The world coming at us is a world defined through changing demographics, cultural awareness, technological advances, and economic forces.
Demographic Change
Demographic change is not new to colleges and universities. Across time, multiple generations – representing differing backgrounds and belief systems – have entered the hallowed halls of higher education and forced change to occur.
In each generation, the individual students brought with them experiences and values that informed institutional frameworks and educational practices. For example, millions of GIs returning from World War II took advantage of the GI Bill (signed into law in 1944) to obtain funding for higher education, expanding program offerings of both public and private institutions. When the Baby Boom generation entered college, they pushed back against the Vietnam War and what were perceived to be imperialistic and racist practices of the government through protests demanding schools provide more courses taught by liberal or left-leaning professors who were subsequently granted tenure.1 The interests of Generation X, brought about by an embrace of capitalism and the generation of wealth, forced colleges and universities to offer more and more professional programs in business, law, and medicine. Forced by the advent of the Internet and the backlash of Generation Z against excessive accumulations of wealth, colleges and universities had to shift programming to meet needs of students who came to embrace globalism and cultural awareness.
However, with the emergence of Generation Alpha, one of the biggest shifts of all is now coming into focus.
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