Colleges have been cut off because they are not producing good products. CHEA - an organization to over see accreditation agencies which is heavily tilted to standards and outcomes. We are moving in a direction of intense appraisal related to eroding public trust. There are threats from the corporate world. In the next thirty years there will be as much demand for educational training as there has been in the time from Plato to today.
Education is a tremendous export business.
Mr. Leach and others attribute these developments to a confluence of political and economic trends, including recent changes in federal welfare policy and the competition among states for industry and the jobs it brings. As capital becomes more fluid, as plants can be set up at any location around the world, what really accounts for the strength of a location is its work force, says Scott Ralls, director of economic development for the North Carolina system. With nary an acknowledgment from anybody, the community college has recently been moved to center stage in American education. And the degree it offers, the associate's, may be elevated to an extent that it puts pressure on high school diplomas to mean more than they now do. The data also demonstrate the centrality of the community college in a pattern of educational consumerism that is both healthy for the society and sheer hell for higher education planning.