs.
A smaller pool of graduates also affects industries that rely on highly skilled labor. A dire need for workers already persists across most industry sectors as we head into 2024. The workforce gaps in the labor market also impact higher education. For instance, institutional development and advancement offices are being affected by the knowledge loss of the “the Great Resignation,” and general staffing shortages and turnover. These workforce issues constrain their ability to engage donors and alumni in fundraising efforts and further contribute to financial pressures.
Our institutions of learning are critically important to addressing these workforce gaps. You can learn more about how to build interoperability between our institutions of learning, government, and nonprofit organizations in our government outlook.
Additionally, institutions of higher education are wrestling with broader trends, such as the need to deliver modern learning experiences, enhance revenue and control costs, modernize technology infrastructure, and leverage data and all types of artificial intelligence (AI). We anticipate that these challenges will disproportionately impact underrepresented groups, who already face barriers to accessing educational pathways that lead to economic mobility.
In the following sections, we’ve provided recommendations for solutions and case studies you can consider as you work to address three specific challenges: declining enrollment, stagnating graduation rates, and financial pressures from a shifting donor landscape.
We’ve focused on ways you can leverage data and technology to boost enrollment, increase student success, and bolster your institutional advancement and fundraising capabilities.
1. Address declining enrollment by preventing “summer melt”
2. Capture student data throughout the learner lifecycle to improve student experience and success
3. Leverage data and AI to enhance institutional advancement and fundraising capabilities
The need to innovate is just as critical in academia as it is in the corporate sector. With Slalom, we’re creating the digital university of the future.
