By Wallace Pond

Demographics, cost, lack of relevancy, inconvenience, poor ROI, and of course, the pandemic, are all contributing to a 12-year decline in higher education enrollment, but another significant cause is the growth of non-credit post-secondary education. There are many examples, but one of the fastest growing can be found at Google.

“A bedrock piece of Grow with Google is its series of low-cost professional certificates that require six months to complete and target high-growth industries. More than 80 percent of individuals who complete a certificate report a positive career change: a new job, a promotion in an existing job, or a pay raise. And Grow with Google reports that almost half of the people who earn the certificates were from the lowest income bracket in the United States.” 

At Google, they build programs “from the job back,” in close consult with industry employers, rather than the faculty centric model in most colleges and universities. In addition to content delivered directly by Google, they are also expanding into 100 technical high schools, and work with local workforce development agencies and select colleges in an “ecosystem” approach to career training. This presents both a significant challenge and an opportunity to institutions of higher education. By either expanding the student market into non-credit and combined programs and/or partnering with organizations like Google, institutions of higher education can tap into the part of the post-secondary education ecosystem where students are shifting and from which employers are hiring. 

Colleges and universities that are willing to do the hard work of reinvention, generating a student value proposition for today rather than decades ago, can grow even as the traditional higher ed market declines. For a no-cost consultation about transformation at your institution, contact the Transformation Collaborative™.

You can hear the podcast on which this Strada article is based at: https://stradaeducation.org/podcast/lisa-gevelber/.