Sustainable Leadership: Creating Foundations for Lasting Change

The change in the United States population and the pace of Internet technology-perhaps more dramatic than most universities may have forecasted-translates into more diverse prospective students with changing needs and interests in university education (Wilson & Meyer, 2009). Immigration and U.S. population growth patterns have converged into a new prospective student profile (Banks, 2008), such that between now and the year 2050, one in three U.S. residents will be Hispanic (U.S. Census, 2009). Similarly, African Americans and Black immigrants will increase to 15% of the U.S. population, and the Asian population will grow from 5.1% to 9.2%. People of two or more cultures will more than triple between now and the year 2050, and minority children will constitute 62% of U.S. children, up from 44% today. The new challenge of recruiting new techno-savvy diverse prospective students is impacting many dimensions of higher education, particularly the historic euro-centric focus (Eckel & King, 2009)