The USM in 2010:
Responding
to the Challenges that Lie Ahead
Introduction
What will "the State of the State" in Maryland be a decade from
now? How best can the University System of Maryland (USM) help build that
future?
These are the questions that the USM's universities, colleges, and research
centers considered as they sought to fulfill the Maryland General Assembly's
directive to prepare a new strategic plan for the System. As they prepared to
advise the USM Board of Regents on the content of the plan, USM institutions
worked together to ensure that the plan be both visionary and firmly grounded in
reality, that it be consistent with the State plan for higher education, and
that it incorporate the principles and priorities for higher education
articulated in State law. First and foremost, we agreed that the plan must
respond to the needs of Maryland and its citizens.
By reviewing current demographic, economic and social projections for the
next decade, a number of reasonably confident predictions can be made about what
Maryland will look like in the future and what needs and issues public higher
education will have to address.
To begin with, we know that Maryland's population will be increasingly
diverse and that the children of the Baby Boomers (the "Baby Boom
Echo") will swell the numbers of full-time undergraduate enrollments.
Concurrently, the number of working adults, who are already returning to
higher education in record numbers to expand their general knowledge and to
retool their job skills, will continue to grow and "cradle-to-grave"
education will be the norm. Partially because of this trend, we can safely
assume that online education will be increasingly accepted and available. A
majority of working adults will avail themselves of postsecondary courses over
the Internet, and even "traditional" students will weave together
online, classroom, and distance education programs.
We are confident that Maryland will be even more integrated into an
increasingly global economy. We can already see that the ability to find jobs is
becoming progressively more dependent on intellectual and technological mobility
(rather than physically moving from one location to another). Industries,
services, and jobs will flow to regions with the richest pool of highly educated
human resources.
And, just as the notion of "biotechnology" was science fiction
fodder 15 years ago, we can be assured that new industries, disciplines, and
interdisciplinary linkages that we cannot yet imagine will become increasingly
the norm, particularly as we continue to respond to worldwide health and
environmental concerns.
Maryland must be positioned to respond to this rapidly changing environment.
The State cannot meet the challenges that lie ahead without concurrent growth
and evolution in its system of public colleges and universities. After analysis
of current and projected trends, the USM has crafted the following vision of
what we must achieve over the next decade for the benefit of Maryland's future:
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