Page 18 - BusinessWest January 6, 2021

ECONOMIC OUTLOOK 2021 >>
Education
Continued from page 16
time will tell if those numbers hold up as the vaccines are rolled out and their effectiveness is gauged.
Meanwhile, beyond the all-important process of rebuilding enrollment, colleges and universi- ties will face other challenges, said Yves Salomon- Fernández, president of Greenfield Community College (GCC), especially the need to “adjust, adapt, and evolve,” as she put it, to effectively prepare students for what will be a changed landscape when it comes to the workforce and how work is done.
“For next year, we have to very intentional about our learning because the world we’ll be returning to, post-COVID — and with the vac- cines, which will be a game-changer — is going to different from the one we had become accus- tomed to before COVID,” she explained. “We know that there are a number of jobs that won’t be returning.”
Elaborating, she said GCC will lean heavily
on a panel it created called the Future of Work Advisory Committee, comprised of area business leaders across several sectors, including health- care, hospitality, financial services, manufactur- ing, and others.
“They help us keep a pulse on what’s chang- ing, what they anticipate, and what the outlook is, so we can align our new academic programs, and also adjust our existing programs to meet their demands,” she noted. “Also, it will be criti-
cally important for us to get a sense of what the workplace will look like and the skills that employers will be looking for.”
In this respect, she said colleges and universi- ties, at least those with an eye on the long term, will be taking lessons from evolved companies that looked at the marketplace and how it was
this past September, with enrollment down as much as 20% at some area schools (that was the number at MCLA) and 15% at most of the insti- tutions, with many high-school graduates taking a gap year and many already in college simply taking a break.
The question hanging over the industry
YVES SALOMON-FERNÁNDEZ
changing and began to adjust accordingly. “These companies started asking themselves,
‘what are the market needs today that we can adapt to and meet — and what will be the unmet needs in the future, and how can we best posi- tion ourselves to meet them?’” she explained, adding that colleges have to do the same.
As for enrollment, the lifeblood of any college or university, area schools have been battling not only the pandemic, but demographics in the form of smaller high-school graduating classes. The two forces collided with considerable force
involves that matter of pent-up demand and whether there will be good amount of it when the product is a college education.
Birge believes there will be such demand, although, as he said, it might be the fall of 2022 or 2023 before pre-pandemic levels return.
“
learning because the world we’ll be returning to, post- COVID — and with the vaccines, which will be a game- changer — is going to different from the one we had become accustomed to before COVID.”
For next year, we have to very intentional about our
“From the information we collect from stu- dents, the students want to return to campus,” he told BusinessWest. “Even in the era of online and remote
learning,
students
Education
Continued on page 26
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18 JANUARY 6, 2021
ECONOMIC OUTLOOK 2021
BusinessWest