Increasingly research has become freed of the constraints of time and place and has become a shared, collaborative national, even international, venture. We have similarly built a teaching infrastructure. This infrastructure works in support of faculty members and teachers. A lack of a national learning infrastructure stands in very stark comparison. Heterick strongly emphasized the need to turn away from the teaching paradigm, which, he said, simply won't scale into the 21st century because of problems of quality, cost, access and productivity.
Lecture is still the dominant mode of instruction.
According to recent studies, more than 48 percent of all college and university students are adult learners, many of whom have families and jobs. For this growing sector of the higher education community, the trappings of the four- year, residential college experience have become irrelevant. Underscoring this growing trend in higher education is a new consumerism on the part of both students and the organizations looking for learning opportunities. Regarding cost, Heterick echoed the emerging analogy between the national health care crisis and the current situation in higher education. Like health care, our system of higher education is considered the best in the world by many.