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Breakpoint: The Changing Marketplace for Higher Education
The challenges facing colleges and universities today are profound and complex. Fortunately, Jon McGee is an ideal guide through this dynamic marketplace. In Breakpoint, he argues that higher education is in the midst of an extraordinary moment of demographic, economic, and cultural transition that has significant implications for how colleges understand their mission, their market, and their management.
Drawing from an extensive assessment of demographic and economic trends, McGee presents a broad and integrative picture of these changes while stressing the importance of decisive campus leadership. He describes the key forces that influence higher education and provides a framework from which trustees, presidents, administrators, faculty, and policy makers can address pressing issues in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
Although McGee avoids endorsing one-size-fits-all solutions, he suggests a number of concrete strategies for handling prospective students and developing pedagogical practices, curricular content and delivery, and management structures. Practical and compelling, Breakpoint will help higher education leaders make choices that advance their institutional values and serve their students and the common good for generations to come.
Drawing from an extensive assessment of demographic and economic trends, McGee presents a broad and integrative picture of these changes while stressing the importance of decisive campus leadership. He describes the key forces that influence higher education and provides a framework from which trustees, presidents, administrators, faculty, and policy makers can address pressing issues in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
Although McGee avoids endorsing one-size-fits-all solutions, he suggests a number of concrete strategies for handling prospective students and developing pedagogical practices, curricular content and delivery, and management structures. Practical and compelling, Breakpoint will help higher education leaders make choices that advance their institutional values and serve their students and the common good for generations to come.
192 pages, Paperback
First published October 22, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 23, 2017
Jon McGee has written a book on education policy for administrators of colleges and universities. Unlike too many books in this genre, the work is thoughtful and well informed. It is also sharply written, which also distinguishes McGee's book from most of its competitors. The premise is that most if not all institutions of higher education are facing a serious problem of disequilibrium as a result of changes in student demographics, economic conditions and employment levels, and government support for higher education and its students. To face these changes, post-secondary institutions must meet the challenge with the resources and capabilities/skills they have at hand and so must of necessity fashion a custom fit with the environment that matches environmental conditions with the resources schools can muster to respond to those conditions, organized according to a set of thoughtful decisions. In a nutshell, McGee wants administrators to think more strategically. From the book's title, McGee is not suggesting the reestablishment of old equilibrium but rather the construction of new ones. (Left out of this effort is the possibility that there are no new equilibria to construct and that the changing educational environment he documents will largely persist in its dynamism.). The idea is that administrators/faculty must identify the location of their institutions in a space characterized by demographic, economic, and cultural/technological disruptions. Then they must craft a set of decisions (a strategy) that will adapt to changing student characteristics and needs, develop new management and measurement approaches for responding to students, and craft new learning approaches to work cultural and technological changes into new programs and course offerings. There is no overarching answer to fit everyone, strategies are custom fitted and even idiosyncratic. This is a bit of a mouthful, but the book ends up at a reasonable and even defensible. Whether McGee has really added something to the debate (I think so) or has just repackaged the problem in the form of a solution is up to the reader to determine.
What did I like about this? Hmmm ... The book does not provide much information that I had not already known. However the book does a good job at jumping the conceptual divide between recognizing the scary state of the environment and moving to suggestions that can be understandable and even helpful to faculty and administrators in facing dynamic environments.
What did I not like? This is a bit easier. He soft pedals the difficulties involved in actually identifying a market space and a set of potential students. This seemed tinged with an assumption that a school would be looking for a newer general type of student. Why not go for different types of students? What about foreign students? For the near term governments in East Asia and South Asia have systematically underinvested in their post-secondary schools. That creates a potential windfall in the short term for US institutions, which are facing a potential market consolidation. Lots of schools already know this so I was surprised McGee did not make more of it.
I also think McGee downplays the inherent homogeneity in many post-secondary schools that will limit the ability of schools to change dramatically in response to a breakpoint. Faculty are long lived fixed assets and academic labor markets are tight. Facilities are also expensive and long-lived with the added advantage of being tied to a particular location. If the location is a desirable on, so much the better, if the location is undesirable, good luck.
While I enjoyed McGee's discussion of matters like pricing, which is a central part of academic administration, he could have said much more about it, such as the different ways in which pricing is linked to the development of new academic programs.
McGee also beats around the bush on discussing some of the economic factors here, such as scale based programs or price discrimination in its varied forms. I get how that works into his book, but it might have helped to provide some references.
Finally, McGee quotes too many trendy management gurus, especially from the Harvar Business School. These references are OK with appropriate dosage, but if I run across many more stories of how a small college is going to be able to save itself by mimicking Apple's rebirth under Steve Jobs, I am not sure what I will respond. The similarities between corporate rebirth stories and colleges and universities in crisis are interesting. The differences, however, are even more interesting.
What did I like about this? Hmmm ... The book does not provide much information that I had not already known. However the book does a good job at jumping the conceptual divide between recognizing the scary state of the environment and moving to suggestions that can be understandable and even helpful to faculty and administrators in facing dynamic environments.
What did I not like? This is a bit easier. He soft pedals the difficulties involved in actually identifying a market space and a set of potential students. This seemed tinged with an assumption that a school would be looking for a newer general type of student. Why not go for different types of students? What about foreign students? For the near term governments in East Asia and South Asia have systematically underinvested in their post-secondary schools. That creates a potential windfall in the short term for US institutions, which are facing a potential market consolidation. Lots of schools already know this so I was surprised McGee did not make more of it.
I also think McGee downplays the inherent homogeneity in many post-secondary schools that will limit the ability of schools to change dramatically in response to a breakpoint. Faculty are long lived fixed assets and academic labor markets are tight. Facilities are also expensive and long-lived with the added advantage of being tied to a particular location. If the location is a desirable on, so much the better, if the location is undesirable, good luck.
While I enjoyed McGee's discussion of matters like pricing, which is a central part of academic administration, he could have said much more about it, such as the different ways in which pricing is linked to the development of new academic programs.
McGee also beats around the bush on discussing some of the economic factors here, such as scale based programs or price discrimination in its varied forms. I get how that works into his book, but it might have helped to provide some references.
Finally, McGee quotes too many trendy management gurus, especially from the Harvar Business School. These references are OK with appropriate dosage, but if I run across many more stories of how a small college is going to be able to save itself by mimicking Apple's rebirth under Steve Jobs, I am not sure what I will respond. The similarities between corporate rebirth stories and colleges and universities in crisis are interesting. The differences, however, are even more interesting.
April 18, 2016
A very solid analysis of current trends in higher education.
In Breakpoint's first half McGee does a great job of exploring transformative forces in economics, demographics, and culture.
Demographics: the long boom in higher ed, from post-WWII GI Bill through the early 21st century, saw all kinds of institutional growth, and it really grew like mad during the past couple of decades. For example, "There are 1000 more degree-granting colleges and universities today [2015, presumably] than there were in 1996." (27) "Total undergraduate enrollment at American colleges and universities rose from 12.3 million in fall 1994 to 17.6 million in fall 2009, a gain of 43 percent." (!) (13)
But we are now in a new era, post-boom. For example, McGee shares excellent data about the high school graduating population dropping recently, then flatlining for the next decade (23-24).
The K-12 population in the northeast and midwest continues to decline, especially in comparison with the west and south(east); McGee nicely summarizes this as "The geographic center of the nation's youth will continue to edge westward and south over the next decade... By 2022-23, 63 percent of the nation's high school graduates will hail from those regions." (30)
And that population is increasingly nonwhite: "By 2023, graduates of color will represent nearly half of all high school graduates... up from one-third in 2003." (36) Specifically the largest increases will come from Asian and Latino populations ("By 2023, Hispanic graduates are expected to make up one quarter of all high school graduates").
Moreover, that population will face increasing economic challenges (41).
Economics:
Only 6% of students come from families earning enough, generally, to not require financial aid, which McGee cites as annual incomes >$200,000 (44). More,
Culture: when campuses seek to distinguish themselves from each other, that "differentiation or specialization at our institution is not nearly as clear to prospective students during their college search." (68) McGee notes that students apply to more campuses than before, and are much more price sensitive.
Breakpoint's second half attempts to synthesize these findings and offer strategic advice to campus leaders; this is less successful.
Items:
-demand for college will "remain very high, but college enrollment will become increasingly less predictable and stable" (85)
-differentiation will have to be much stronger, tied more closely to market needs (115ff)
-post-secondary education needs closer connections to K-12, especially given demographic and economic changes (126-8)
-the "math" of institutional financing at the present makes very likely "widening gaps between already rich institutions and everyone else" (132)
How will campuses survive and thrive? Ultimately McGee hints broadly that it will take cuts to the academic mission.
Income will be hard to grow, meaning "most colleges and universities [will have] to turn more assertively to the expense side of the budget" (138).
Campuses just can't switch faculty and staff from one less needed area to ones more in demand (137).
The examples of addressing budget problems all involve cuts: of a sports team (136-7), of IT support (139). Expanding the student-teacher ratio (139) could be done with enrollment growth, except the book rules that out, suggesting fewer faculty members.
Instead, the book advises campuses to consider questions like so:
i.e., where can a school reduce resources? This is a grim but, I think, quietly and widely held belief.
Breakpoint ends on that note, summoning campus leaders to think creatively - and to be ready with the ax.
That's a solid amount of information and advice to cram into 143 pages of text. Naturally I find two key features absent or woefully underplayed, namely technology and adjunctification. The discussion of digital changes (76-82) touches on high points (cost, commodification, MOOCs), but comes to no conclusions or recommendations. The transformation of American faculty from largely tenure-track to majority-adjunct goes unremarked - a special lacuna, given the book's concluding thoughts about cutting costs.
I suspect these absences stem from another issue, the book's focus on traditional-age undergraduate education. While Breakpoint acknowledges early on that the age of students is increasing, its focus remains on the 18-to-22-year-old segment. Adult learners don't appear. Four-year residential colleges are front and center; community colleges barely appear, despite educating nearly one half of American students. Those residential campuses tend to be the ones most resistant to online learning, and the wealthiest tend to retain classic patterns of largely tenure-track faculty. I appreciate that McGee's career experience gives him excellent insight into these schools; I just wish his book had addressed the rest of higher education, not least because his sector is increasingly competing with the rest.
Given those limitations, I recommend this book for any reader interested in American higher education, from academics to policymakers to students and families. Breakpoint offers a very handy compilation of very needed information.
In Breakpoint's first half McGee does a great job of exploring transformative forces in economics, demographics, and culture.
Demographics: the long boom in higher ed, from post-WWII GI Bill through the early 21st century, saw all kinds of institutional growth, and it really grew like mad during the past couple of decades. For example, "There are 1000 more degree-granting colleges and universities today [2015, presumably] than there were in 1996." (27) "Total undergraduate enrollment at American colleges and universities rose from 12.3 million in fall 1994 to 17.6 million in fall 2009, a gain of 43 percent." (!) (13)
But we are now in a new era, post-boom. For example, McGee shares excellent data about the high school graduating population dropping recently, then flatlining for the next decade (23-24).
The K-12 population in the northeast and midwest continues to decline, especially in comparison with the west and south(east); McGee nicely summarizes this as "The geographic center of the nation's youth will continue to edge westward and south over the next decade... By 2022-23, 63 percent of the nation's high school graduates will hail from those regions." (30)
And that population is increasingly nonwhite: "By 2023, graduates of color will represent nearly half of all high school graduates... up from one-third in 2003." (36) Specifically the largest increases will come from Asian and Latino populations ("By 2023, Hispanic graduates are expected to make up one quarter of all high school graduates").
Moreover, that population will face increasing economic challenges (41).
Economics:
The combined effects of slow post recession economic growth and the changing demographic characteristics of the rising traditional age college population suggest that scarcity and uncertainty will remain the signature economic themes for the foreseeable future. (63)
Only 6% of students come from families earning enough, generally, to not require financial aid, which McGee cites as annual incomes >$200,000 (44). More,
By 2010, only one-third of all first-time, full-time undergraduate students attending four-year colleges and universities nationally, and just 1 in 6 students enrolled at private four-year institutions, were paying the full price of attendance, meaning they received no grant or scholarship assistance. (133)
Culture: when campuses seek to distinguish themselves from each other, that "differentiation or specialization at our institution is not nearly as clear to prospective students during their college search." (68) McGee notes that students apply to more campuses than before, and are much more price sensitive.
Breakpoint's second half attempts to synthesize these findings and offer strategic advice to campus leaders; this is less successful.
Items:
-demand for college will "remain very high, but college enrollment will become increasingly less predictable and stable" (85)
-differentiation will have to be much stronger, tied more closely to market needs (115ff)
-post-secondary education needs closer connections to K-12, especially given demographic and economic changes (126-8)
-the "math" of institutional financing at the present makes very likely "widening gaps between already rich institutions and everyone else" (132)
How will campuses survive and thrive? Ultimately McGee hints broadly that it will take cuts to the academic mission.
Income will be hard to grow, meaning "most colleges and universities [will have] to turn more assertively to the expense side of the budget" (138).
Campuses just can't switch faculty and staff from one less needed area to ones more in demand (137).
The examples of addressing budget problems all involve cuts: of a sports team (136-7), of IT support (139). Expanding the student-teacher ratio (139) could be done with enrollment growth, except the book rules that out, suggesting fewer faculty members.
Instead, the book advises campuses to consider questions like so:
Are the curricular and cocurricular programs and activities we currently provide financially sustainable in the context of changing student needs and expectations and our revenue model?...
What spending choices have we defined as nonnegotiable in relation to our mission or values? (140)
i.e., where can a school reduce resources? This is a grim but, I think, quietly and widely held belief.
Breakpoint ends on that note, summoning campus leaders to think creatively - and to be ready with the ax.
That's a solid amount of information and advice to cram into 143 pages of text. Naturally I find two key features absent or woefully underplayed, namely technology and adjunctification. The discussion of digital changes (76-82) touches on high points (cost, commodification, MOOCs), but comes to no conclusions or recommendations. The transformation of American faculty from largely tenure-track to majority-adjunct goes unremarked - a special lacuna, given the book's concluding thoughts about cutting costs.
I suspect these absences stem from another issue, the book's focus on traditional-age undergraduate education. While Breakpoint acknowledges early on that the age of students is increasing, its focus remains on the 18-to-22-year-old segment. Adult learners don't appear. Four-year residential colleges are front and center; community colleges barely appear, despite educating nearly one half of American students. Those residential campuses tend to be the ones most resistant to online learning, and the wealthiest tend to retain classic patterns of largely tenure-track faculty. I appreciate that McGee's career experience gives him excellent insight into these schools; I just wish his book had addressed the rest of higher education, not least because his sector is increasingly competing with the rest.
Given those limitations, I recommend this book for any reader interested in American higher education, from academics to policymakers to students and families. Breakpoint offers a very handy compilation of very needed information.
May 15, 2018
A solemn and thoughtful look at the state of university education from the point of view of a top university administrator. McGee takes a look at the forces changing the shape of how education works and how the money flows to pay for it. Three major disruptions are described in detail: Economic, cultural, and demographic. A lot of background and history is given.
The goal of the book seems to be focused on how universities need to make changes so they can survive the disruption.
I found it useful and the background helpful to understanding the problem. However, I do think it is written like an insider who possibly does not see how bad it really is.
The goal of the book seems to be focused on how universities need to make changes so they can survive the disruption.
I found it useful and the background helpful to understanding the problem. However, I do think it is written like an insider who possibly does not see how bad it really is.
December 12, 2021
"Here's the key point: if, say, 98 percent of our organizational DNA is shared with other peer and competitor institutions, then the 2 percentage point of difference need to make a difference. The distinction must be known; it cannot be assumed or simply hoped for. It must be valued; there must be a market for it. It must be conveyed to the marketplace as valuable; we have to tell people why it matters. And it must ultimately deliver value; it must produce or yield what is pledged." (114-5)
August 26, 2018
Forthright presentation of the challenges faced in higher education. Prescriptions are pretty much what you would expect - understand prospective students, the reality of your situation, and the value proposition and mission of your institution.
June 20, 2017
Excellent read but short on new insights.
January 2, 2018
Great book for understand the current and future landscape of higher education
August 13, 2018
Eye-opening economic analysis of the state of higher education today. McGee makes clear that in the next decade a lot of tuition-dependent schools will be in deep financial trouble.
January 6, 2017
Yes, I read this book for work -- and I expected to be a gut-wrenching slog. It wasn't. Jon McGee is an insightful writer who used his decades long work in higher ed to crystalize ideas that face every college and university today. Sure, it can be seen as inside baseball. But for any parent facing the daunting challenge of sending their children to college -- that includes me -- this book was a clear-eyed distillation of what colleges and universities face as well as the questions parents need to ask and teh answers they need to know before they start hemorrhaging money when they send their kids to college.
McGee writes: Colleges and university leaders can talk about learning value to their heart’s content, but if we cannot address economic concerns in a compelling way – which does not require promises or guarantees but does require a commitment to understanding what happens to our students after they graduate – we risk losing the argument altogether.”
And this: “The coupling effect of rising college costs and seemingly diminished economic returns makes colleges and universities particularly vulnerable to the effects of the commodity narrative. What we provide – a degree – is nearly universally lionized as necessary to economic sustainability and success. But when we fall short of delivering on that promise or hope, we often are demonized as ineffective, inefficient and sometimes even corrupt.”
Yup.
McGee writes: Colleges and university leaders can talk about learning value to their heart’s content, but if we cannot address economic concerns in a compelling way – which does not require promises or guarantees but does require a commitment to understanding what happens to our students after they graduate – we risk losing the argument altogether.”
And this: “The coupling effect of rising college costs and seemingly diminished economic returns makes colleges and universities particularly vulnerable to the effects of the commodity narrative. What we provide – a degree – is nearly universally lionized as necessary to economic sustainability and success. But when we fall short of delivering on that promise or hope, we often are demonized as ineffective, inefficient and sometimes even corrupt.”
Yup.
April 10, 2016
There are seven other people on Goodreads that have read this book. I am betting that they have a stronger connection to the higher education marketplace than I do. I read McGee’s book because the Board of Trustees at the college where my husband works is discussing it. I will be at a weekend retreat with this Board and I like to be prepared. I doubt that this topic will come up when I am around, but you never know.
I am glad that I read this book. McGee writes clearly and I found his explanation of the economic, cultural and demographic disruptions that will affect colleges and universities very easy to understand. The marketplace for higher education is going to get complicated and McGee has some good ideas about why this will happen. Change is always hard and the coming changes in this world will affect all of us.
I wished that the author had some clear answers, but understand why he doesn’t. I am grateful for his insights – I have a better comprehension of what my husband deals with every day.
I would recommend this book to high school guidance counselors and anyone who teaches or works at a university or college.
I am glad that I read this book. McGee writes clearly and I found his explanation of the economic, cultural and demographic disruptions that will affect colleges and universities very easy to understand. The marketplace for higher education is going to get complicated and McGee has some good ideas about why this will happen. Change is always hard and the coming changes in this world will affect all of us.
I wished that the author had some clear answers, but understand why he doesn’t. I am grateful for his insights – I have a better comprehension of what my husband deals with every day.
I would recommend this book to high school guidance counselors and anyone who teaches or works at a university or college.
January 18, 2017
We read this book as a leadership team to provoke conversation on how to reimagine our future, and it really worked. Did we agree with all of McGee's points? Of course not, but that's the richness of group reviews. We have used this book to propel us to a 6 month study on how we might propose significant shifts in our business model.
July 14, 2016
A good analysis of the challenges we face in higher education and the trends/issues at drive student choice followed by strategic guidance about how to foster change in our institutions. Well-written and researched. 3.5 stars.
December 5, 2015
Brilliant! I immediately recommended it to all leaders at my institution. If you're in higher education at ANY level of academia, this is truly essential reading...and highly accessible.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews