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Starting my new book project: Peak Higher Education
Greetings from somewhere over the United States. I’m flying from DC to LA, and will take this lofty moment to announce my next book project.
I introduced the peak higher education concept way back in 2013. It was a scenario describing one path for colleges and universities. Since then I’ve developed the model in presentations, articles, a book chapter, and workshops. Meanwhile, the past decade largely embodied what I projected, with enrollments declining along with a steady stream of institutional cuts, closures, and mergers.
Now I’d like to announce a full length, scholarly book project developing the model even further. I just signed a contract with Johns Hopkins University Press to produce Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Emerging Academic Crisis.
What I hope to do in this book is to trace out the peak model first as it played out historically, examining the causes and contours of how American academia reached, then passed a certain height. Second, and to greater length, I plan to extend this model forward in time as a scenario. I’ll do that by some trend analysis, identifying the forces which drove the post-secondary sector into and past peak, then extrapolating them forward. Next I broaden the picture to address three grand and emerging challenges to higher ed: automation, climate change, and a…
