Anticipated Developments in Education by 2025:

Five Anticipated Developments in Education by 2025

As we inch closer to 2025, here are five anticipations I hold for education and higher education, with a few exceptions:

The College Shutdown Apocalypse Will Not Surface — Another Time Around

It seems not many have taken notice of the fact that it's now a full ten years since Harvard professor Clayton Christensen made headlines by forecasting that half of all colleges would close within a decade. Later, he adjusted his prediction to nine years. Yet, you won't find these occurrences materializing, and it's highly unlikely that they'll happen in the near future either. As a matter of fact, there's scarcely any evidence to support this prediction.

Instead, 2025 will follow a similar pattern to the past 10 or 11 years – some schools will cease operations, particularly small art schools or religious institutions that can no longer bear the expenses. Other schools will merge together to save money or expand their reach. Purported scandals and poor management will bring down a few institutions as well.

To put it simply, even though some smart individuals keep talking about it, do not bet on any significant changes in the higher education marketplace in 2025.

Higher Education Will Not Experience a Major Enrollment Crunch

This projection is related to the first one in the sense that we should not anticipate substantial school closures due to dwindling enrollments – at least not to the extent predicted.

One reason most colleges and universities won't face a severe squeeze on their enrollments in 2025 is because they're improving at retaining and graduating their existing students. As per the latest figures from the National Clearinghouse, “The national six-year completion rate for the 2018 freshman cohort reached 61.1%, the highest six-year completion rate ever recorded for the cohorts tracked in this report. This year’s completion rate increased marginally from the previous cohort (by 0.5 percentage points), thanks to a reduction in dropouts (by 0.4 percentage points, down to 30.2%).”

Meanwhile, enrollments in community colleges, which serve as the gateway to higher education for millions of students, continue to rise – rebounding since the large decline brought about by the pandemic.

It's also worth mentioning that the most recent predictions for demographic declines of high school graduates have been continuously weakened, and the latest predictions suggest a national drop of traditional college-aged prospective enrollees of 13% over a span of 15 years. That's a drop of 0.86% per year, which might impact some schools, but not significantly or soon enough to show system-wide consequences in 2025.

The AI Transformation is on Pause

The hype surrounding AI in education has been overstated. The long-awaited breakthrough is likely to remain elusive in 2025 – or perhaps forever.

For students, AI is undeniably appealing, but its utility in education is limited. It's a good tool, no doubt, but it’s just one. And that tool often falls short of delivering reliable or accurate results. Add to that the growing risk of being caught and penalized for using AI to cheat or bypass school assignments, and it's safe to assume that AI usage among students will plateau or even decline.

As for educators, many will continue to grapple with and express doubts about its practical applications in real-life educational settings. For instance, a recent survey revealed that only “26% of teachers and 47% of district administrators believe that AI can be useful in the classroom within the next two years.” When just a quarter of teachers and less than half of admins expect AI to be even “useful” in their classrooms by 2024, do not expect a sudden surge in AI adoption in 2025.

For-Profit Schools will Stage a Comeback

Thanks mainly to a change in presidential administration, for-profit schools can expect a renaissance in 2025. Policy reforms that tied tuition payments and federal loans to actual career outcomes are likely to be rolled back, and it will become more challenging to discharge student loans, even in cases of proven fraud. Such policy changes will pique the interest of investors in the for-profit education sector, leading to renewed marketing efforts, enrollments, and profits.

While the revival won't be drastic, it will certainly pick up speed in 2025. It's worth noting, however, that enrollments at for-profit schools had already started to recover before the recent election – a trend that will likely accelerate in 2025.

High School Graduates Will be Even Less Prepared for College

For years now, college professors and administrators have lamented the fact that incoming students are unable to write, analyze written material, or employ other essential skills required for higher learning – that high schools aren't doing enough to prepare students for college work.

In 2024, complaints about college students' inability to read books increased significantly, as students reportedly lacked the attention span or stamina to plow through more than a few pages of text. They saw any expectation to do so as unfair or unnecessary.

In 2025, these deficiencies are likely to worsen, as the first class of college freshmen will have spent the past three years relying on AI writing assistance. Many of these students will have never written an entire paper without AI's help, leaving them ill-equipped to handle the demands of college-level work.

For institutions prioritizing academic rigor or moral integrity, this development might prove challenging and drive instructors up the wall, undoubtedly. However, the landscape might shift in 2025 as higher learning establishments gain access to data revealing the deficiencies and incapacities of their new wards for the first time. Improving AI grading and assessment systems are becoming more advanced and widely available, enabling objective comparisons between student performances. Colleges utilizing reliable AI detection tools will also acquire data concerning what students are, or likely aren't, producing in their written assignments. Consequently, the level of criticism may rise significantly.

When contemplating 2025, it's reasonable to anticipate an environment remarkably similar to the current year, particularly within K-12 systems. Nevertheless, for-profit colleges will encounter a more dynamic climate, although the scale of these changes is expected to be limited.

In contrast to the predictions of some AI advocates, the generative AI transformation in education is expected to remain on pause in 2025, as educators continue to express doubts about its practical applications and the risk of cheating deters its widespread use among students.

Contrary to expectations, for-profit colleges are likely to stage a comeback in 2025, benefitting from policy changes under a new presidential administration that make it more challenging to discharge student loans, even in cases of fraud, and encourage investment in the sector.