Marketing Upheaval

The Growth of Distance Learning and Professional Contentment

November 20, 2019 Creative Outhouse Season 1 Episode 20
Marketing Upheaval
The Growth of Distance Learning and Professional Contentment
Show Notes

Hey everyone, this is Rudy Fernandez from Creative Outhouse. In this episode, I spoke with Dr. Jonathon Halbesleben about two areas at critical points of change. The first is the university system and how people are accessing it, and the other is a completely new way to view work life balance. Jonathon is the Dean of a very successful college, the College of Continuing Studies at the University of Alabama. Nationally, distance education has grown 14% while traditional admissions have shrunk 3%. And that continuing trend is going to cause a tremendous shift in terms of how we view universities, and Jonathon shared his view of what the future might look like. He's also a PhD in organizational psychology, with much of his studies and publications centered around workplace productivity and contentment. It was an enlightening conversation about work life balance, and why we should stop using that phrase. It's a great episode folks. Check it out. Welcome to Marketing Upheaval.

Transcript:

Rudy:
Welcome to Marketing Upheaval. My guest is Dr. Jonathon Halbesleben. He's the Dean of the University of Alabama's very successful College of Continuing Studies, and a PhD in industrial psychology. Jonathon has written and edited 13 books and published numerous articles. His areas of focus have been workplace stress, work, family issues and employee engagement. He's a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and the Society for industrial and organizational psychology. So we have two areas that I'd like to talk about today. One is the growth and continuing education. And the other one is the trends in work life balance. Two topics, one expert guest, thank you for joining me, Jonathon.

Jonathon:
Thank you. I'm delighted to be with you. 

Rudy: 
So let's talk about continuing education we have - overall nationally I think enrollments are down 3% in a traditional University, but in continuing studies are up 15 percent What do you attribute that change to?

Jonathon:
You know, I think it's a couple of different things. But overall downward trend in enrollments is some of that's just demographics. It's true in Alabama. But it's true nationwide where we're now moving into the period where we're getting to very close to being about 18 years post recession. Yeah. And that was a time when people were maybe a little bit more reflective about having children, bringing children into the world. And so we're actually seeing declines in like, traditional 17-18 year old students that would be going to college. That definitely helps explain the downturns overall in college enrollment. With regard to the more of the distance learning or online education and those increases, I think a big part of it has been that people, they see that that you can get a good education that way. That it can be just as good as that experience you might get on campus, the experience might be different. I mean, you might not be going to football games and visiting the strip or whatever on your campus. But the education itself is just as high quality, but the cost is often lower.
Full transcript at: https://creativeouthouse.com/2019/11/20/jonathon-halbesleben-phd-dean-at-the-university-of-alabama-and-expe

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