Future to change definition
of traditional student
College students fresh out of high
school may be a dying breed.
The latest studies destroy the
myth of the 18-year-old freshman.
Projections by the National Center for
Educational Statistics predict that 50
percent of all college students will be
older than 25 by 1993.
“The majority of students (in the fu
ture) will be near 30, part-time,” said
Bob Atwell, president of the American
Council on Education in Washington.
That trend will accentuate.”
However, the non-traditional stu
dent probably will not be in the major
ity at the University of Nebraska-Lin
coln in the next century, despite the
nationwide trend.
“I think it (higher enrollment of
non-traditional students) will happen
some, but not to the extent it will na
tionally,” said James Griesen, vice
chancellor for student affairs.
Although UNL has seen an increase
in the enrollment of non-tra
aiuonai siuaenis over tne past
two decades, Griesen said,
that rise has not been compa
rable to other universities.
He attributed that to the
way non-traditional
students look at UNL.
•
“We’re viewed primarily
as a full-time institution,” he
said. “Certain institutions
just play that role in a state.”
However, the UNL student
of the future will change in
terms of ethnicity. Currently,
Griesen said, African Ameri
cans, American Indians and
v Hispanics are underrepre
sented, but he added that
minority enrollment should
change by the year 2000.
“Look at the K-12 (kinder
garten through twelfth
grade) enrollment in those
three categories,” he said.
“It’s triple, quadruple, five
times the percentage of en
rollment we have here."
Based on those numbers
and on the development of
support programs targeting
students as early as the jun
ior-high level, Griesen said,
minority enrollment should
at least double by the year
2000.
The goal of achieving
greater diversity in the next
century is not limited to the
student level, Atwell said.
“We’re going to have to
achieve greater diversity at
all levels — students, faculty,
administration” if colleges
want to see higher enrollment
levels, he said.
BY DIANE BRAYTON
SENIOR EDITOR
I can’t imagine
that the normal
university of the
future will he
electronic.
—Marian Gade,
research associate
Marian Gade, research associate
for the center for studies of higher
education at the University of Califor
nia-Berkeley, agreed, saying minori
ties would constitute a larger part of
the population.
“The big change (in higher educa
tion), of course, is going to be the
number of minority students who
haven’t been served,” she said. “We’re
still not in the position to serve some of
those students.”
Just as student demographics are
expected to be more diverse, student
curriculum will be more varied.
Integration studies will be the catch
f>hrase in the next century, education
eaders agreed. The student of the fu
ture will not be limited to one area of
study; rather, students will combine
majors to make themselves more
marketable.
“We definitely see trends toward
double majors, like agribusiness —
__ agriculture and business — or
psych law, Griesen said.
“People are positioning
themselves to be competi
tive.”
In addition, more em
phasis will be placed on
internationalization.
The Persian Gulf war has
shown people the importance
of a more global attitude,
Atwell said.
“Ninety-nine percent of
the 500,000 (soldiers) we sent
over to the gulf wouldn’t have
been able to tell you where
Kuwait was on the map,” he
said. T think that’s chang
ing; it has to change, it will
change.”
A more global economy in
[ the next century also will
encourage international
thinking, of universi
“In the 21st century,”
Griesen said, “internationali
zation will impact every as
pect of a student’s life. It’s
important that we become
cognizant that we live in a
global economy.”
What students will learn
may change quickly, but
changes in the ways they
learn are predicted to follow
more slowly.
Griesen said the current
educational system has been
slow to adapt to improving
technology, and he reluc
tantly predicted that future
classes could follow the same
path.
See STUDENT on 5
Libraries to survive
age of technology
BY DIANE BRAYTON
SENIOR EDITOR
As education enters an age of widespread
computer use, it is easy to dismiss books as
a thing of the past, and the library that
houses them as merely a museum of the obsolete.
Not so, library officials say.
The traditional library, with row upon row of
books, will not disappear, they say. Rather, print
will be com piemen tea by the incorporation of
technology.
And, according to Kent Hendrickson, dean of
university libraries, that partnership will be
evident in the 21st century at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln.
We see ourselves being a sort or a gateway to
all kinds of information on and off campus,” he
said. “In the future, we will also provide access to
other electronic databases around the campus,
around the country, around the world.”
“We’ve made the first step in that direction by
implementing IRIS,” the computerized card
catalog system, Hendrickson said.
Students and faculty members can access the
Innovative Research Information System from
their offices or residence hall rooms by plugging
their personal computers into UNL’s intercam
pus communication network.
In the future, they may even be able to access
the text of the material they need.
However, copyright laws that protect some
library materials hamper that scenario, said
Mary Ellen Davis, director of communication for
the Association of College and Research Librar
ies^__
See LIBRARY on 9
